I didn't do enough to justify acceptance of this horrific act. I should have fought harder, I should have fought longer...I should have died before ever letting that happen, I should NEVER have been raped. I simply can't forgive myself for being in that situation in the first place and then when things started to happen for not dying while defending myself. Afraid? Yea so what!? Either way I was going to be afraid...who wouldn't be...fear is not an excuse for cowardice. I know I had more fight in me...3 to 1 are NOT insurmountable odds. Looking back I always felt that I should have MADE them kill me...then they would have to live with murder and I another...well perhaps I would have been one of many, I'm afraid...hate crime martyrs. Anyway, in death there would be no guilt, no more shame...
I have often traced my behavior in the later stages of my active addiction, the actions that I have described many times in the past as "living with a vengeance, as if I had a DEATH WISH...back to the feelings I had after being raped that I would have been better off dead. Geeez...talk about a double whammy, Alcoholism & Addiction combined with a real and true DEATH WISH...I was doomed. What a frightening combination and no wonder I freaked people out with my insanity in talk and action.
The first paragraph of this post most accurately describes what I felt about being sexually assaulted. I always blamed myself for being in the situation I was in, for decisions I made once in that place and then for not "fighting enough or even dying in self-defense"...I couldn't win!
I don't know if I will ever publicly reveal the specific details of that experience: where it happened, what I was doing there and why. What provoked the attack and who did it, though other then there were 3 grown men, I don't know specifically myself though I believe it was a case of mistaken identity and a true HATE CRIME. There are real issues, obviously still quite unresolved to this matter but alas...I don't believe that I still can't begin to heal with certain unresolved issues and details.
First and foremost is the matter of forgiveness...for myself not for those ass-holes. Sometimes I feel inclined to forgive myself, knowing in my heart that further resistance would have very possibly increased what were already significant injuries and certainly bringing on the possibility of paralysis or death. I know in my heart this "I should have died fighting" belief is unrealistic but it was the only true dignified way out in my mind IF I couldn't physically drive them away, hence successfully defending myself. If IT had to happen, then the only true justification for allowing IT was that I was dead therefore it couldn't be stopped.
Have you any idea, READER...how many times I have laid in bed and had that scenario repeated OVER and OVER and OVER again?! The Surprise, the SHOCK...the screaming, the punching, the SCRATCHING...clawing like an ANIMAL, the pain, the violence, the FEAR...the acquiescence..a cold WET bathroom floor...the SHAME followed by GUILT. Do you know? How could anyone ever fucking know how that feels for 36 years re-living that experience virtually EVERYDAY since it happened...and the out come is ALWAYS the same. I always LOSE...I'm a LOSER, The biggest LOSER of all.
That is the scenario that runs like an endless movie in my brain, in my minds EYE everyday...all day. What can break that cycle? That was the big question...could anything or any one ever help me turn that around? Could I once and for all step outside the vortex of spinning images haunting not only my dreams but my waking hours as well. I had very little hope or expectation that would ever happen.
Oddly the first step in any recovery, I believe anyway starts with accepting that the big, bad, haunting thing that hurts you actually happened in the first place. For all that re-lived horror I experience DAILY, there was part of me that lived in denial that it ever really happened! It's hard to believe yet that was very much the case. I would tell myself, NO...No, it couldn't have happened. Then when it was OBVIOUS that it had indeed happened...then the "IT wasn't THAT bad" tape started to run in my brain. I was over-reacting...yea that's it, over-reacting...TO RAPE!
Of course none of that was nearly as troubling as the "I deserved what I got" notion that still can crop up in between me ears to this very day....it is all so complex, so inter-twined with my reality today. I often just didn't know HOW to feel or WHERE to go with these horrid feelings when they cropped up...and they often still do.
So that is the reality I face, that I live with concerning that one situation ALONE. One can see how overwhelming this all must have felt when I first got sober. I NEVER thought that I would be able to do it, that I could survive it. It was that overwhelming feeling that opened my mind then my heart to the very real idea that GOD was there, for me.
People say, after all that happened to you, how can you say that? Where was GOD when this happened to you, why didn't he stop it?! Well, I wasn't having any GOD in my life at that time...NO it was my life, I ran the show...I MOCKED GOD at this time as a figment of a weak MAN's imagination and for decades afterward. I don't pretend to know all about what GOD is and GOD does..I do know that I felt his GRACE and his LOVE envelope me when I ASKED him to come into my life and it has been getting better and better ever since. Not perfect...but better. I'll accept BETTER...
So that is what IT is at this time. I still have issues...I still feel like the LOSER at the end of the line sometimes. So is it going to take MORE time? I don't know...would you know? How could you KNOW?!
(Painting by Pablo Picasso)
