How to change a reaction?

I see him with my eyes, but I feel him with my heart as the fear causes yet another crack. 

Fear? What is it I have to fear when I see him? That he will attack me again? In public! Of course he wouldn't be so stupid! Then what? The only thing I have left to fear is a memory, that awful split second memory that is triggered when I see him, that memory that plays, over and over, and over, the memory where I slowly figure out what's happening to me yet I cannot do a single thing to stop what's happening. The memory where I don't try to stop him, I just lay there all fuzzy wondering how I move again. The memory that haunts me still, all these years later. I just don't know how to change my reaction to that memory, it paralyses me briefly, and then it just runs and runs, bombarding my thoughts with its pain. I can't stop it, and I don't know any other way to react to it, initially my fear when seeing him was real, it was valid, but as the years passed the fear became irrational, I know he won't touch me, he can't hurt me, I'm never likely to be alone with just him again, so it's not possible for him to hurt me. Yet my reaction remains the same all these years on and I just wish I knew how I could react differently when I saw him but I just don't have any control over my reaction yet. Will that come? Ever?

2 steps forward, 1 step back

That's how my life feels right now, like I take 2 huge steps forward and then take a step back again. It's so frustrating. I'm being told that I cannot keep looking to the past and letting the past control me, but the problem I have is that I think the past has actually become me, that I am what happened to me and if that is the case then if you take the past away there will be nothing left of me. 

I've said it so many times before but I don't know how to be me anymore, I don't know who I am. I find a glimpse of someone, someone with a bit of self esteem, someone who's happy and confident in herself, and as quickly as I find her she seems to retreat inside me and vanish again. 

So how do I grab this girl and keep her before she vanishes again? How do I even consider letting go of everything I am when I have no idea what will become of me then? If I do find the strength to let go, what will be left, if anything? I have so many questions and yet there really are no answers, the only way I will ever know is to simply take the plunge. I'm getting close, I know I am, closer than I've ever got to finding some sense of normality with the chaos and destruction that's been my mind. The problem is that the closer I get, the more steps forward I take, the harder it pulls me back like a bungee rope. The only hope I have right now, is that even bungee jumpers eventually come to rest on the ground, the bouncing back doesn't last forever, eventually they lose momentum and the rope stops dragging them away from their final destination. All I can do is hope that my rope to the past will eventually lose its momentum too and that one day, I will find the courage to step out of the bungee harness and walk away from the past. One day I will figure out who I am, and that I will be able to be more than just what happened to me. 

2 steps forward and 1 step back, are still steps in the right direction and they mean that I'm still moving forwards, albeit slowly.... 

Of guilt, shame and battles!

Firstly lets define guilt and shame so we know exactly what we're talking about, 

Guilt: n. 1. the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law.

2. a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.

Shame: n. 1. the painful feeling of having done or experienced something dishonorable, improper, foolish, etc. 

See most, if not all rape survivors, feel guilty or shameful after being raped, guilty because we convince ourselves that we must have done something to cause this to happen to us (in my case one of the times it was drinking and getting intoxicated, if I hadn't got drunk that night would have ended entirely differently and not with being raped) and then you have shame, shame is what silences us, keeps us from telling people what happened to us. I told someone what happened to me and I was told "m isn't like that, he wouldn't do that" which then made me feel like it was my fault, I had somehow made him do that. Logic doesn't even come into play during these moments, because although logically I know that nothing I did caused M to rape me, I was passed out, fast asleep, when he raped me, so I know that my actions didn't cause the rape. 

But then the guilt and shame kick in, I need somewhere to point the blame, somewhere to direct the anger that I feel, and the safest place to direct all those feelings is at myself. My skirt was too short, my top was revealing, I'd had too much to drink, I didn't fight him off, I didn't say no, all reasons to blame myself, to feel guilty and ashamed. 

Had this happened to a friend, I know I'd be first there telling her it wasn't her fault, she has every right to wear what she wants, drink what she wants and to still feel safe, I'd tell her the alcohol stopped her from fighting and saying no, it's not her fault that she couldn't move to push him away, it's not her fault that she didn't say no, she didn't realise what he was doing at first because of the alcohol. So if I can see all this logically and I would comfort another person in this way, then why on earth do I choose to punish myself for these things? 

Because if I don't punish myself and direct my anger at myself, then I need someone else to punish, somewhere else to direct the anger, the only other place is at my attackers. Something which I fear would not be possible without huge ramifications as a result.

 I did confront T, I spoke about that in the blog post titled "confronting your demons" and there were no ramifications, I received what I felt to be a sincere apology from someone who felt guilty for his own actions and had spent years torturing himself as a result. A lot like I had been doing. But somehow even knowing that hasn't seemed to fix things in my head. 

I could never confront M, I honestly believe that he didn't think he was doing anything wrong that night, and I know he bragged to friends about this "conquest" which hurts even more, because I know he will never understand how much he hurt me, and I know he will never care about it. 

I feel like I'm fighting a constant battle with these people, I feel like I need to win, they hurt me, they made me suffer, which means they've been winning all these years, and now I need to fight back and win. 

When actually, the battle I'm fighting, it's not with T, or even M, it's with myself.

 I'm fighting myself, waging a constant war in my own head, convincing myself I'm fighting these demons, when I'm only fighting myself. The problem is though, when there's only one person fighting the battle, although you may win, you will find that you also loose too. 

I know I can't change what happened to me. I can't control what T and M did, I couldn't control it back then so I certainly can't control it now. I cannot alter the past. All I have is here and now, all I have are my memories, my reactions to what happened, two things that are actually controlling me right now. Except these are things that I CAN change, my memories, my reactions, these are things that I actually can control. 

So that will be my new battle, I cannot change the past or what happened to me, but I CAN change myself and how I react to the past and I can control my memories and how I react to those. 

I spent far too many years blaming and punishing myself, simply because that was the easiest and safest option I had, but now it's time to step out of my safety zone, let down some of my barriers, and do what's right for me, NOT what's easy for me! Easy is locking things up and torturing myself, but right is letting go and changing my reactions, letting people in and finding the real me! She is in there somewhere, no more hiding her away, no more fronts or masks, just the open honest truth.   

Letter to them

Dear M and T

I swear to God you both have ruined my life now for far too long and every single time I try to fight back you knock me down again, well I'm sick of it. I'm fed up of the control you have had over my life and my head. I'm trying, God only knows I'm bloody trying, it's a constant uphill battle with everything that you both did to me. But this is one battle that you cannot win, I won't let you, it's just not possible because when you win - I die, it really is that simple, and I'm NOT ready to die! Fighting you both is my only option, I know that now, and I'm damn well prepared to fight until there is absolutely nothing left of you for me to fight anymore. It will happen, it might not be right now, it might not even be in the next week or month, but it will happen one day. 

I need you out of my head for good, I just need to figure out how to get to the place where that is possible. It is possible, it just has to be, my sanity depends on it now.  

One day I will be able to see you or think about you and what you did, and not feel a thing, to not feel hurt, anger, guilt or any of the myriad of emotions I experience when you're in my head. 

One day, not today, not likely tomorrow, maybe not next week, or even next month, but one day, you won't have a place here and I will be strong enough to let you go, strong enough to stop torturing myself, strong enough to be free. One day ........

More thoughts

So the other day I discussed dealing with some of the bigger issues, in order to start fixing and resolving the smaller issues. The 2 main things that I am up against are T and M, both have their own set of problems and each one is going to be incredibly difficult to try to deal with and solve. 

First M, you see M is the more threatening presence in my life right now. M is the one that I'm likely to run into going about my daily life, shopping, working, days out locally with the kids, M is the one that lives locally, the one that I live in fear of running into on a daily basis. I just don't remember what actually happened with M, you see, I'd been drinking (back to those bad choices we make!) I wasn't even sure where I was when I woke up that night, I wasn't sure what was happening at first, and even when I realised someone was having sex with me, I couldn't make my body or my brain work the way I needed to, I didn't even know who it was until he spoke and I recognised his voice. I have spent many years questioning if this was even rape? For all I knew I could have consented but had no memory of that part. Having read up in books and online, it is classed as rape if a person is too intoxicated to be deemed capable of consenting to sex. So the answer I was looking for, was yes, M raped me, whether I said yes or not, I was incapable of making that decision for myself at that moment in time. If I had the opportunity I never would have slept with M, it would have just been too weird as we'd grown up together and I just didn't think of him like that, I never had. 

You could call T a less threatening presence in my life, he moved away from the area many years ago, the chances of me running into him in Asda are pretty remote to say the least. Our paths had not crossed for several years and were not likely to cross at any point in the near future. However, despite this, the psychological damage that T caused cuts far deeper than I ever imagined it would. The betrayal on so many levels affected me far more than I first realised. 

T and I were super close, he was someone I could talk too, he knew I'd been raped, he'd held me as I cried, comforted me and reassured me, he made me feel safe and could make everything ok when he wrapped his arms around me. Sunday mornings before church and after church we were often found curled up watching episodes of Red Dwarf together, I trusted T completely, that line between friendship and more often blurred, lines were crossed, but I was so comfortable with him. I think that's what hurts so much, I'd have been with him, he only had to say the word and I'd have crossed that line with him because I held him on a pedestal. 

There were a few months when I was in a relationship with someone else and T liked to poke fun at that relationship, but despite my feelings for T, during that time I'd have never done anything to spoil things in my current situation. When we broke up I was heartbroken, and T was the one with open arms, comforting, safe and secure. On that particular day were were messing around, talking, joking, playing that stupid game that required someone to admit they were nervous - we'd played it so many times before, I had every faith that I was safe with T, he'd never given me a reason to doubt him yet. But somehow that day ended up different because he didn't stop when I asked, and my protests and giggles were soon stopped dead when I realised what was happening. I switched off, turned my focus everywhere but there, I watched the church out of the window, questioned the morals of a God who allowed people to hurt like this. My soul was being torn to shreds, I'd never be able to repair this, and I had no idea where or how to even begin. 

How do you try to rebuild your trust when it's been shattered into so many pieces? When you've used your judgement to figure out who it is safe to trust, and then it turns out that you couldn't have been more wrong, you suddenly begin to question everything, even years later, every time you need to trust your instincts, you start questioning your judgement, always turning back to T. I thought I could trust T but look how wrong I was, how can I be sure that I can trust this person? The psychological effects of this betrayal of trust wreak havoc upon your life. You no longer have any logical concept of who is safe to trust, who poses a threat and might hurt you? 

If you combine the damage caused by T, with the damage caused by M, all you have is a shadow, that's all that remained. A tiny whisp of my former self, I did everything I could to fade into the background from then on, choosing to blend in rather than stand out. 

I wish you ........

I wish you strength of a mountain.

Strength to fight

strength to stay true to yourself

strength to not let this destroy you

strength to find your inner purpose

Strength to carry on

I wish you the hope of a child.

hope for a future

hope for recovery

hope for safety

hope for well and whole

I wish you love deep enough to fill the oceans

love from yourself

love from others

love from a strangers kindness

love in spite of your history

I wish you comfort of a blanket

comfort to acknowledge your feelings

comfort to accept them as valid

comfort to not feel lonely

comfort to receive help

comfort to become fearless

comfort enough to let your inner beauty shine.

I wish you patience

patience to deal with life

patience to know your journey is a long one

patience to push forward through setbacks

patience to accept the confusion of those close to you

patience to heal with every tear.

I wish you these things because you deserve them for you are beautiful, strong, loved, and because someone along the way didn't believe these things about you.

This is such a beautiful poem, I just had to share it!!!

A journey towards change and letting go.

So recently I've been thinking lots, I know I've talked about healing and a recovery journey, and I've been thinking about what this means to me. One of the thoughts I've had involves me, "letting go" of the past, but for some reason I actually find this a scary prospect. For so many years, all I wanted was to go back to the me I was before being raped, but as the years pass me by, this vision of me gets smaller and fades away further into the distance, in fact I don't think I even know who she is anymore, I barely even remember her, it's been so long since I knew her. Because, being raped, over the past 16 years has become an enormous part of who I am and what I am, I'd even go as far as saying that it's become me. I spent so long convincing myself that I was fine, that I would NOT allow being raped to become a part of who I was. I failed miserably. It really is who I am, some days I still see myself as a victim, mostly though, I'm a survivor. But it's had such a massive impact on my life, affecting so many of the decisions I make, affecting how I think, how I act, who I am. I'm a completely different person since that happened, I find it so much harder to trust people, and almost impossible to trust myself, instead, relying on others to make decisions for me. The part that I find scary though, is that if I let go of all the feelings, all the guilt, hurt, blame and pain, then what, if anything will actually be left of me? I allowed the rape to consume me, to become me, I lost sight of the old me, the girl I was, she disappeared long ago. If you take rape away I am nothing, because I don't know how to be anything else, this is all I know, this is who I've been for 16 years. I don't know if I have the strength left, to create a new me, to become someone else, someone I don't actually know, someone I've never met. Because it's up to me to change, it's what I need to do, I know in my heart that I simply cannot continue to carry all this with me forever, the burden just grows heavier as time passes. After a long talk a couple of nights ago, probably one of the most, frank, honest and open discussions I've had in 16 years, I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 major things I need to deal with (and probably lots and lots of smaller ones, but hopefully these will fall into place as I worth through the others) The 2 big things are T and M - I have to come to terms with what they both did. Both are entirely different incidents, which have their own entirely different set of issues - maybe that needs it's own blog post though. The smaller issues involve; trust, touch, letting go, relaxing, cutting, triggers and flashbacks, just for starters. So for now the journey is underway, a journey I've been taking for 16 years already, but this time I'm choosing a new path, I need to move away from the bad coping mechanisms of the past, and learn new, healthy ways to deal with things, and that is what this part of my journey will focus on.

Anger

Lately I've felt like a red cloud descended upon me, for no particular reason with no prompting, the anger just appears like a red mist, it's as though the more I try to organise my head, sort through my feelings and make decisions about moving on with life, the more intense the anger becomes. Almost as though I'm angry at myself for wanting to deal with my past properly and try to heal properly, the closer I get to trying to take these steps the more the anger grabs me and tries to hold me back. I don't actually know why I'm so full of rage, I don't really have any particular or valid reason to feel this way, I just can't seem to control the way that I feel though. It's killing me. Slowly, but surely, it's eating away at me, filling my head with ugly thoughts, with hateful feelings, just this awful red rage, consuming me from the inside out. I need to figure out a way to control it and I need to figure it out fast. I need my life back, I just want to be able to open my mouth and speak instead of feeling my jaw clenched refusing to let my feelings out. I want nothing more than one day to walk past one of them 3 and feel nothing, no pain, no fear, no anxiety, no hatred, just nothing. I want to tear my soul to pieces and then slowly and carefully put it back together again, unlike last time when I hastily tried to fix things with all the wrong coping mechanisms. I want to do this properly, no haste, no quick fix, just pure determination to sort the past out once and for all. Only it would appear that my demons clearly object to these decisions, in fact they are pretty much ruining my life all over and making things pretty miserable right now. I was told in the past that its when you try to rid your life of demons that they will do everything in their power to try to stop you. That's exactly what they are doing, and right now they're turning me into a big volatile ball of rage and they're winning. Now I need to find the strength and figure out how and IF I am able to fight back.

Of rugs and sweeping......

Somehow that black cloud still has me trapped, I'm discovering that most of the progress I had made in the past towards healing and recovering was this special little tactic also known as avoidance, avoiding the memories, the feelings, anything related to being raped. In avoiding these various triggers it becomes increasingly easy to convince yourself that you are "over it" that you've dealt with everything and you've moved on with your life. Actually what you have done is simply swept those feelings, the hurt, the memories, under a metaphorical rug in your mind, if you can't see them, they can't hurt, right? Except what happens when something else rape related crops up? Out comes the metaphorical brush and rug to tidy up your mind again, but before long you suddenly realise that your rug is no longer a nice flat rug, in fact there is a huge lump underneath the rug, which is now barely being covered by the edges, stray feelings, stray memories are creeping out because they are no longer confined in the darkness underneath the rug. This is what I've spent the past 15 years of my life doing. It's a vicious cycle, avoid and sweep until there's no where to sweep to, work through some of the issues until you feel satisfied with your 'healing' and then go back to avoiding and sweeping again. Now, logically, what I need, is to stop the avoiding, and instead deal with each and every issue as it appears, no matter how small it may seem, no more sweeping, no more rug to hide behind, just constant daily battling and dealing. By fixing the little things they shouldn't build into big things, right? So now I know what I need to do, the question should actually be, am I capable of doing this? How do you deal with the little things when so many times your head cannot seem to put the feelings into words for you, then sometimes if your head has finally managed to find the words, your mouth finds it just cannot speak them out loud. Then what? When you can't find the words to express yourself, or you have the words but find you don't have the voice you need to share with others. Then what do you do when you realise you don't have anyone to share this with? I don't actually mean literally, I have people that I trust, not many, but I have a few, I just don't like to turn to them, it hurts me to burden others with the memories, the pain, the thoughts I have. I have no choice but to live with them, but by sharing them with others, I feel as though I am taking away their choice too. Vicious cycle springs to mind because I know if I don't share then I sweep and hide. How on earth do you manage to break free of this awful cycle? Ideas welcomed with open arms at this point because I'm running out of ideas......

A book recommendation

I've been reading a book, it's called "the truth about rape" by Teresa m. Lauer MA. I actually skipped straight to section 2 of the book, section 1 is the author's journal entries describing her recovery from being raped. Section 2 deals with and describes in detail the various questions one might need answers to following the trauma of rape and also questions and advice regarding recovery and moving on after being raped. At present my head isn't in the best place to be reading descriptions and journal entries depicting someone else's recovery journey, instead I simply needed something else, what that something was I wasn't entirely sure, but I skipped straight through to section 2 and instead started to deal with the facts, the truths, the how to 's and the whys relating to rape. Through my reading I learned several things I hadn't realised earlier, I'd been suffering from a few different coping techniques without even knowing about it, the book touched upon and answered questions regarding "avoidance" (avoiding dealing with the emotions relating to the rape to avoid feeling them again) "Denial" (refusing to admit we are not coping with the situation we are in and instead burying our feelings and emotions regarding the rape) "bargaining" this I was aware of simply as the "what if" stage that I had never really been able to let go of. Reading all this information gave me something I very much needed at this point in my journey, validation, the knowledge that what I am feeling, the emotions I was experiencing were completely real and valid feelings, in short, I was not going crazy. I was not imagining these feelings, the emotions were very much real, in fact these were things I would never ever get away from, never escape, instead I would learn to accept them for what they are, memories, albeit bad ones, of an incident in my past that I would never be able to forget or change. So it would appear that acceptance was a step I needed to take, accepting what happened to me, does not mean I condone their actions, it simply means that I understand that this happened and I understand that the past cannot be undone, the memories cannot be changed and that I accept this for what it is in order to move forward in my journey. I don't have to like it, just accept that it happened and can never be altered or changed. All I have control of anymore are my own reactions to my past, I can choose to be controlled by it OR I can choose to instead become the master of my own destiny by facing the future with a courage I've never discovered before. One more step along the world I go .........

Another step along the road

Last week was a difficult week, this week will be much better, I can just tell. Last week I was consumed by the inherent desire to overcome my demons yet at the same rooted by the fear of what might be. It's been 6 days since my last post and when I left off I left my head in a very bad place, I was suffering a severe lack of faith in myself, in my abilities, a complete lack of confidence and self esteem, my aims at the time were way over my own head, but I was blind to this and could only focus on the final destination as opposed to simply enjoying the journey one step at a time. This week I'm taking each step slowly, and I plan to cherish each moment. Even the moments that cause me pain, I will embrace them and try to understand that the pain is only a temporary feeling, the the results however, I hope will last much longer. I know there will always be a long road ahead of me, I don't think the path to healing ever really ends, but it's my path and its my journey, I can't change that now, so I'll just keep on walking and see where I eventually end up. Maybe I'll endure constant battles with my demons, but each battle I win is simply another step behind me. On to pastures New and all that? We shall see, the only way to know is to try - right?!