Fix My Feelings

I am not a rape victim, I am a survivor. I get offended when someone uses the word “rape" in a jokingly manner. Prime example, Jim Carey’s character in the Burt Wonderstone movie, Steve Gray, “Mind Rapist". I don’t know why someone who’s such an advocate for human rights, would knowingly and willingly play a character that makes light of the word rape. I was raped for the first time when I was 9 years old. It was by someone I considered a friend, one of whom I had a crush on. He was 15 and I had met him at my friend’s church. That summer I was invited by him to go swimming at the local high school. I, of course, wanted to go badly. Once there, I never had a chance to get in the swimming pool. He wanted to walk to the football field. Once we reached the storage shed in the middle of the field, he kissed me and we sat down. I was uncomfortable, but I liked him, so I let him kiss me. Then he lit a cigarette and asked if I wanted a drag and I shook my head no. He kissed me again, pushing me down and running his hands somewhat violently down my stomach, to my thigh and back up to between my legs. I tried to fight him off. Tried to tighten my legs closed, but he burned my thighs with the cigarette. I couldn’t fight anymore.

Sometimes I sit a think about me losing my virginity at the age of 9 years old and I feel so disgusted with myself. But other times, I’m brave enough to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault. I never asked for that to happen to me. But it’s hard not to feel disgusted with myself because that wasn’t the only time I was raped. I was also raped by 2 adult male cousins (whom are my mother’s age) from the ages of 12 til I was 16. Sometimes I blame my mother for the continuation of the rapes. They started when I just turned 12, my cousin “eased" my into the situation by showing me my first porno film, that left me verbally and physically paralyzed, so much so that he took advantage of that. I was raped when I was on my period. I was raped with tampons inside me. I had to go to the Gynecologist twice to have forceps help remove the tampons that were lodged so far into my cervix. I blamed my mom for a lot of the rapes because she didn’t trust her teenage daughter to be home alone during the summer, that she forced me to go on road trips with Joey. I eventually started to fall for my cousin and in some sick and twisted way, I thought of myself as his girlfriend. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that’s called Stockholm Syndrome.

My past has been weighing on my mind a lot lately and it’s hard to turn it off once it starts. A trigger for me that I never told anyone for years, was living in fear and horror at my mother-in-law’s house for the first year of our relationship. She just happens to live right down the street from the place that Joey used to rape me at in his big rig, in Blythe, Ca. So every time we’d walk or drive past that spot to get into town, I was constantly  reminded of the horror of my young teenage years. I did eventually tell Derrick where that spot was, but my in-laws don’t care to know. They’ve never wanted to get to know me, they’ve never tried and Derrick and I have been together for 13 years now, married for 10 of those. I have no idea if they know that I have mental illness issues or that I’ve been raped and molested or that I had a rough childhood full of abuse of all kinds. I doubt they read my blog. I doubt they’ll even accept me as Derrick’s wife and the mother of our children. I’ll never be good enough and that’s another thought that just keeps repeating over and over in my head. Three years and two kids missed, that’s how long Derrick cut his family out of his life because of the way they treated me. Now that we’re [he is] giving them another chance, they still continue to pretty much ignore us. Granted, we’re friends on Facebook, but that’s about the extent of it. At least the kids have my side of the family. 

Then there was my cousin, who’s also my Godfather. The very first time he forced me to perform oral sex on him was in a public park, on a stairwell in a secluded part of the park. I was pushed to the ground, hair pulled and was literally orally raped. I just remember crying like crazy, trying my damnedest not to throw up. I wanted to fight back, I really did, but I knew about my cousins past, how he was arrested for attempted murder and gang violence. Plus, he’s raped his own sister at least 3 times and got her pregnant those three times. I could just image the pain he’d cause me or my family if I hadn’t complied. I was literally afraid for my life. One time I was asked to a slumber party at my cousin’s house for his little sister. She promised me that he wouldn’t be there, and he wasn’t when I showed up. But in the middle of the night, when I got up to go pee, he grabbed me when I came out of the bathroom, covering my mouth and took me into his bedroom. I was raped anally and was crying the entire time and when he finished, I ran into the bathroom and screamed for my aunt. I told her that I needed to go home. I didn’t tell her why. But I called my mom, who called my boyfriend and they both came and picked me up. I never told anyone why I left.  

I’m tired of constantly being triggered. To be forced to think about the pain that the boy from my childhood and my cousins caused me. Everything triggers me; the news, Law & Order: SVU episodes, movies, books and even my own daughter. Evelyn is the age I was when I was raped for the first time. I see her innocence and it breaks my heart being reminded that my innocence was taken away. I never had a chance to fall in love and give my virginity away, I was forced. It was taken. It was stolen. I was robbed. I don’t want to be a victim anymore, I AM a survivor, but I can’t help but feel weak sometimes. My triggers are becoming more and more frequent lately, even though I don’t tell Derrick when I’m triggered. I usually just go into the bathroom and have a small panic attack in there. I usually chew an Inderal pill to calm my nerves. And Derrick wonders why I always want to drink (and to cut). I want to drink to numb the pain. I want to drink to forget, to distract myself. I want to drink to temporarily erases those memories from my mind. I want to feel sexy and think about sex with my husband, without thinking about how my cousins used to touch me. I get insecure wearing a bathing suit, and it’s not because I’m slightly overweight, but because I have a scar on my thigh from being burned. I want to feel normal. I need to feel normal. I need to not feel like a victim. I need to feel like a survivor.