Hauntingly Familiar

As you might well know, from my many posts, I have moved back to the city I lived in during college (a.k.a. College Town, as named for my blog).

This also just so happens to be the city in which I lived through the worst year of my life, 2015.

2015 was a terrible year, filled with 2 relationships that were exceedingly toxic and abusive. I was sexually assaulted/raped, mentally imprisoned, physically abused, and otherwise harmed in most ways possible. Through these occurrences, I developed terrible depression, complex PTSD (which was made worse by my friend's suicide the year prior), and I participated in smoking and self-harm as ways of attempting to cope.



Often, in my experiences as a nurse, and general experiences as a human, I have been slapped in the face with comments, made by unknowing people.

Usually these include jokes about suicide or self-harm. Other times they are people lying about sexual assault and rape in order to remain out of trouble or to get attention. And still, there are instances that fall in and out of that range.



Recently, my ability to cope was tested as someone mentioned to me that "they don't believe most rape victims have actually been raped. Most of the time these girls didn't say 'no' strongly enough or contributed to the drinking and merely had sex that they regretted in the morning."

*deep breath*

For those of you who don't know my full story, just know that these are two very triggering statements for me 1) that the 'no' was not forceful enough and 2) that because the girl was drunk, it is automatically her fault because she was drinking.

Let me preface this by saying that sometimes people lie. Maybe someone is lying about having sex and regretting it in the morning and they feel that claiming it as "rape" is going to lessen their guilt or somehow get them sympathy. Let me also say that I have a tendency to believe people if they claim they have been assaulted, because if it's false then it'll eat away at them as they meet true victims. If it doesn't, then hey, not my problem. I would rather believe people and treat them with extra gentleness, than to assume that everyone is lying.



With that being said, the details of my story often keep me up at night. I have worked for years at grounding techniques and trying to remember all of the events that I unfortunately survived over the course of living through the hell I experienced in 2015.



My attackers were boyfriends. With 1, I question whether my "no" was strong enough, because I froze. I told him "no" about 50 times, maybe more. However, my body was frozen apart from moving his hands away and trying to keep myself safe. There are about 15-20 minutes that I cannot account for because my brain shut off and I had a sort of "flashback" but I didn't go into the past, I just went somewhere else in my brain. I remember my thoughts through that unaccounted time, but I cannot remember reality.

I struggle with knowing I could have done something, but I couldn't, all at the same time. Especially after taking self-defense, I know that my desires to kick him in the face and run, were absolutely acceptable and encouraged behaviors because of what he was doing. But I didn't do it, because I couldn't grasp the gravity of the situation in that particular moment.

My second boyfriend (of about 2.5 months at the time) knowingly got me drunk and likely drugged me. We had been planning to go out dancing and drinking. Like a fool, I told him my limit was 3 drinks, and asked him to hold my drink when I went out to dance. It was a night where we were given 2 free shots of various whiskey to encourage people to buy these brands. This, along with him getting me refill after refill (without my knowledge) and then encouraging me to chug, ended up causing me to drink too much. He knew I trusted him, and he knew I wasn't able to keep track of him being gone when I was dancing with my friends. He had been charming and fun for the few months we were together, until that night. The next memory I have was waking up next to him, naked, in a hotel room. I didn't know where I was, what had happened, or how to get home.

This is a struggle for me because I was counting my own drinks. I know to not drink too much. I know when to cut myself off. I trusted him. He claimed he wanted to help me after having been hurt by my first boyfriend. He claimed to have "over-the-moon" feelings for me. He claimed to want to marry me... after only a couple months of dating. We had had our fights, but he typically ended up working out a decent deal to "compromise" with me. After that night, he fought with me on religion, virginity, giving my body to him (he even claimed scripture for this, even though he is not a believer), and he fought me on everything.



With the two comments made about rape/sexual assault victims in relation to lying, saying "no", and drinking, I am at a war. I war within myself nearly every day whether I was truly abused the way I have had to convince myself I was, or if I'm making these things up and merely regret having sex with guys I hadn't even planned to kiss. Which, is a form of assault in it's own right, technically. But those are stories for another day.





And so, I lost hours of precious sleep, that I already don't get enough of, battling in my own head over words spoken out of unknowing. In the conversation, in which those comments were made, the person I spoke with prefaced the conversation saying they "had not had anyone in their family raped" and that these were just their findings in their limited control group of people who had claimed to have been assaulted/raped (a group of maybe 2 people). So, at least they acknowledged that. But it still stings.

It stings to not even believe my own memory, because of somebody's opinion about something that has never personally effected them or someone they love and know dearly. It stings to have to battle in my own head and lose sleep over such small comments. It stings to not be able to easily discern reality from nightmares, because your life is worse than your worst nightmare.

Grounding is exhausting in these situations and for someone who has been working 6 days a week, between 2 new jobs and learning all of the "new", it is especially difficult to bring myself back to the facts. To prove to myself that the labels of "rape" and "abuse" given by my counselor truly fit the relationships I had. Then, for days, my brain is recounting and dredging up all of the examples it can muster, and even some I had forgotten, in order to prove to me that I am not "crazy" for believing in my traumatic past.

And so the past haunts the present. It lurks in the corner of every new adventure. It tests out every new friendship, and holds it to standards that are unbeknownst to me. All I get are the results of the test: don't trust anyone and keep it to myself.



I don't talk about my past anymore. The more new people I meet, and the more I go on with life, the fewer people I tell. I told nobody in Small Town, and I don't plan on telling anyone here. The only people that will know, already know, and those were even probably not great choices. Thing is, it's not fair to keep it to yourself and it's not healthy. Counselors can't be the only people to ever know things like this, but I can't go around telling every random person I befriend about my traumatic past either.

The "discussions" started, the fights I wage, and the debate about what constitutes rape and abuse are conversations I simply try to avoid. Changing the subject or nodding along and zoning out seem to work the best for me. However, it seems that's all I do anymore...

And so it goes. I bandage those hurt feelings and move on. I don't blame the lips that spill the words. I don't abandon the people who think that way to begin with. All I can do is hope to recover from my many returns to the deep pits, and keep on pushing along.

Maybe one day things will get better.