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mistoferin -> RE: Do they know? Do they care? (11/25/2004 5:10:53 AM)
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liljoy.......
*Big hugs to you* I'm sorry but this has taken me a few days to get the courage to write to you. You see your post caught me just a bit off guard as you and I are the same age. We also have in common the fact that we were both raped at the age of 18....during the Holiday season.....by a "They" and not just a "Him". Your post came almost 24 years to the day of my rape. I understand so much of what you are going through as I have truly been walking this same path. I too know what it is like to wake up in the night screaming as sleep is the one area of my life that I seem to have not been able to fully purge of this. The only other time it is ever a real concious issue for me anymore is that sometimes during a scene.....a look, a smell.....a touch...can sometimes send me spiraling right back to that day. For the most part though I now live my life without allowing "Them" to enter, and if a thought does creep in I immediately shut it down because I feel that every moment I allow it to stay I am actually giving them my power.....and I just refuse to give them anything more. I gave them enough that day and in the months and years following and they were never deserving of even that.
It took me a long time to realize that this was an issue bigger than myself. I used to tell myself that I was tough, I could handle it alone, I didn't need help. I kept this to myself.....it was easy for me to do as this happened in another state....I didn't come home until long after the physical healed.....I told no one here and thought I had very effectively "left" it behind me. It was a couple years later when a strange car pulled into my driveway and a man I had never seen came knocking on the door. I still don't know to this day who he was because I never answered it. I was too busy lying on the floor trembling so I wouldn't be seen....my baby in my arms covering his mouth so he would not let out a cry and give us away. That is when I realized that I had a problem. I also realized that I had not been out anywhere alone in all the time since the attack. I picked up my phone and I called a counselor. After months of really hard work and reliving it over and over I finally began to let go of it. A few years later I became a counselor myself.....I needed a way to give that back.
I am not to say that I am never negatively affected by this event anymore, I guess that to some degree I always will be, but today I also see some positives. This event has helped form the person I am today....the strong, caring woman I have become as a result. This may sound weird but for that reason alone....I have come to embrace it in a way....for without it I do not know if I would be the same person I am now....have the same levels of compassion.....the same strong determination. When I have bad things in my life happen today.....like we all do.....I tend to hold them up to the rape...and if they are not as bad as that, well then I know I will come out just fine in the end.....for if I could overcome that, well I can overcome almost anything I guess. I believe In God liljoy....a personal choice for me....and I believe that nothing.....absolutely nothing....happens in God's world by accident. However bad, however good, they are exactly as they were meant to be. Now I don't always know the reasons why things are the way they are.....but then again, maybe that is not something for me to know. I have learned acceptance though....and today I do my best to accept things as they are.....to try to find the lessons to be learned in all of them and to understand that each and everything that touches me or happens to me affects who I am going to be tomorrow.......like every drop of rain that touches a flower, every ray of sunshine that shines down upon it and every wind that ruffles its petals. The good and the bad.....all make up "Me".
Peace and light,
erin
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