As I sit here thinking about my journey, and the person I have become, I can’t help but be both proud of myself, and fully surprised. To be frank, my life experiences were harrowing to say the least. I don’t know, even now, how I was able to keep moving forward despite my disadvantages, or how I managed to give myself the chance to heal. I chuckle now when I reflect on the difference between the Me before the awakening and the Me now. Now, I have more of an understanding that the shadows I held and the way I behaved in the past were understandable and reasonable considering the circumstances I endured. This clarity finally allowed me to give myself permission to accept it, and not beat myself up for it.
As a young child—probably beginning around the age of eight or nine years old—I fell victim to child sexual abuse. My own older brother used to take advantage of my sister and me, as we were weaker and unable to defend ourselves. Our parents also never seemed to be around as he did these things. Where they were, I still do not know. Both myself and my sister were never able to bring ourselves to tell them as children what was happening, probably due to this lack of presence. Our brother used to choose one of us, throw us on the ground, and hold us down with his body weight. We were utterly trapped. He’d then rip down our bottoms and underwear, and inappropriately place his face on our private areas. My sister and I were both always scared to death and knew what he was doing was wrong, despite not having the knowledge of what sex was at that age. One thought I remember vividly thinking during those harrowing traumas that I personally had was that whenever it was my sister’s turn, I felt relief and was actually genuinely grateful it wasn’t me. I really hated myself up until extremely recently for thinking this because I knew I shouldn’t find solace at others’ expense. I felt it was wrong to think such things, and it led me to beat myself up for it for a long time. As I think about it now, I know that thinking such a thing given the terror of the situation is a normal response to trauma. We were subjected to these scary, abusive experiences for quite a long time.
Unfortunately, my parents really did not get along. They were near constantly arguing for most of my childhood (this really did not help with my migraines). This eventually led to my mother participating in infidelity. Around sixth grade and the following summer, she dragged myself and my sister with her on her liaisons. What was possibly going through her mind in thinking it was ever okay to drag her children there to witness such things is something I will never understand. We were not ignorant by any means and knew fully what was happening. I can remember my dad was aware something was amiss as well because I can recall one night sitting in the living room in the darkness with him until around three or four in the morning when she finally walked in the door with her shirt on inside-out and a disheveled appearance. Not long after, she finally left. I can remember the feeling I had that night my mother left of losing any childlike innocence I had remaining when I told my dad that she had been cheating. At eleven years old. No child should ever be put in that position.
This loss of innocence was forced for multiple reasons. It’s crucial to remember that I was still being subjected to child abuse as this situation arose. With my mother gone and my dad working all day, the household responsibilities were taken on by myself and my sister. I also knew in that moment it was apparent I’d lose what semblance of adult presence I had—that with one parent gone physically and the other gone mentally, I would truly have no protection from my brother at all. This fear for my safety was my kryptonite. I had to find a way to protect myself, and at that moment, decided I had no choice but to leave this situation. I saw college as that out, although that would be a few years away. I felt I could no longer be a child allowed to enjoy anything anymore. Thereafter, I routed all of my focus toward doing everything necessary to get into college. Everything I had done was for this purpose, and this purpose alone. I had to excel in school, take extra-curriculars all year round (also to get me out of that house for longer), and later gave up my Saturdays to attend school through this college-bound program at a local university campus. I even attended college as a full-time student my last two years of high school. I worked my teenage life away on this one goal for the sole purpose of preserving my own safety to the best of my ability. This came at the cost of my own enjoyment. These mundane responsibilities are restricting and limit growth. Hence, having these responsibilities forced on me at such a young age to accept the lie that I was to submit to this lifestyle forever—that it was the only option. I feel strongly it was this loss of my fun, light existence that was the most damaging trauma. Such a loss is extremely difficult to ever get back. Since I was forced to grow up too fast and experience adult burdens from such a young age, I forgot how to see, how to experience the magic and beauty of the world. I forgot how to believe in the impossible, and see life as journey filled with endless possibilities.
An important personality trait to know about me is that I am at heart an extremely kind, caring, compassionate person by nature. This rang true even as a young child. As my wondrous, childlike world dissipated and the abuse continued, my self-worth dwindled. I thought of myself as damaged and unworthy. I truly believed I was less valuable than others, and it caused me to alienate myself from everyone and close myself off to creating meaningful connections with people. I felt truly alone and out of place. The abuse also had me feeling I could not trust anyone—after all, it was my own brother that was the perpetrator, a family member who is supposed to be unconditionally trustworthy. I also knew I was ultimately leaving with no intention of returning, and as the kind person I was, I believed I was doing people a service by not allowing them to get too close in an effort to not hurt them in the end. But just because I kept people at a distance, doesn’t mean I didn’t care about anyone. It was a double-edged sword.
It’s important to note that not only horrific, abusive experiences can have a significant impact. To remain kind and nurturing to others despite my difficulties, I had quite the large heart. One thing I had always felt, was that I would never wish my circumstances, nor anything as harrowing, on anyone else—especially if I cared about them. I sincerely hoped no one else would ever be forced to give up their innocent, fun, childlike view of the world and lose their belief in the impossible as I did. But hope wasn’t enough. Growing up, there was one person I cared about more deeply than anyone. Only a year or two after I was forced to give up my own childlike mentality, I bore witness to this person experiencing the same loss, and it thoroughly broke my heart to see it. I thought I would have been no help since I did not have that childlike innocence anymore myself, and I felt unable to help him. Although he never mentioned it, nor asked for help, I saw the despair in his eyes and felt it thoroughly myself. I felt all I could do was watch from a distance as he too fell into the darkness. I already struggled with low self-worth and feeling damaged, but this killed me so deeply that it caused me to put up walls around my heart in order to not allow me to have feelings for anyone anymore. It’s not that the feelings disappeared, or that I never had feelings for anyone again, but that I didn’t ever allow myself to act on them. I distanced myself from anyone I felt attraction towards from then on. I felt so unworthy for such feelings when I could not be there to help him when he needed it. I always believed one should be there for their partner whenever they were needed if they truly cared. This made me feel even more unworthy, more damaged. As a result, I turned to extreme people-pleasing because I never wanted to feel as helpless as I did then. I even had myself believing I was doing it because I never wanted others to feel I was no help. I wound up losing all assertiveness, and couldn’t refuse much requests or favors even if they were to my own detriment. As you can imagine, this is not healthy, and this behavior led me to put myself in some troublesome traumatic experiences later on.
For my last year and a half of high school, I had left my dad’s house to live at my mother’s two towns over. I mistakenly believed I was free from the abuse at that time. Not long after my high school graduation, I realized just how mistaken I was. I was dog-sitting at my grandparents’ house next-door to my dad’s (where my siblings were staying), and lo and behold yet another frightening trauma occurred. I was a young adult at this time and fully understood what was happening. I had grabbed some clean clothes and went into the bathroom to shower. I locked the door and stepped into the water not thinking much of it. Next thing I know, I look up to find my older brother had broken in and was watching me over the shower curtain (for how long before I noticed, I do not know), and I freaked out. I began to panic and constantly yelled at him to get out while I tried to cover myself up, but he wouldn’t leave. Instead, he decided it would be appropriate to take his own clothes off and try to join me in the shower. He continued to try to grab me and touch me inappropriately, but I somehow managed to escape. I, to this day, cannot remember how, but I escaped before it got worse. I immediately ran next-door to my sister and told her what happened, only to be greeted with laughter. I was so appalled that she thought my being attacked was funny, that I never mentioned it to anyone else until much later. I was rather in shock and terrified for most of that summer, and fell into deep depression my first year of college. This trauma cemented my decision to leave town for college, and with the intention of never returning.
Unfortunately, college turned out to not be safe either. I know, surprising right? Almost immediately after I arrived at college, I wound up in one crazy love triangle (although others wanted in on it too, so polygon is probably more fitting) that ended with me losing the rest of my self-worth I had left. As a result, this in combination with my people-pleasing tendencies, led me to allow people to stay in my life that I shouldn’t have. In November of my second year, I was raped by a guy that was supposed to be my friend. I spent the rest of the night in shock. Weirdly, my initial reaction once this jerk left my dormitory was to wash my sheets. As I sat in the laundry room in the basement in front of the washer, I messaged a friend who lived right across the street—which is as close as it gets at my college since campus was so incredibly large—and begged him to come calm me down, but he refused. This of course farther upset me. I spent the remainder of the night/morning laying awake in bed staring blankly at the ceiling until I had to go to work that afternoon. My work supervisor noticed something was amiss, and after an emotional conversation in private, he convinced me to go get a rape kit done. The doctor’s office informed me that I had to report it to the police in order to get the kit done though, to which I did. Since it happened in my own dormitory, I was moved out into a large townhouse off campus all alone. I was grappling with so many emotions over this situation on top of not sleeping or eating and being in shock, as well as, having to tell the story repeatedly in vivid detail to police detectives and nurses. I was an utter mess, and in severe shock for a long time. I had never been so weak or vulnerable up until that point. Within less than a week of this rape, an old friend of mine since junior high came up to visit under the guise of ‘checking up on me’, but instead wound up taking advantage of me in that vulnerable state, then immediately left after he achieved what he came for. I consider this second college rape to be the worst of the four because this person was fully aware of the abuse by my older brother throughout my childhood and the attack before college, knew of the rape that had happened only a few days before, knew I never had any interest in him romantically, and knew of the vulnerable state I was already in because of the earlier rape, yet he still did what he did. That’s entirely unthinkable and immeasurably malicious. Who could do such a thing? And to have called himself my friend? No friend would do such a thing. Unfortunately, since I was already going through everything with the rape from a few days before, I couldn’t afford to process the emotions for this one as well, and I ended up somehow unconsciously flipping the switch on my emotions. The downside to doing that is it’s not possible to shut off only your emotions. In doing so, I also shut off any dreams or aspirations, desires (including sexual), ambitions, goals, and any passion or zest for life that I had. I lived as an empty shell going through motions to survive thereafter. My state at the time reminds me of the Nobodies from the Kingdom Hearts video game series.
The main reason I couldn’t afford to let myself feel anything after the second college rape was because it was still unsafe for me to return to my hometown with the first perpetrator living there. As I mentioned previously, as I left for college, I had the intention of never returning. After another rape by someone from that area, it was then even more unsafe to return, leaving me with no choice but to do everything necessary to stay in college. This forced me to have to stay in school full-time and work, even during the summer. I had to take care of all of my responsibilities alone so I didn’t risk my safety as best as I was able. I couldn’t take a break from school like doctors and psychiatrists recommend survivors of rapes do. In fact, I had to do the opposite. I had to take on a second job just to scrape by in paying for rent and food. I was under an unbelievable amount of stress, depression, and anxiety for a long time. As if all of this wasn’t enough, within ten months of these two college-age rapes, I was raped again by someone at a fraternity when I went to visit with my roommate. I could not catch a break it seemed.
It took 16 long, dreadful months for the trial for the first college rape to occur. Again, as if everything so far wasn’t enough bad experiences compounded atop each other, while I was waiting for hours in a side room for the trial to begin, I received a long message from an unknown number with the same area code as mine. In order to make sure it wasn’t the defendant, the prosecutor had me ask who it was. It turned out to be the third perpetrator (the second college rape)…while I was at the trial about to take the stand for the other rape. At that point, the only one who knew about this whole rape was my best friend at the time. I never told anyone else. So, unfortunately, when he replied with who he was, I then had to out the whole experience to my prosecutor and relatives who were in the room. The prosecutor had the nerve to tell me I was lucky that the information never got out, because had it, we wouldn’t have been sitting there for a trial. I was told not to let that information leave that room. Apparently, that would have made me look bad and ruined the whole trial. That whole second college rape was never mentioned again until seven years later during my recent healing process when I opened up to my closest friends about it.
To make matters ever worse, the trial lasted three days, and ended in defeat. He got off scott-free. I feared for my safety afterward knowing he was still out there, and considered a restraining order. I was also heavily burdened by the thought that he would do the same thing to other women. I dealt with the anxiety and restlessness over this for many years following. I felt I failed other women, other survivors. Even though I did everything I could in that situation, with the trial ending in failure, I felt I didn’t get the closure I needed to move on. It was so upsetting, and killed my morale even more—let alone my faith in the legal system.
Beyond these rapes, I also had other guys harassing me constantly both during college and after. I really never felt safe. I shut myself off physically from the world as a result. I rarely went around people. But I still found myself in unsafe situations. For example, there was a friend of one of my college friends that harassed me from my first year of college when were introduced. My people-pleasing behavior had me still allowing this person to meet me for meals once every couple of months because I thought it’d be rude to cut someone off completely. But it got out of hand when he took a job where I worked and began to harass me there. I realized very quickly that I could not handle that harassment for that long of a period every day of the week. I was only able to relax once he finally quit several months later. I was constantly anxious and uncomfortable even at my own job to say the least. I tried to find another job myself, but never had an opportunity arise. I felt the universe was against me.
But sexual abuse and harassment weren’t the only types of abuse I had to deal with throughout my life. I also dealt with verbal and emotional abuse for nearly my entire life. My siblings were flat out bullies. They even threw rocks at me when I walked up the driveway after school. They even brought their friends in on the bullying. Thankfully, for the most part, I ignored them. I realized recently I was even tolerating this abuse in the workplace in another form. My jobs had been abusing my kindness and intense work-ethic to force me into doing several others’ work, and taking on more without any raise or incentives. They abused my time and energy in the process. Abuse comes in many forms.
Due to a combination of my shutting off my emotions and such after the abuse, and because I believed I was only safe if I was alone, I made the decision to spend my life alone. I honestly thought it was actually for the best, not only for me, but that everyone else was better off without me in their life. I truly believed that. I was in so much darkness and despair, that I was blind to the truth. Don’t get me wrong, I was well aware I was not healthy, and I had no problem saying so. In fact, my friends and others consistently tried to push me for nearly a decade into getting into a romantic relationship, but I refused. I told them every time that I would not be in a relationship because I was struggling with poor mental health, and had I entered into a relationship with someone, it would have created a dependency on them to be there when I had an episode. I would lose myself in that relationship, as well as my ability to love and care for myself in those times as it should be. I did not want to be in a dependent relationship. I also sincerely could not trust people. Truly, I mastered the art of pushing people away.
Yes, I was well aware I was not healthy. It is difficult to explain, but despite all of my negative thoughts and behaviors—although reasonable in response to rape and abuse—I did not like being that way. I can remember myself saying in confidence several times these past few years to a close friend that I wanted to find a way to unblock my emotions. I didn’t enjoy the emptiness, the lack of fulfilment. I wanted to free myself from my own restraints. I used to think I was well aware of all my problems and the source of them. Awakening has proven the contrary; however, the awakening process has brought me tremendous healing and freedom at a soul level. If I can fully release several rapes and all the negative behaviors and thought patterns I adopted in effect of those, and be truly happy, ANYONE CAN.
Not Your Cup of Tea 