Why The Delay In Posting

I literally just figured it out! I now know why I've been in such a funk the past few weeks, and it's because of a piece I was writing for this and the tsean blog. It hit me when I came up here to finally write something for The Journey because I was just about to attempt to write about the exact same subject. I was going to write about the event itself, but now that I know that even after 27years it still affects me, I am going to go about it in a different manner....

Rape. Nasty word. Nasty act. Puts disgrace, self-loathing, fear, feeling of filth, sense of powerlessness, paranoia, lack of self-worth, can't tell anyone because who wants damaged goods, and many other thoughts/feelings into the one it is done to. It is not something one can just 'get over' as I was once directed to do, and though the menacing fear that first envelopes a victim does degenerate over time the base root of that fear never truly leaves.

Sometimes it's a stranger, others you think you know as your friend. In my case, my friend was really no friend at all. I have to ask, who in the hell do some people think they are that they feel they have the right to take what is not theirs? Who are they to think you owe them anything just because they say so? You won't give it up so they force it out of you, and unfortunately some pay the price of their very life in refusing. My life may not have been perfect after it happened to me, but I am grateful to be living.

If it does happen to you, or you know of it having happened to someone you care about, I found the release of my major fear in telling my best friend, my mom. It took me a few years to tell her about it, but when I did, it was like having the perverbial anchor lifted from me. I found I could allow myself to trust again, to take people at face value instead of asuming they would hurt me somehow. Informing the local authorities did nothing for me, and it took two weeks of being afraid to leave the house I was living in at the time before I could even do that. Two weeks of watching everyone around me as I went to work and back -- going to and from work was the only time I did leave the house. Picture in your mind a young girl afraid of her own shadow with squinty eyes as she checks out those around her with scrutiny -- that was me. I saw no friends, I lived secluded from the potential threat of a repeat. The only phone calls I made were to mom, just so she would think all was right in my world.

Life went on, but I was always afraid to be around men I did not know, and some of those I did know. I thought I knew the person that raped me, proof in itself that you can never really know anyone. When the boyfriend I had at the time came back from trying to find work so we could leave Seattle, we packed it up and made out for parts known only to us. I didn't tell mom, I should have as she then set off on a tangent of worry until I finally called her over a month later. Anyway, Donny and I headed south. Hitchhiking at that time was relatively safe for a couple, but even then Donny made sure I was the last one in the car and the last one out. He was very good to me as far as being my protector from evil-doers.

Until we were in Jackpot, NV and he decided to go out drinking and left me alone with a male roommate. It almost happened again! This time I locked myself in the bathroom and jumped out the window, went directly to casino authorities and by the time we got back to the place the man packed his crap and left town! I didn't fully trust Donny after that for leaving me alone when he knew I didn't trust anyone but him. He figured as I was asleep and the room mate was asleep he had nothing to worry about. Donny and I didn't last a year after that because I couldn't trust him to protect me anymore. That and he cheated on me!Sorry if this jumped around, but that's the way it goes!

Rape is dominance and holding power over someone else. It is never about sex. What the victim feels is exactly what the rapist wants them to, and for a very long time.

Do I fully trust anyone now? Sad to say, very very few people. Two live with me, one in Hawaii, one in Buffalo, two in Phoenix. If they read this, they know who they are and most know it is not easy for me to give complete trust. True, there are a tiny amount of folks that although they do not have compelte trust, it's pretty close. The kind of trust I am more likely to give is the kind that if you falter in any way, you won't be let back in the way you were before but more on a distant plain. Harsh, I know but if you've ever been attacked in a manner where you felt your very soul would leave you and believed you would not come out of it without taking a severe beating or even alive, you can understand it.

I know there are stronger women than me out there that have had to suffer through this type of event and have come out of it close to whole. I think I found my way to that point in December of 1995. That's when I met my husband, I just knew I was safe and could be me again. That's 14 years of being who I'd allowed fear to turn me into. Now, after 27 years the major fear has long been gone but I still don't like going anywhere at night by myself. I don't like going back to that place in my mind because it sends me into a sort of depression that isn't all-comsuming but more of a pain in the rear because I'm just in a 'blah' mood.So, that's why I haven't written much in the past few weeks.