Trauma's Long Term Wounding

Several months ago, I was embroiled in a bit of a family drama. I received a vicious e-mail from a cousin, who I do not know, about one of my blog posts.  This blog post expressed my love for experiences we had at our beloved family cabin, but also expressed hurt that the cabin was gone.  Having someone completely belittle my experience and viciously attack me about a heartfelt blog post, made me sick and sad. Knowing that 'family' could be this heartless and unkind made me sick to my stomach.  It also triggered old traumas, old hurts.

Since rape and domestic violence in my late teens and early 20's, I have suffered from PTSD.  More than 20 years later, at times, I expect this hurt, this pain, that I carry deep within my body, to be gone.  I often don't realize how easily triggered I am, nor recognize when I begin to shut down.  The e-mail that I received and the actions of other family members in this same clan made me question myself, made me shut down and hide.  I felt overwhelmed and felt that I had  no worth.  The same feelings and insidious messages my abuser had instilled in me.  I recently read that one symptom of PTSD is the feeling that your world is about to fall down around you at any moment.  One trigger can set me into this feeling and throw me into complete panic. With the events that happened back in February, I have slowly begun to realize how easily I am still triggered.  Abuse and trauma never completely go away. 

Many traditions and philosophies have a message of 'acceptance', of learning to accept those things we cannot change. This philosophy, while helpful for some, can be harmful at times for those of us who have suffered from abuse.  When we have the type of body trauma and anxiety that comes from deeply abusive and invasive experiences, it is really hard to accept those things we cannot change.  It can take years to heal from traumatic experiences and jumping to 'acceptance' or 'forgiveness' can, at times, suppress the real healing that comes from feeling the rage, the sadness, and  the loss of innocence and trust.

With each trigger, I learn that my trauma lies deep within my body, mind and spirit. I wonder about the very public victims we have heard about the past year: the women who were raped by Cosby, the young victims of Josh Duggar, the many victims of campus rape, the ex-wife of Bill O'Reilly, and more.  How are they faring? Are they easily triggered?   Do they shy away from intimacy and struggle with this many years later? Do they have a hard time trusting anyone? Do they carry their trauma as wounds to their souls and have they been given a chance to heal?  My heart hurts for them. This long term hurting and healing is often forgotten in discussions about sexual and domestic violence.  Media doesn't focus on the fact that abuse is a wound on the victims' soul, a wound that can be re-opened, that can refuse to heal.  Sometimes, they talk about the hypocrisy of the perpetrator, but we forget that years later, there are still victims of these crimes that are facing ongoing life-changing hurt.

I also feel deep sympathy for 'public' victims as they not only have their own trauma from the abuse, they are also re-traumatized by people in the media who minimize their pain.  The media has been rife with examples of this cultural need to require victims to shut up, accept, forgive and move on. We hear public figures call abuse ' a mistake' while trying to minimize the impact, the deep hurt that the victims are subject to for the rest of their lives. My call to the media, to public figures who speak out, is to think before you speak, think of the victim and the trauma they endure and then re-endure when their abuse is made public by choice or by chance.  My call to all of us is to be kind, to think about the impact that your mere words can have on someones life, be it a nasty e-mail or a hateful comment on social media.  There are so many of us out here, wounded and trying to heal.  We could do with more compassion and a little less judgment and denial.

I feel my trauma deep in my mind, my body and soul.  I have worked hard to heal.  But, that trauma is still there, at times, lurking beneath the surface. Sometimes I don't even recognize it when my wound is re-opened and raw. This wound is not visible to the outside, but it is there nonetheless. There are millions of us walking around with similar wounds that at times become infected and life threatening be it through suppression and minimization of pain or through new abusive and hurtful experiences.  All of us need to do more to prevent our lives and our children's lives from being shattered by abuse.  We need to stand up to those who want to shut us up, who want to deny our experience.  As we all work to prevent and heal from abuse, we need to hold our hearts open for others who are hurt and wounded.  Remember that our trauma is a long term wound and that we must be gentle with ourselves to move forward.  Together, we can heal, grow, and work towards a world where abuse is rare, not common, and those traumatized are supported, not suppressed and re-traumatized. 

Together, We Are Not Broken

Since I started this blog a few months ago, I often have inspirations; a small voice that tells me what I need to write about next.  Sometimes these hunches are inspired by current issues in the media and other times they are inspired by personal experiences that are making their way to the surface of my consciousness, urging me to write about them.  This topic has been a nagging small voice for at least a month now.  The media has definitely pushed this nagging voice, with Cosby, with the Rolling Stone debacle and the discussion of campus rape.  But, I had a great deal of fear about writing about my experiences.  I realized that my fear is not all that different from what I felt 25 years ago when this experience happened.  The fear is rooted in the shame of what I experienced and that blame that I still put on myself 25 years later. This collective, misplaced blame that our culture inflicts on survivors of sexual violence is something that is hard to escape.

25 years ago, October, 1989, in my first month of college, I was raped.  As a teenager, I never had a relationship and had never even kissed anyone.  My experience with drugs and alcohol was extremely limited.  On this night that is etched in my consciousness, I hung out with my roommate and her boyfriend and was under the influence of a drug that rendered me somewhat frozen.  My roommate and her boyfriend left me at an apartment with someone I did not know.  This person was drunk, took advantage of the situation and raped me.  

I remember making my way back to my apartment, broken.  I remember the long shower and the feelings that could not be washed away.  I walked around campus that day in a fog of sadness and pain; heartwrenching physical and emotional pain.  Back in my apartment, my new friend, Heidi looked at me and knew something was wrong.  She pulled me back into her room and asked me what was wrong.  I told her.  She was loving and kind and most importantly, believed me.  Somehow the story got out to my 4 other roommates. One was extremely angry and wanted me to press charges.  Two of them did not believe me and openly said that I was responsible for this experience as I was there alone and it must not have been rape.  The one who left me there never did say much except to tell me later that her 'real' boyfriend(not the one she had been with that night) was very angry at her for leaving me there, unprotected and vulnerable.  

Reporting this rape was not an option in my mind.  My mom was a director of a family violence/sexual assault agency and I heard all the stories of women who were raped and their rapists were never convicted.  Most importantly, in high school, I witnessed extreme victim blaming when a victim of statutory rape was ostracized for reporting the rape.  These fears, the reactions of my two roommates, and the fact that it was an acquaintance rape where I was under the influence of drugs kept me silent. I did what was expected of me, kept quiet and let this trauma eat me up inside.  

This experience colored my life in ways that I was not aware of until much later.  It made an already difficult relationship with my body, even more difficult.  I learned to disconnect from my feelings even more and to detach from my body.  The only thing good that came of it was that it solidified my friendship with my lifelong friend, Heidi.  My relationship with men became fraught with mistrust and fear for many many years.  It took away my intuitive sense of what was healthy and what was not, and it was hard for me to discern who the 'good' men were and instead, I could only love men who were broken, even if they were violent.  The disbelief of my roommates and the dismissal by others taught me to question my own reality  My intimate relationships were effected in ways that are difficult to define. I never went to therapy for it because I didn't know if it was real.  Was it a real 'rape' or were my roommates correct in thinking it was my fault for being in that situation?  Were the feelings of violation and deep despair a mere figment of my imagination?  

Since this experience, I met many women and men who experienced similar traumas; women and men who never reported sexual violence, who questioned their reality even when they knew deep down they had been violated.  These shared experiences have helped me validate my own reality, to know that what I experienced was real and to see how it effected me.  I am filled with despair and guilt when I hear the statistics about the percentage of rapists who rape again.  Could I have stopped this rapist? I can only hope it was a one time thing for him, but I will never know.  

Why do I share this  now? Some of the reactions I have seen to the Cosby rapes and to the Rolling Stone rape story, have made me deeply uncomfortable.  Again, 25 years later, I see victim blaming and questioning of victims stories.  It is not a walk in the park to come forward with a story of deep sexual violation.  The percentage of 'false' reporting of rapes is very small.  It makes me physically ill when I see women and men accusing victims of lying or somehow profiting from reporting of these horrible violations.  The Rolling Stone story made me even more uncomfortable as I heard that 'friends' were sharing that there were discrepancies in Jackie's story. This could have been me.  My roommates could have come forward with similar allegations, even though what I experienced was very real. My heart went out to 'Jackie' going through her recovery from this horrific event in the public eye.  I cannot imagine how heartwrenching and painful this must be for her.    

I share my story because I cannot be silent.  My silence makes me complicit in a culture that still blames victims for rape.  I have two daughters and I do not want them to live in a world where women are brutalized.  Unfortunately, they do. What can I do? I can teach my daughters to believe survivors of sexual violence, support them and fight for them.  I can teach them to be open about their own experiences, to seek support and fight back.  Importantly, I can teach them to never leave their friends alone in situations that could be dangerous, to listen to their guts and get themselves and/or others out of situations that just don't feel 'right'.  

Looking back on this experience, I feel tremendous sadness for the broken and alone young woman that I was.  My heart fills with gratitude that I had my friend  to support, believe, and love me even though I could not talk about it.  My heart breaks for men, women, boys and girls broken by sexual violence.  Sometimes, we learn to slowly mend our broken pieces and tragically, sometimes we don't ever mend those broken places and escape in death or addictions. The more we speak out about our experiences, the more we can fight a culture that shames us and strives to keep our experiences hidden. If we have the courage to share with others, to band together and speak out, we can become unbroken; ready to change a world that shames us and to eliminate sexual violence.  

Our Trauma Lives

As you leave jail today, you leave the place that kept us safe from your harassment for a blessed 6 months of not worrying about what lies around the corner or on the other end of a phone.

The legacy of trauma that you left our little family lives.

It lives in the sleepless nights of one you traumatized.  It lives in the ways that I learned to numb myself.  It lives in dreams deferred. It lives in our anxieties, in our sadness, anger and depression.   It lives in the ways that we have all learned to protect ourselves in our own unique ways.  Sometimes we learn healthy ways and other times, we don't.  We shut down, we get ill, we get tense, we get angry.

And it's a funny thing about trauma, I think that I have moved on and found peace.  Then, something hits me and my rage and resentment comes back. It comes back and consumes me.  I try to breathe and let go.  Forgiveness does not come easy.  I know that holding on to that rage is only punishing me, but it comes, without warning.  Then, if I am not aware of it and work through it, it turns into all consuming depression. 

The legacy of trauma that you left us lives.

It lives in our strength sometimes.  The passion and creativity that one of us has used to heal and dance through the pain.  It lives in the beautiful writing and creativity of the other.  It lives in my ability to help others through that pain when they are going through similar issues.  It lives in my deep respect and compassion for others.   My deep pain has opened my heart to others in a way that it might not have opened without the trauma.  It has given our girls an awareness of others struggles and with that, compassion and respect. They have not let that trauma turn into hatred.  Instead, they love others with open hearts.  Their trust of others may not be completely intact, but at least they can still love deeply.  You have not completely destroyed our tender hearts. 

The legacy of trauma that you left us lives.

But, we will not let it take us down.  We will keep putting one foot in the other.  We will dance through it.  We will write through it.  We will love each other through it.  We will take the ugliness and transform it into something beautiful.

You will not destroy us.  We will not let you.