My week has been a tough one, one Im ashamed to say, I almost didn't survive. We are getting ready to move to a tiny new home which has been very hard on me. We have to go through everything and downsize and get rid of everything we've worked hard to have. I was going through some papers I had tucked away for the past 13 years.
I picked them up and began to read the nightmare that was my life between 2003 and 2006. I had written a detailed outline of events that were filled with attempted murder, sexual assaults of myself and my daughter, stalking, domestic violence, and repeated rape.
I sat on the bottom stair of my house, pages in my hands and a sound rose up in me like a dying animal. I began to bawl uncontrollably. The memories swam through my mind. The worst memories are those of being raped after I had separated from him and we lived apart but he started raping me before we separated.
Some of the incidents all swim together in my mind and I can't place them but I see flashes of the memories. I see seconds of memories, awful memories. Often I see it as if I am up in the air, floating over the room or I'm looking from the bottom of the bed seeing it happen to someone else as my mind desperately tried to escape the pain.
The first time he raped me we were still married. and I had been a willing lover, except for when I was in too much pain or had my period. One that day, He wanted sex and I said no. I was battling a flare-up of interstitial cystitis with a bladder and kidney infection and was in agony throughout my lower pelvis. I remember feeling my body being thrown backward on the side of the bed and as I am falling backward I realized I was powerless. There was nothing I could do to make him stop. The look in his eye was like a raging animal out to devour. He wasn't my lover, he was a fierce creature filled with rage wanting to hurt me. He forced himself on me in seconds taking what he wanted as I cried and pleaded for him to stop. I remember staring at the grain of the wooden bureau trying to memorize every curve instead of focusing on the weight of his body as he violently stole from me.
Another time I remember the terror I felt as he raged in my face and forced himself on me, screaming at me. I often dissociated and disappeared to protect my heart but he kept screaming and struck me across the face trying to snap me out of it and make me come back to present. I remember becoming present and hearing him screaming, " You are just a fucking dead log" You fucking worthless bitch". I don't know why he felt he had to rape me. I don't understand. He was angry and violent and hurting me and abusing me, terrorizing me. My body shakes remembering, wishing it would all just go away like a bad dream that fades in the morning. I feel such hatred, such loathing, such anger. I wish he were in prison but he's not because I was afraid and felt unbelieved.
At the time, I told the counselor from the church, that he was raping me. Our marriage was in separation. I believed he had no right to be in the house, and no right to my body but because I said no. Yet, he stole from me whenever he wanted. If I was sleeping, he'd sneak in the house and start raping me while I'm asleep. I separated from him in 2004 but he came in and out of that house as he pleased, taking what he wanted from me, assaulting our daughter in the middle of the night while I slept, and sleeping with his whores on the side. In 2006 I moved to a new house. It was a place he would never have the key for.
He had been stalking us. There were times when I'd wake up and find all the doors wide open in the wind. He was doing it to scare me. I got a special lock for the back door but couldn't install anything on the front door because it was a marble floor and hardwood door that I wasn't allowed to damage. One night, He got in and climbed in my bed sometime after two am. I remember feeling like I was dreaming. I was fast asleep laying on my back. While slept, he fondled me. I woke up extremely aroused thinking it was a dream and suddenly saw him in my bed. My emotions went from blissful to sheer rage. I screamed at him and pushed him away and felt such rage. I physically fought back. I pushed him out of the bed with all my might and jumped up and screamed at him and pushed him threatening to call the police. He did leave but showed up the next morning.
He pushed his way into the house and I was terrorized. I knew he planned to hurt me. I corraled the kids into their rooms and locked their doors so he couldn't hurt them. I begged them to turn up their music so they wouldn't hear him. He taunted me. he said, "You were aroused, you wanted it." he described the ways my body had responded to his touch. I cringed inside, hating myself, hating my body. He was right, my body had responded and while I slept and I remember feeling sexually aroused in my sleep. Guilt smothered me as he taunted me, and told me he could take from me whatever he wanted. He told me that he was in complete control and could do to me as he wished. I remember the terror I felt as I screamed and pleaded for him to leave me alone and not hurt me. the kids remember hearing my cries and screams but I have blocked out the rest I don't know what happened next just that the kids heard crashing and lots of crying and him yelling and hurting me.
The counselor, named Alison had told me It was my own fault because deprived him of sex during our separation.
So on read the letters that tell of years of violence and probably a dozen rape incidents and sexual assaults during our separation. I broke inside I couldn't cope with it. It kept playing over and over in my head. I kept crying at all hours and wanting the memories to go away.
The next day, Wednesday, I spent a day with my friend at the lake and shared a tiny bit but tried really hard to be completely detached from it all, as if it was someone else story. I told myself I was not going to feel or cry or let anyone see what it was doing to me on the inside. But as I spent hours alone the memories played in my head.
At one point in the day she asked me, What do you mean raped you? I kept thinking of how she'd said my story isn't believable and thought of how the counselor and pastor knew and brushed it off as if it was nothing. After all, wasn't I still legally married, so could he do with me as he pleased???
One of the memories on the pages was the pastor sitting us down and reading to Bill excerpts from emails I'd sent him the pastor spoke in mocking tone. He read them laughing at how Ludacris and extreme the allegations sounded of the things I'd reported Bill has done to me that week. He didnt beleive me, he mocked me!
Bill didn't laugh, he fumed and within minutes he was in a full-blown rage. He raged at Pastor Ken and Heather then stormed out of the room and began punching the wall of the church hallway making a hole in it. Ken and Heather seemed to feel threatened suddenly by him and for the first time, Ken responded to me as if he believed my story. He paid for my locks to get changed that night.
Yet two years had passed since the separation and he'd been doing this all along. I hadn't been believed. As a child, I'd reached out and told about the abuse. I told my mom about the sexual abuse. She claims now that its all in my head but then she told me it was my fault, that I must have worn a nightie that was soo revealing as a five yr old girl.
Now, still triggered by those memories I'd read on Tuesday, my friend's words played in my head over and over I and I thought no one will believe my story if I tell it. It has too many incidents, not just one or two. I thought I'm too screwed up to fit into this world. I felt like everything I have been through is worthless. What is the point of trying to overcome, no one will care, no one will benefit and I will still have these memories. I wanted the memories to stop.
Then a friend messaged me on Wednesday night and said:" Its time to just give it all to Jesus and just move on." I was so angry inside. Wasnt I crying out to Jesus the whole time this was happening. Wasnt I crying out to him to take the pain and carry this burden. I tried and tried to give it all but the idea that I somehow move on as if I can make it go away, or stop it from haunting my dreams. How can I when these memories come up that was blocked out. I can't control that. I felt so incredibly alone and misunderstood. I cried myself to sleep with thoughts of the memories raging through my mind.
On Thursday morning, I was still crying and deeply depressed. But then my friend had hurt herself so I decided to pop over and encourage her. I knew I wasn't in a good space to visit and wished I were because I wanted to encourage her but I felt my outrage at my story bursting out of me. I hated the person that sat there with her, wishing I could be a better friend but feeling so broken and empty that I had nothing left to give.
We talked for a while then she made an innocent comment about my husband. she mentioned that he must be a patient man to deal with all the stuff I am wrestling with. I quickly changed the topic, not being able to cope with the thought that I was such a failure that even my husband suffered because of me and had to endure. At first, I was deeply hurt, realizing that even my closest friend saw me as a person who is a drain, not a blessing. I shouldn't have visited unannounced I thought. Then I realized that's not her fault. If that's what I am, then I am the one who is a problem, not her statement.
I went home and wept. My husband noticed that I was really blue. So he asked what was going on. I told him I was frustrated with the one friend's comment about moving on as if she felt I somehow was failing to accomplish what the rest of the world does because the trauma is locked in my head and I can't control when memories surface and the pain all comes back.
Then I told him about my other friend's comment about him being patient. I said, she 's complimenting you but it hurt so deeply to realize that that's how she sees me. he said, " well that was really mean." I argued, no, she didn't say it like that. There wasn't meanness in her, she was complimenting you for being such a good husband. It just hurt deeply because it was true. I do require a lot of patience and I hate that. I don't want to be that. I want to be a blessing.
I cried most of the night. I kept thinking, I am such a pain to my friend I can't even support her through the simplest thing without requiring her patience. I am such a burden to my husband that it requires so much patience for him to bear with me. I won't be believed by anyone, therefore my testimony is worthless. I'll never make a difference in anyone's life, so my life is worthless.
How can I minister to anyone, no one will believe me, they will see me as a burden as someone who tests their patience. All the abuse I went through,, the anger the rages, the violence because I made him angry, I was more than his patience could bear. Looking back at what I thought, I realize now that I was so deeply triggered, believing that I was to blame somehow because I tested their patience. Not by doing something specific, just because I existed.
I thought I can't take people. I can't be around people. People will just hurt me more. I pushed away isolating myself. I was pulling away from my friend, yet I was so afraid I'd hurt her. I didn't want to hurt her. I kept thinking that I'd done enough damage to her. I felt so guilty I sent her a text to remind her that I still love her, knowing it wasn't adequate. But inside I thought, how many times have I hurt her and I probably don't even know it. I thought I'm an utter failure as a friend, as a wife, as a mother. Thoughts of suicide swarmed through my head. I thought, they would be better off without me. The world would be better off without me.
I tried hard all day Friday to cope but just wept the day away, not coping. I felt like I was walking in a deep fog and couldn't get out. I wondered how it would end. I poured my heart out on Friday night, writing out how I felt. I pleaded with God, saying "Help me to hang on". I knew I was on the edge of a dangerous precipice.
I hated myself, every bit of myself and I wanted to hurt myself more than anything. Friday night I went out for a bit. The lady I met said she thought God provided good gifts for his children. She said she didn't think God would put me in a tiny place without even a stove. So I sat in the van crying. I smashed my hands over and over again against my steering wheel until they were bruised and sore. I didn't care. I asked, God, Don't you love me. Don't you care about me? I thought, how could he, I'm such a disappointment. I have ruined my whole life by making bad choices. It's my own fault.
I thought, how could I be such a failure. My life is so gross, so disgusting. No one will believe it and I am stuck with these horrible memories that won't stop playing in my head.
Saturday morning, I woke up in the same heavy slump. I was supposed to drop off a jewelry box at a friends garage sale. One of my older friends saw me there and gave me a hug. I could feel my wall starting to burst. I wanted so hard to not let anyone in, lest they say something more that would put my fragile state over the edge. She just held me close in a long hug and it was what I needed. Her hand was on the back of my head and she said, It's going ot be ok. Yet shame smothered me. I wondered if she knew on some level just how close I felt to the edge.
I came home and cried more. I felt like a zombie, detached from reality but somehow that hug had broken my wall just a little bit. I wanted to tell someone where I was at but couldn't. I knew I needed counseling, but couldn't talk to my interim summer counselor. She'd told me that if ever I was suicidal she'd never try to talk me out of it because she says death is your constant companion and you need to embrace it. My regular therapist was on holidays so I knew I had nowhere to turn.
I was pleading with God If you want me to live then do something, send someone, make me stop. Just then my best friend sent me a heart sticker in messenger. Her previous comment was asking if I was ok. I burst into tears. I was so angry at myself for not being ok and angry that I would never be able to be enough for anyone. Again her words played in my mind of my husband being so patient. I thought I don't know how to be different. I don't know how to require less patience, to not be annoying or frustrating. I don't know how to be a better friend or wife or mother.
I sobbed. I went into the kitchen. on the counter was a knife. I remembered the last time I had tried to slit my wrist in college, the knife was too dull and I sawed at my wrist and it swelled and tI never got to my vein. This knife was super sharp and serrated. I stared at it, in a daze wanting it all to go away, wanting the pain to stop, wanting to stop being such a failure. I felt like I was in a heavy trance, far away, but yet sobbing at the same time.
Then suddenly I heard the sound of my best friend coming in the door. I dropped the knife. I felt like she shook me but I don't know if she did. She said she grabbed my face and said, look at me. I vaguely remember. It was like I was sleepwalking, far away, trying to escape the pain, emotionally dissociated completely from the present.
She held me and I wept bitterly. It felt like I was far away, and she reached through the fog and grabbed ahold of me and wouldn't let go until I was no longer dissociated. Suddenly I realized what I had done, what I was doing. Shame smothered me like a blanket.
Suddenly realizing the irony of her running in my door at that split second, I looked up at her, standing there holding me an I asked," What are you doing here?" Here she was, loving me, saving me, and I didn't deserve it whatsoever.
We sat down on the couch and she put a pillow on her knee and pulled me towards her. I lay curled up on the couch, my head on her knee, like a small child. Somehow, on some level, it was what I needed, to break through the darkness and believe I was loved and loveable. She spoke truths over me, affirming me while brushing my tears away and stroking my hair out of my wet face. At that moment, she felt like she was a big sister in a way, like the family I never had but always longed for. I sat up and I told her the truth....... of what I was believing, of what I was feeling. I told her the truth of how I was perceiving her words and how I was struggling to cope with the memories.
I think it broke her heart that I would misunderstand her that way and end up wanting to die. As ashamed as I felt, I couldn't take back what had happened. I could only try to stay present and try hard to move forward.
In my mind, she should have rejected me then and there for hurting her. In my mind, I'm not worth anything but there was something about her response that made me want to hang on. I felt so loved, amid my shame. She reminded me of Jesus as the good shepherd who leaves the 99 to chase after the one undeserving sheep whose life is in danger. She had left her family at home on a Saturday, something she doesn't do, and she ran after me, suspecting I was at the end of my rope, which I was.
Never once, did a look of disgust or shame cross her face. she smiled warmly at me, and brought me back from the edge of the cliff, saying no we aren't done, you have a purpose.
So I am here, I am still battling heartache and overwhelming shame. But I want to heal, I want to be better. I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good wife. I am trying....... with all my heart.
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