A friend of mine sent this image to me recently. I have no idea who to credit for it, but it is so true.
I spent most of my life hyper-vigilant, not knowing who I could trust, even myself. I often felt like there was an overwound spring, ready to break free inside of me. The anxiety often threatened to pull me under and drown me. It took a toll on my body as I am still learning to relax my overly tense muscles.
Therapy has helped me tremendously. The first few times I went, I did the work to get through the trauma of the moment. Then because of insurance, or time committment, I would end treatment with new skills and strategies for dealing with the stresses of life.
This time though, I have continued beyond the trauma of the moment and gotten to the base of my mental health issues; feeling worthless, not good enough, abandoned, alone, and dealt with them. Now, instead of always waiting for the next bad thing to happen, I believe that I will find joy.
That is a terrifying, new experience for me. I’m not saying that I haven’t been happy before, but I never trusted it, history had shown me that good times don’t last. You get your heart ripped out of your chest, cut to pieces, and left alone to put it back together again.
As I have been learning to live my authentic self, not making myself fit into a certain mold or expectation of me, I have found people who like me, and all the oddities and nerdiness that go along with me. It’s scary to be vulnerable and honest with yourself and others, but in the process, I am learning how to handle joy in my life. I’m not scared that I have to behave a certain way to keep people likeing me, they just like me.
Therapy taught me that I can be me. As a friend learned in one of her therapy appointments, I’m not for everybody and everybody isn’t for me and that’s okay. As I have embraced who I am, I have learned to find joy in acceptance, peace in solitude, and contentment with others. I no longer feel as though I am a spring ready to break free, now if I could just get my shoulders to realize that they are not responsible for keeping everything inside so they can relax…
If you need someone to talk to, I am now an Associate Marriage Family Therapist working at Share Homes Foster and Adoption Agency in Lodi, Ca. If you are in California, I can work with you. Send a message for more information.
I have anxiety and it lies to me. It knows every one of my insecurities and fears. It whispers them to me in a steady drone in the back of my head, like constant white noise. Sometimes anxiety chooses one or two of them to pick out and amplify; to scream into my mind until I can’t breath, until I can’t think of anything else, until my heart is racing as if I’m facing a life threatening moment, until I want to run away.
(I take medication that helps. Finally, my doctor and I have found a medication that helps AND now, almost a year later, hasn’t left me wanting to do nothing but sleep which is what every other medication I have tried has left me feeling. I also see a therapist, having a person to talk to has helped tremendously.)
The lies anxiety chooses to amplify focus on two topics that have a huge impact on my life: “You can’t do this.” and “They won’t like you.”
Those two lies have kept me from doing so much in my life. They have kept me hidden. They have kept me invisible, locked inside a prison of my own making. There have been people in my life that fed into the lies along with anxiety, who emotionally, physically, and sexually abused me, but it was the lies anxiety told me, and I believed, that kept me in those relationships far longer than I should have been. I couldn’t leave my parents until I was 18, but I kept them in my life much longer. The boyfriend who raped me and my first husband, I waited until they were physically away from me before I broke up with them.
I believed I couldn’t do it.
This past week, I went on a vacation specifically designed to challenge myself. I was willing to go alone, but a coworker ended up joining me, because it was one of her bucket-list travel destinations. It was amazing getting to know her better, I’m so glad she joined me on all the challenges I chose to do. She even had to do one of them herself, because of health reasons, I wasn’t allowed to participate in it.
I hiked up waterfalls, one of them was 1200 steps! There were many stops… for photos… along the way. It was never because I needed to catch my breath. Where are the photos you ask, ummmmm. I’m pretty sure the film didn’t develop on those… (HAHAHAHA.)
Skogafoss Waterfall, Iceland (the black line to the right are the steps I climbed to the top)
I walked through an ice cave, in a glacier that’s melting, on a volcano, that has never gone more than 100 years between eruptions, until now. It’s been 104 years since the last eruption. I walked over bridges made of 2X6 planks of wood, that have been chewed up by the cramp-ons that people wear on their boots to not slip on the ice with melting glacier water rushing beneath them and nothing to hold on to except the occasional rope hooked into the melting glacier wall.
Katla Ice Cave, Iceland
I met tons of new people, that I actually talked to. I didn’t listen to anxiety telling me that they wouldn’t like me. I just went for it. There I may not have learned everyone’s name, but we all did amazing things together and I will never forget them being there with me. I ate food that I NEVER thought I’d eat and it was DELICIOUS. I hope to find some of it here in California, but some of it I know I won’t. I ate fermented shark and I will never eat it again! EVER! But I did it, I got out of my comfort zone and did it! I can do hard things.
My travel buddy, our driver/guide for two days, and me at Silfra, Iceland (where two continents meet)
The next time anxiety tries to lie to me, I need to remember all the hard things I did on this trip and all the people I met. I can do this and people will like me.
I grew up being told that if in order to be a “good Christian” I needed to forgive those who did wrong to me. If I wanted God to forgive me of my sins against Him, I needed to forgive others of their sins against me. I mean, the Lord’s Prayer, what we are taught is the “perfect prayer” says, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
If we forgive others, then God can forgive us and we can have a chance of an amazing future in Heaven.
What I was never taught, what I never learned growing up, was how to forgive myself, so while I was busy forgiving others, so that I could have a future chance in Heaven, I was living in a version of Hell on earth.
I wasn’t taught how to forgive myself for being “stupid” enough to trust my boyfriend to go with him to his friends house.
I didn’t learn how to forgive myself for being so “slutty” that I wore a knee-length denim skirt and a long sleeve button up shirt that day, that I had buttoned all the way up, but somehow, I must have been “asking for it.”
I never knew how to forgive myself for being so embarrassed about what “I” did that day, the day my boyfriend decided that I had been teasing him long enough, that he forced himself inside of me, without even taking my clothes off, that I didn’t tell anybody for months, and I “allowed” it to keep happening for another eight months.
I had forgiven him for what he did, so I could go to Heaven, but I had never forgiven myself. I get upset when people blame victims, but I had been doing that my whole life to myself.
Then a few months ago, my therapist asked me when I was going to forgive myself, as I was leaving. I was so angry with him, for the entire week between sessions. That question was all I could think about.
Forgiving myself? I struggled with it for almost two weeks. I cried, I screamed. I yelled at my therapist. I finally forgave myself.
I had to realize I was a fifteen year old child. I was not in control of that situation in any way. He drove me there, I knew something felt off, but I had no way of leaving and nobody to call, no way to call anyone since there were no cell phones back then. Once he started, he had me pinned down and was about 200 pounds to my 90 pounds, there was no way for me to sop him.
I didn’t have anyone to turn to when it was over. There were no safe adults in my life. The adults at school would have to call the police, my mom would think I was a slut and a sinner. If I told the adults at school my mom would eventually find out, which is exactly what happened months later. She ended up telling me that I had to marry him.
Since I forgave myself, I no longer feel like I’m living in my own personal version of Hell on earth. My thoughts have slowed down (most of the time) and I can sleep at night. I don’t constantly feel like I’m in fight or flight mode.
Forgiving others, is something I recommend if you need to in order to move on from them.
Forgiving yourself, I highly recommend, I don’t think you can live your life to it’s fullest potential if you don’t.
I was sexually assaulted for the first time in Junior High when a boy touched my crotch as he walked past me getting off the bus. I was raped by by boyfriend a few years later when I was fifteen. I didn’t break up with him immediately because he threatened to tell people, especially my mom, that I’d had sex with him if I broke up with him.
In the ultra-conservative, Christian church I belonged to at the time, having sex before marriage was equivalent to murder; it was just about the ultimate sin. If my mom found out that I’d had sex, she’d call me slut, whore, easy, and I’d endure lecture upon lecture about how I was used goods, that no man would ever want me know, how I had given up that ONE GIFT that I had to offer my future husband. How do I know she’d do that? I’d heard her talk about other people plenty of times, she did not keep her judgement to herself.
Later, when I’d end up alone with that boyfriend, if he wanted to have sex and I didn’t, he’d remind me,
“We already did it, so what’s the big deal?”
Or, “If you really loved me you would.”
Or, “So, you don’t want to be with me anymore, fine. Leave me. See who’ll want used goods like you.”
Or, “If you don’t, I’ll go tell everybody you’re a slut and that we have sex all the time.”
Or, “I bought you dinner, you owe me this.”
When I was fifteen years old, I was just scared to tell him no. I didn’t want anyone to find out what he did to me. I felt dirty, used, embarrassed, worthless, and unlovable. When I finally did tell my mom what happened she told me I had to marry him because I had sex with him. I was shocked!
As an adult I know that is coercive rape, when I was a teenager, I just thought I was too weak to say no. When I finally reported to the police what happened a few months later, when I found the courage to break up with him, even the male police officer I reported to, told me nothing would happen because I kept having sex with him. I told him it was because I was scared to say no. I told him that he hit me. None of it mattered, because I stayed.
Coercive rape is rape. Period. End of story. It doesn’t matter why you stay. If coercive rape is happening to you, most likely the entire relationship is dangerous and you need an escape plan to get out safely. Do what it take to keep yourself safe, but plan an escape.
When most people hear about somebody being abused by an intimate partner, like a boy/girlfriend or spouse, they will often ask, “Why didn’t they just leave?” Or will say, “If that had been me, I would have just left.” People who are lucky enough to have never been in that situation have no idea how hard it is to just leave.
That’s a picture of me the summer before I started high school. The very next summer I would meet a boy that treated me like nobody had ever treated me before. He liked me, he told me he loved me. He asked me to be his girlfriend. He risked the wrath of my dad to see me. I was in LOVE.
It wasn’t long before he started criticizing me. Little things, like how pretty I’d be if I just wore make up, or dresses. He started letting me know how lucky I was to have him as a boyfriend because most guys wouldn’t want to date a girl as tomboy-ish as me.
It also wasn’t long before he started pressuring me to have sex with him. (I’m talking weeks here.)
At first it was on phone calls. I’d tell him no, I wasn’t ready, that I wanted to wait until I was married. (I had been taught that a girl’s greatest gift to her husband on their wedding night was her virginity.)
Then I was fighting his hands off when we were kissing. I was constantly moving them to where I was more comfortable. It was a losing battle, I eventually stopped fighting it and let his hands go where he wanted them to and do what he wanted them to no matter how uncomfortable I was, because, as he said, “if I loved him I would.”
For TEN months I put off the inevitable. I put off sex with him. Then one day he told me we were going to hang out with a friend of his. When we arrived, he had the key to his friend’s apartment and let us in. We were alone. He started kissing me as soon as we sat on the couch, then whispered in my ear, “I’ve waited long enough.”
I tried to get out from under him, but he was too big and too strong for me. He forced himself into me and did what he wanted. Because he loved me and he wanted to show me how much.
I cried.
I had been told for so long that my entire worth and value was wrapped up in my virginity and he had just taken that from me, so what was the point in anything anymore. I gave up fighting. I didn’t tell a single soul. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had done. I gave in, I gave up. I was worthless. I was lucky that this guy still wanted to be with me because nobody else would want me since I wasn’t a virgin anymore.
For a year, I kept that secret. For a year, he continued to use and abuse me. For a year I continued to die a little more inside.
Then I went on a double date with a friend, I was still dating my abuser, but he was in boot camp and she really wanted to go on this date, but not alone so I agreed to go with his friend. We saw the movie Sleeping With the Enemy. There’s a scene where Julia Robert’s character’s husband forces her to have sex with him. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
My date noticed. We went to the lobby and he asked if I was ok. I told him, “That’s what he does.” His response was, “Your boyfriend rapes you?” I just nodded. It was the first time I used that word to describe what he did to me. He raped me for over a year while I stayed with him because I felt too worthless to leave him; too ashamed to ask for help.
That is why people stay with their abusers, among other reasons.
I gave up. I got tired of telling him no. That is not consent. That is rape.
Giving in because you are afraid of what will happen if you say no is not consent. That is rape.
Saying no and your intimate partner doing it anyway, is rape.
Being told when or how often you are going to have sex in your relationship is not consent. That is rape.
Being told that if you say no, you don’t love them, is coercion, not consent. That is rape.
Just because you are in a committed, intimate relationship does not mean that you owe your partner your body at anytime unless you are a willing participant in the activity. If you are not a 100 percent willing participant, that is rape. You have the right to say no, even to your intimate partner. Your body is your body.
First of all I want to apologize for not writing for so long. Something has been going on with the website, I don’t know what it is, but every time I write something it won’t load. In fact, I’m writing this wondering if it will load, hoping that it does. Anyway, I have been thinking about writing this post for months, since November actually, but wasn’t emotionally prepared to do it, but I am now, so here we go.
When I was 15 years old I was dating a handsome guy with brown eyes and dark hair. He was the first boy to make me feel really special and to make me feel like I had to earn his love. However, I had to earn my parent’s love, so earning love wasn’t new to me. There was one thing I wouldn’t do though, I wasn’t going to have sex with him. I told him that from the start and multiple times throughout the relationship.
We had been dating for ten months when he asked me to go with him to one of his friend’s apartments with him, I had met the friend before so I agreed. When we got there, his friend wasn’t there, but he had the key to let us in. I thought that was a weird, but I trusted him so I went in with him when he explained that the friend had given him the key because he knew he’d get there later than us.
My boyfriend led me to the couch and started kissing me, whispering that we might as well make good use of the time alone. So we started making out. Next thing I knew he had me pinned down on the couch, I was wearing a skirt, and he was forcing himself inside of me. There was nothing nice or romantic about what he was doing. When he was done, he told me to clean up before his friend got there and knew what I had done.
I was humiliated. I was horrified. I was shocked. I was scared. I was broken. I was crying (he told me to stop). I was devastated.
Nobody would know what I had done. I tried to bury myself in the couch while he was on top of me, but the couch wouldn’t open up and swallow me. I couldn’t get away from him because he weighed almost a hundred pounds more than me and had me pinned beneath him. I didn’t tell him to stop.
I was too humiliated to tell a soul. I was scared if I broke up with him he’d tell people that I’d had sex with him, or people would ask me why I broke up with him and I couldn’t tell anybody what happened, so I stayed. I was ashamed.
Months later, I finally told someone what he did to me, and finally called it what it was, rape. They had to report it to the police. I was questioned. The officer asked me if I had told anybody when it happened. He asked me why I stayed. He asked me if I ever said no or told him to stop. He blamed me for being raped. It was my fault because I went with him willingly to the apartment, because I never said no, because I didn’t tell him to stop, because I didn’t fight back.
It took years for me to realize that it wasn’t my fault. Everyone from that police officer to my rapist, to my mom, to my best friend, to the teachings of my church told me it was my fault that I was raped.
In November I read an excellent book that wasn’t easy to read. There were times that I threw the book across the bed or couch where I was sitting. Other times I was ugly crying with loud angry sobs and snot running out of my nose. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who has been sexually assaulted or who knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. It was hard to read, but oh so worth it.
It was written by the Stanford rape survivor Chanel Miller and it’s called Know My Name.
So many people blamed her for being raped because she was drunk. There is never a reason for rape except that the rapist is a rapist.
One of the quotes from the book that stands out to me shows how ridiculous it is that so many people blame sexual assault victims for the crime against them, when they don’t so easily blame other victims for crimes against them.
Nobody really expects you to fight back if a person steals your purse or car or breaks into your house, but they expect you to fight back when you are being sexually assaulted and if you don’t then it’s your fault or you must have wanted it.
I had been telling my boyfriend for ten months that I didn’t want to have sex, he knew I didn’t want to have sex, so if I had told him while he had my arms pinned above my head and was laying on top of me forcing himself into me, would me telling him “NO” have made him stop. I was crying and that didn’t make him stop so I doubt any words would have worked.
The police officers let me know that there was nothing that they could really do, especially since it had been over a year by the time I talked to them and he was in the Marines at that point. After the Marines, my rapist has gone on to become a police officer in New Orleans.
I have healed, for the most part, I still have moments that are hard. I have an amazing husband and family and a great job. I love the life I have despite what happened to me when I was 15 years old.
My daughter is now 15. I look at her and hope that she never has to endure what I went through, especially not at that age. 15 is so young, too young to have to endure such trauma, alone.
Let’s all make a promise to stop victim blaming.
If you have been a victim of Sexual Assault
Need help?
Call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
If you’ve ever been sexually assaulted or raped, know that you are not alone.
The statistics are staggering, yet we rarely talk about it. Since the #metoo movement, there has been more awareness, but still not enough in my opinion.
And we definitely don’t talk enough about men who are sexually assaulted or raped. It happens to them too, women aren’t the only victims of these crimes.
When we do talk about sexual assault we, as a society, tend to teach people how to not get raped.
Don’t go here…
Don’t wear this…
Don’t drink that…
Don’t say this…
It is never the victim’s responsibility to stop an assault before it happens or while it is happening. They can try to stop it, they can fight back, but it is always the perpetrators fault for a sexual assault.
It doesn’t matter matter where you are, or what you are wearing, or drinking or saying or doing. Unwanted sexual advances are not your fault.
If you are the victim of rape or sexual assault, you are not alone. There is an army of survivors out here, fighting along side you for your survival.
I am a survivor!
If you need someone to talk to, please reach out to someone you trust or use one of these hotlines:
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