Since I've started blogging my mind has gone into overload. Ideas have flooded my brain on ways to raise money for Safe & Sound Refuge.
But, along with the good comes the bad. The nightmares have been waking me from my sleep for the past couple of weeks. To be honest with all of you, my journey is far from over, and I still have my own weaknesses. After being raped I don't think a person ever goes back to the person they were before. Everything changes, and I don't think that our situations are ever easy after that. We just become stronger. I think everyday is a survival in our minds, even if we don't say it out loud. At least, that's what I think.
The nightmare are all apart of that. I think now, by me opening up my world I have to also be honest with myself and in a way, I posted a target on my back. Him and his family/friends probably know by now that I am doing this, and I'm sure they aren't happy about it. I would hope they wouldn't go as far as to shut me up, but I never thought in a million years that he would of done what he did in the first place. So, I need to adjust my life accordingly just to be safe.
In my dreams, the situation shows itself in many different ways. Me being punished for talking, or my family and friends being punished… because of me. It's truly horrifying. I have to tell myself that the worst is over but how can it be over when all my head does is play it back to me everyday? Play different outcomes because of my newly found voice as well. Before my life changed, I never worried about my safety, not like I should have. I'd like all of you reading to ask yourself if you have in the past, or now, always put your safety first? I used to be very trusting in others, strangers even. I never had a plan on what I would do if this ever happened. Or anything bad for that matter. But, I should have. Now, I have plans for everything life might want to throw at me. I also have things to protect myself if my nightmares ever seemed to become a reality. Now, I'm not telling all of you to go buy a million guns. Let's stop that controversy in its tracks. I'm just saying be aware of what's going on around you before having to learn how I did. At first I questioned myself by asking, are you doing all of this because of what happened to you??? But I think I have known that answer the whole time.
This journey has taken every bit of emotion and every bit of strength that I have. There is not a day that goes by where it doesn't. Still. The truth is, I wouldn’t be able to survive it again. From the night it happened, to the defensive team ripping me to shreds on the stand, the fear I have daily, to all the counseling. All of it balled into one situation that happened two years ago. I could never experience it again.
Rape feels the same no matter how it happened. Like your world got ripped away from you and all you are trying to do from there is hang on. That's what every victim needs to do. Hang on and wait for the experiences that aren't bad ones. The moments in life that put a smile on your face. Hang on to the people that hold you up, and hang on to the happy memories that are still to come. Hang on until you realize that that there is so much more to this life than that one horrible situation. This is what I tell myself when I see myself slipping a little. Because, I still do, and I always will. But, I've become stronger than my situation and I will hang on to all the amazing moments in my life. To basically outweigh all the bullshit.
I hope you all continue to read and support because, I’m holding onto this, and the awesome things I want to do with Safe & Sound Refuge. So please, keep the support coming. I hope these blogs are sparking something in all of you, like my situation has sparked in me. If it has, please share these blogs with the people you love, and support a company that I know is going to do amazing things. <3
It won't be this way forever. It feels that way now, but time does its good work, truly. You're doing the right things. You're getting help, you've remembered to think positively, you've got support. You're going to be okay, I promise.
ReplyDeleteA woman who I admire (Cheryl Strayed) once wrote an article where she described a conversation she'd had with a friend who'd been raped. The friend was an artist who'd been raped three different times. She asked that woman how she had gone on in the way that she had, living well, having healthy relationships. The woman talked about deciding who we allow to influence us. She said, "I could allow myself to be influenced by three men who screwed me against my will, or I could allow myself to be influenced by Van Gogh. I chose Van Gogh."
I've never forgotten that. I think we all believe to some degree that we don't get to control how we feel about what happened to us, but there's an amount of control that we don't always realize we have over our lives. That's not to say it's easy or that it comes instantly, but it's there. You're living it now, by making choices that will lead to your healing. You could be making different, less healthy choices that would take your life in a direction that would be painful. Keep choosing to live, always. Keep choosing to heal and you will. You'll see.
It's been a long time for me. I know that it was still fairly fresh, and pretty consuming, and felt like it could never feel any different after two years. I remember that. It's been 16 years now, and that's an entirely different feeling (and it didn't take all 16 years to get to this point). The truth will never stop being true, but emotional wounds do heal, and this will find an increasingly lower spot on your To Think About list, just give it time. There will come a day when you realize that you hadn't thought about this in so long that you almost feel as though you'd forgotten it, and now that you've remembered, it's ok, you can move on.
You survived! Keep doing that.
While you're in therapy, ask about a method called EMDR. If you haven't done this already, see if your therapist practices it and thinks it would be good for you. It was initially designed for phobias, but also helps a great deal with trauma. It made a BIG difference for me.
Take care!