Lisa
It’s been a long time coming, telling this story. Since moving to the Midwest, I’ve kept it pretty close to the chest. I’ve been reading Violence Unsilenced off and on since a friend posted her story here. There are some days when I cannot bring myself to read here because it is just too much for me to handle.
My friend in real life, Megan, posted here recently. I know how hard it is for her to share it so it finally gave me the courage to decide to write this out. I’m doing this without the support of my loved ones, except my husband, of course. My sister refuses to support this coming out. Maybe one day she’ll understand. This is a place where fear is put on the shelf and our voices ring out. This is a place for people to find courage and if I can help someone find courage, then I need to tell my story. I’m telling this as I remember it. All the stories are separate events, but all connected.
The first thing I remember that just “wasn’t right,” my mom hit me in the grocery store and made me wait out by the car. I’d been asking for something, repetitively as kids do, and she’d lost her patience. So I stood out by the car, alone, at night and waited for her to finish her grocery shopping. Patrons would come out and say “You don’t have to live like that.” All I could think to myself was, “Live like what?” I was seven.
My parents divorced when I was two. My dad was stationed in Germany. Every summer I visited. He and my stepmom would ask me to stay with them. I wanted to say “YES!” so badly, but all that went through my head was the pleas of my mom before I left saying, “You’re all I have. Don’t leave me.”
My dad finally moved to the states and retired from the military. One summer I came back from visiting, and my mom had a new live-in boyfriend. This wasn’t so odd. Mom had lots of boyfriends. This one really tried to gain my trust though.
I should’ve believed her. She was my best friend. The last weekend we spent as friends we’d gone away to the beach for the weekend. She never told me when it happened, but the police came by our house and arrested him for molestation. Her word versus his. She was nine. He was released. I’m SO very, very sorry, friend.
My mom asked me if it was OK if they got married. I wish I’d said “NO!!” I wanted to. But, I said “Yes, if he makes you happy.” What kind of nine year old says that? People pleasing at its finest. (This was after the above memory.)
The winter after I turned 10, I found out that they were having a baby. I felt more at peace in the house because I thought the drinking and the partying would finally end. My sister was born 3 weeks before my 11th birthday. She’s the only thing that makes this whole ordeal worth it. I wouldn’t have her.
The first time it happened, I had a stomach ache. He wanted to rub my back to help me feel better. He rubbed a little too low. I asked him to stop and he did, but not without making me feel guilty for not wanting his help, and reminding me that I wanted him to rub my back. All I thought was, “Did I really ask for this? I guess I did.”
When sister and I started sharing a room, he would come in and touch me. Caress my rear end. Then when I would awaken, he would leap away from the bed and pretend to be consoling a crying baby. At 11, I really thought, “Dude, I’m two feet away, don’t you think I would’ve HEARD that?” I refused to sleep on my back or side from then on. I could “handle” it if it was my butt, but I refused to take the risk that he would touch anywhere else.
I told a friend, she said if I didn’t tell my mom, she would. So I called her. Asked her to come home from a night out of drinking. I had something important to say. I told her. She brought him home, confronted him. He lied. She believed him. I was looking for attention. Too “neglected” after the baby came around. I wish I’d been neglected. I wish I’d been ignored, but I wasn’t.
One day at school, after it had happened time and time again, I wrote a letter to a friend. It dropped. Some other friends found it, read it, and instead of returning it to me, turned it in. I thank God for them. He never would’ve been forced to move out if he hadn’t had the court order.
Of course, my mom made me drop the charges, but not after cashing in all my savings bonds beforehand. I put him in there, I may as well pay to get him out. She told me I’d never see my sister again if I didn’t. She was in trouble too. (Not really, but I was 12 or 13, what did I know?) To this day, she hasn’t admitted she was wrong. She said she made me drop charges because the attorney’s would have ripped me apart. My memory is better than yours mom, it’s not true.
When I was 15 I was suicidal. I mean, friends stopped me just in time multiple times. A friend really. My safe haven. The place I could go for a weekend or a week and pretend my life wasn’t as bad as it was. I’d have moved in if I would have been allowed. It was offered. (I love you all! I miss you “Mom,” I can’t wait to see you again in Heaven.)
I told my mom one time that I was suicidal. She replied, “How do you think I feel, I have kids.” She also told me that I was too fat for any man to love me. I would cry myself to sleep. I scratched myself just to feel. I used to burn things and burn myself.
One time he was drunk, he broke into our house. I awoke to find him caressing my boobs. Only recently had I found the courage to sleep in any other way other than my stomach. It took me years to do it again. I still don’t ever want my butt or boobs played with. It makes me want to puke.
My mom reconnected with an old love. (Mom, if you think I don’t know who he was in your past, you’re mistaken, I know everything. You should have hid those journals better.) I’d met him once when I was 6. She really thought I’d move across the country and live with him? I went to live with my dad, finally. The last day I lived with my mom, I didn’t see her. She was off partying with her coworkers. She came home at one point to pick up more booze. She came home at midnight and brought me food to eat and cried and begged me to stay with her. I said, “No.” But I was thinking, “Who the fuck are you kidding bitch? I’m not even worth your spending time with me.”
I spent a lot of time feeling better after moving in with my dad. Feeling better but not healing. When I turned 19, I thought I had it all together. Moved out, started partying, drinking, drugs. I was staying over at a friend’s. His buddy was there. We started making out. He wanted to have sex. I told him “No, I’ve never done this before, I don’t want to.” He did it anyway and I kept quiet. I thought, “Well, he must really like me if he did it anyway.” It also solidified my belief that sex was all that I was good for. I began sleeping with lots of guys. I just wanted to feel something. Feel loved. I thought that was the only way I could feel loved. No amount of food I ate could hide me from my destiny to be an object to men. I gained weight and hid behind my fat to keep myself away from this belief, but it found me. I was an object after all.
I know better now. I’m married to an amazing man who loves me for me. Sometimes it’s hard for me when he’s eager to show affection. It’s taken a lot of time to understand that he really DOES love me and is trying to show it. I’ve forgiven my mom. It took a lot of time and prayer, but I realize that she was sick with alcoholism and that doesn’t make it OK, but it makes me understand why she reacted in life as she did. My goal now is to raise awareness for abuse and eating disorders. To help women understand that they are worth more than they believe.
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Lisa blogs at Unfiltered Insanity.
ZM
I was just a few months out of high school. Barely legal. Book-smart and street-stupid.
My girlfriend’s fiancé was in the Marines. While he was waiting to be shipped off somewhere, he was putting in time at the local recruitment office. That night, she begged me to go with her to the office to play poker with him and his Marine buddies.
“Puh-lease? I don’t want to be the only girl there!”
So, I went. I played poker – badly. Did some tequila shots. Drank some beer. Flirted with one of the Marines. My girlfriend pulled a designated-driver FAIL and got drunk. So she curled up on a couch in the front room with her boyfriend and went to sleep.
Leaving me alone with three drunk Marines.
I have no idea how many drinks I’d had at that point – or whether or not there was more than just alcohol in any of them.
I just know that I was dizzy and nauseous and so, so tired. So, with a final disgusted look at my girlfriend happily sleeping it off, I excused myself to the small conference room in the back, closed the door and claimed a couch there for myself.
And proceeded to have Very. Bad. Dreams.
All I can see are the dingy ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights so far above me. The cold conference table is hard on my back. I want to roll on my side, to go back to sleep. But rough hands flip me back over. Strong fingers are pulling my jeans down over my legs, forcing my thighs apart. There’s a weight on my stomach and sour breath in my face. I push ineffectively at the hands pinning my shoulders down. The too-bright lights are blocked from my view by a face. Faces.
My girlfriend woke me up early the next morning, telling me to hurry up, because she wanted to go find some coffee and a cigarette.
I felt… not right. My bra was on the floor between the couch and the conference table … How did that happen? And my jeans …
“Why are my pants undone,” I croaked groggily. My throat was dry, scratchy. My head hurt. And … other places.
“Oh, Sarge said they had to help you to the bathroom last night. You were so drunk,” she laughed.
“Okaaaay…. I don’t remember that. I … Wait … Was there someone else in here? I think … I mean … I remember … someone … the table … Oh. Ohmygod.”
I told her what I remembered. That I thought I’d been raped. By at least one and maybe all three of the men who were right that moment in the very next room.
And my dear, sweet, good friend who had dragged me with her to this place … totally blew me off.
“No way … You were drunk … It was just a dream … They would never … ”
Yeah … Actually, I liked that answer better. It was just a dream. Never Happened. Lalalala.
A few days later, the dark bruises showed up on my inner thighs.
But by then I had securely locked the whole thing away in a little box in the back of my mind labeled, “Never Happened.”
But, apparently, that box was not as secure as I thought. It leaked. Just a little. Just enough.
Before the Never Happened, I had “normal” issues, like so many teen girls do: I’d left 8th grade as the girl all the boys teased for being flat-chested. And I entered 9th grade as the curvy girl with the Double-D’s who all the boys wanted to feel up. I remember literally having to fend off groping, slobbering underclassmen in the hallways. Not to mention the seniors guys who were openly taking bets on which one would nail the hot, stacked frosh. And you don’t want to get me started about the leering adult men.
So, yeah, I already had the roots of some sexuality issues before I ever left high school. Being raped – and burying the memory – was like pouring gas on the fire.
Looking back on it now – feeling so far removed from that 18-year-old girl – it’s obvious.
But I couldn’t see how it was driving me. Wouldn’t have accepted it if someone tried to explain it to me. Because it Never Happened. And if it Never Happened, it couldn’t affect me, couldn’t hurt me. Right?
I thought I was in control. I desperately needed to be in control. And I guess there are two ways a person can “control” their sexuality. One way would be by withholding it.
That’s not the way I went.
Instead, I tried to “control” my sexuality by choosing all the wrong men, by having “just sex” with one emotionally unavailable user after another. I was the ultimate cliché of desperately looking for love in all the wrong places.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t love I was looking for at all. Maybe it was the pain, the punishment, that I really wanted. Because, as much as I wanted to be loved: I didn’t think I deserved it.
Finally, almost three years after my downward spiral began in that store-front recruiter’s office, I hit rock bottom. That day, I sat in another office – quiet on the outside, screaming on the inside – as the man I thought I loved casually discarded me like damaged goods.
Because that’s what you are.
And the box that held the Never Happened burst open, ripping away any last shred of self-esteem I might have had left.
That day, I finally cried. Not just for the lover who had broken my heart, but for the girl I’d left behind in that conference room and for the sad, broken thing I’d become.
I cried on the drive home. Cried in the shower until there was no more hot water. Then cried under the cold water. Cried until my eyes were dry. Cried some more. I screamed. I threw things. I’m pretty sure I threw up.
The guilt and shame of the rape were as fresh and raw as if it had happened just three days before instead of three years. And those feelings were compounded by all of the stupid, self-destructive decisions I’d made in the wake of my denial.
It was too overwhelming. I still couldn’t deal with it. The Never Happened went back into its box. I could no longer deny it HAD happened. But I still couldn’t drag it out of the darkness and look at it in the light. I still couldn’t admit how much of an affect it really had on me.
Okay, fine. It happened. Whatever. No big deal. Lalalala.
I went numb. Shut down. I went on with my day-to-day life, but I was just going through the motions. Emotionally, I was hiding under my bed in the fetal position. But I had reached a turning point. I finally stopped picking at the wound that Never Happened and it – and all the subsequent self-inflicted injuries – finally started to heal.
It took two more years for those wounds to scar over enough for me to trust any man again.
This year – more than 15 years after that night – I gingerly pried open the Never Happened again. And I found, to my surprise, that the roaring, stabbing, blinding pain had been replaced by a dull ache, a small sting. It still hurts – it probably always will – but it’s more like a phantom limb or a prickly old scar.
Looking at it without the red veil of pain, I could finally realize just how much I was driven, shaped, forged by the thing that Never Happened. And I decided that maybe it was time to shed just a little bit of light on my darkness. To finally admit to someone else that THIS DID HAPPEN. That it changed me. That it’s part of who I am.
I know that – even after all this time – I still have healing to do. I still haven’t completely forgiven that 18-year-old girl. Part of me hates her. Wants to kick her in the ass for being so stupid, so cliché. And part of me wants to hug her tight and tell her she’s good and beautiful and worthy of love and that she didn’t deserve it.
And yes, some tiny part of me still wants to lock the Never Happened back in its dark little box and embrace my old friend, Denial.
But 35-year-old me knows it’s too late to change the things that made me, impossible to ignore or revise the history that brought me to where I am today.
And writing this has made me realize that, even if I could, I wouldn’t. Because we are the sum of our experiences. What Happened THEN is part of who I am NOW.
So. This is me.
Scars and all.
Nina
The biggest tragedy of my story is that it is not remarkable. That this, or some variant of this, happens to women every day and that most often the perpetrators claim ignorance of any wrong.
I was in my early twenties. At the crossroads of young and old enough to know better. It’s easy to blame my own part in this. To say: ‘Why didn’t you leave him the first time he spoke down to you or belittled you? The times he pushed you away so hard you hit the wall? The times when his grip on your arm left bruises?’ and most of all ‘Why did you mix up your medication that night?’
But those questions don’t reach the crux of the issue: ‘Why is there not responsibility for acts of care? Why should a man give himself rights to your body and consider himself invited unless he is explicitly fought off? How can someone leave you with a row of bruises and blame your sensitivity but not their grip?’ Those are the questions I’d most like answer to.
Here’s a cautionary note about mixing up medication – sometimes it can really knock you for a wallop and before you know it the room is spinning and you cannot stand and you crawl to bed and you try to sleep and then your poor-choice-for-a-boyfriend comes in drunk and in the mood for revelry and everything takes on the aspect of a nightmare because you can’t speak and you can’t move but you still remember. And the body remembers the feel of his hand in your hair yanking your head back and the weight of him like a mountain.
The next day I remember lying on the bathroom floor for a long time, my cheek against the tiles knowing that a line had been crossed somewhere which could never be uncrossed and deciding that the easiest thing to do would be to pretend this had never happened. So I did. Most of me forgot.
But the body remembered and felt jagged and dirty and sickened and raw. And the mind remembered and haunted me with dreams of dirty bathrooms for close to a year. It kept the memory for me and nudged me to a therapist who was both surrogate father and friend and then, then when I was safe and far from harm, then the memory came back along with a certainty that I would never disown my sense of self and sense of worth like that again.
I’ve learned that a lot of violence is like this. Toxic. Unprovable. Apparent only in the surge of anger, the apalling taste in your mouth, the cry under the skin.
I’ve learned there are many ways to silence violence. With disbelief, with inattention, with outright threat. And the more insidious things. The ones that say: ‘If you tell this to your family then you won’t be able to tolerate the outpouring of their pity and anxiety’ or the one that says: ‘Your lover won’t be able to tolerate his helplessness in the face of your pain and won’t be able to listen because the impulse to get up and do and fix something is just too strong’.
But still, I have to speak. Partially because speaking is my therapy. But mostly because it is the only measure of validation and restitution I will ever see.
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Nina blogs here. You may remember her from the community keynote readings at BlogHer in Chicago. She asks that you keep all comments here on Violence UnSilenced, rather than on her own blog.
Jean
I started seeing my husband when I was 18. He was loud and rambunctious, but also very attractive, and I was completely enamored with him. I admired him for his bold, brazen demeanor and his rugged good looks. Mild flirting soon led to stolen kisses. He was attentive, and made me feel like I was someone special. He was always very gentle with me, kissing me softly, holding me tenderly. I always felt very safe and secure whenever I was with him.
So it’s no wonder that the first beating he gave me shook me to the core. It was so sudden, so unexpected, so out-of-the-blue that I thought I surely must have dreamt it.
We were newlyweds with a year old son, the first of three children we’d have together. He came home in the middle of the night, drunk as all hell and looking to fight. He woke me up and started accusing me of cheating on him. To this day I still can’t fathom why he would’ve thought such a thing. When I denied it, he stumbled to the side of the bed, held my head down on the pillow with one hand, and screamed, “Don’t lie to me, bitch!” while his other fist came crashing down on my skull. I curled into a ball, whimpering, telling him I love him, that I would never cheat on him, I was his wife for pete’s sake. He’d have none of it. His fist connected again and again with my head. When I tried to stop the blows, he’d grab a chunk of my hair and whip me around the bed as if I were a rag doll. I pleaded with him to stop, but apparently he took great pride in my begging, and it fueled his rage even more. I lost all sense of self with that first beating. Fear took hold of me, and he took control.
The abuse continued on a regular basis for the next four years, sometimes during waking hours when he was sober, but usually in the middle of the night when he’d return after a 2-3 day drinking and drugging binge.
He’d demand that I stand topless against the wall with my arms at my sides while he inspected my neck and breasts. He’d dig his fingers so hard into my flesh leaving red marks that he’d then insist were hickies left by other men. I was beat for that.
He’d push me into furniture leaving bruises on my legs. He’d then insist the bruises were hickies left by other men. I was beat for that.
We had just moved into a new home in a neighborhood with winding, curving streets. I still didn’t know my way around too well and took a wrong turn leaving the store one night and returned home later than expected. I was beat for that.
If I wasn’t at my desk when he called me at work, he would accuse me of being in my boss’ office bent over the chair getting fucked from behind. I was beat for that.
One day, before contact with family members was completely cut off, I was at my aunt’s house a few blocks away helping her with some computer issues. Not two minutes after walking through her door, he called to ask what was taking me so long. When I told him I had just arrived, he accused me of stopping first to suck dick. I was beat for that.
He’d come home and wake me up to tell me he saw (translation: hallucinated) a group of guys crawling out the window. He’d accuse me of being a whore who was just gang banged by the bunch. I was beat for that.
If I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, he’d accuse me of “sucking dick at the door.” I was beat for that.
One day, while holding our toddler boy in my arms, he smacked me so hard in the head that I went flying across the room, losing my hold on our son who fell to the floor and bouncing my face on the seat of a heavy wooden rocking chair. I had a black eye for a full week.
After the beatings he’d force me to have sex. He’d push me to the floor and demand I perform fellatio on him. My battered and bruised body would tremble. I fought back tears from the pain, my head throbbing from where he’d grabbed my hair and flung me to the floor.
The beatings continued until the very day he died. It was Christmas Eve and we had gotten into an argument. He threw the phone at my head as I sat at the kitchen table with our children. When I stood up with the intent of ushering the children into their room so they didn’t have to witness the violence about to come, he saw that as a threat. He pushed the kids out of the way and pulled me into the bedroom where he repeatedly slammed my face against the headboard. That was the last time he ever hurt me, as he died in his sleep the next morning. A heart attack at the age of 38 on Christmas Day. I stood over his coffin at the funeral home a few days later, still with bruises down the side of my face.
Never once was I unfaithful to my husband. I loved him deeply, completely, and would’ve hung the moon and stars for him. Years of abuse have stripped me of my self-confidence, my self-esteem, and have shattered my heart and my spirit. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from what he did to me. He’s been dead almost seven years now and I am still learning to forgive him.
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Jean blogs at I am Bluejean Jean.
