Leaving & Recovering

Why would you want to be friends with someone you feel afraid of and who is harassing you? Who you fear may become violent if you take any action to stop his harassment? That’s not the way friends treat each other: this guy is not your friend, and clearly has no interest in being your friend. Sexual…

Clarisse: the very first thing I want to say, and want you to try hard to hear, is that you are not abnormal, nor are you some kind of basket case. You’re simply someone healing from a serious injury. With at least one out of every four women being raped or sexually abused at some point in your…

I don’t know of anyone who would think that they needed to guard their drink from someone they thought of as a best friend. I sure wouldn’t. There’s just no sound reason, at all, for you to think that for some reason, you should have thought to do something that pretty much no one on earth would…

Really, the why here isn’t that important. What’s important is the “is.” In other words, you’re doing things you’re saying you really don’t want to do. WHY you’re doing them, or what might have caused you to have a hard time with making the choices you want to isn’t as important as the fact THAT…

Sometimes we have no idea how things will affect us, no idea about the million ways in which one event can influence our lives. When I ran out of the driveway that day, across the street and to our house, I had no idea that the hard part was still to come. One volunteer’s story of her history with sexual abuse, and her journey to healing.

The next morning I got up early and we started talking again. It was too early for me to be awake and I was battling severe cramps, among other things, so I fell back asleep. This is where my so-called friend and ex boyfriend decided he was going to explore the female body: mine. Looking back at this, I can only feel anger: at him for being so “curious”, and at myself for letting it happen. I have heard so many “It’s not your fault’s,” that I am honestly ready to puke. It’s ironic I guess. I can see how the victim is not at fault in other sexual assault/abuse situations, but I still refuse to see it in my own.

If you have NOT gladly and freely consented to and participated in sexual activity – if you have not in some way said a big yes and wanted to keep saying a big yes – and someone else had sex with you anyway, that is rape. No matter what ANYONE tells you, it is not your fault. There certainly is fault, but it lies with the rapist, not the victim.

Never believe: “I love you, it will never happen again.” It will happen again. The tears don’t matter, the bruises don’t matter, the broken bones and ER visits and warnings from friends and relatives don’t matter. Those scars that we bury deep inside us, the mental and emotional scars that we try to pretend don’t exist – they don’t matter. It will happen, again and again and again, unless someone puts a stop to it.