Sin & Savior

CHAPTER 9, PART 7

What is a memory without our perspective of it?

"The trauma of being a rape survivor is something I never believed that I would experience. The aftermath is simple arithmetic: I never want to be helpless again. Hopeless, again. But...that desire to have taken control of my situation has only found me in a position of serially compounding irrational fears on top of themselves one after another in a scramble to reclaim my internal power. In a consensual sexual experience: I could have controlled it, no matter how foolish the decision to engage might've been. But....THIS....

Complicating and making unhealthy a thing meant to be tender, loving, joyful, and — sometimes — even funny...I never expected this outcome for myself.

My brain is wired for survival: not happiness. When it's alerted to dangerous, unpredictable environments: I always expect it to forget. The problem is...it never forgets. And this is why traumatic behaviors unconsciously repeat themselves...I've witnessed it on so frequent the occasions....The anxiety...the stress of the anticipation of a future repetition of trauma exceeding and extricating the stress associated with the original traumatic event itself; then...the mind subconsciously compelling the event, in order to resolve the conflict by establishing control, since trauma is caused by the feeling of helplessness, and the only way of overcoming it is to be capable of being powerful.

If rape makes a victim feel like they've lost control of their life, or their sexuality, or their mind, and they engage in impulsive, risky behavior like promiscuity, gambling, substance abuse, or any other dangerous thing: it makes them feel like they are back in the driver's seat. The brain of rape survivors entirely change after they've been attacked.

Some experiencing hyper-sexual states 24/7, or possessing newfound tendencies toward translating personal problems directly into feelings of sexual lusting and frustration because the crimes against them got ignored, normalized by society, refrained of justice, and their own closest friends and family either find this unrealistic, or the norm in the face of the abnormal: it doesn't surprise me at all why they respond the way they do. I'm concerned about whether or not this crime against my body will compel me into whoredom. Hypersexuality, this evident, obvious tell-tale sign of sexual abuse...I've lived an introverted life. A modest...prudent life. Will I begin dressing myself in rags to be as sexually repulsive as possible, or begin accepting every sexual advance IN advance as a layer of protection against renewed sexually abusive situations? While everyone is out normalizing what happened to me: I'm busy trying to normalize myself. Trying to find joy beyond the pale, beyond the trauma, beyond trying to force myself to evolve emotionally beyond it so it lives inside of me, and not on top of me anymore...

Development takes so many frames and forms, opens a full register of bodily experiences not only unwelcome at the time, but still necessary puzzle pieces in order to find and exist inside of sexual joy.

Every instance of trauma is different, and I understand that this one is mine.

I reject the concept of normalizing my treatment, my triggers, my trauma. Of becoming sexually abusive MYSELF trying to "copy" that "fun" no one in my life seems to have found a problem with. I'm smarter than that. I know post-traumatic stress disorder when I see it. I know every experience is individual. I know my body was violently attacked, if I NEVER remember it happening, and you were powerless to stop that. I know that I will never allow that to be excused as a "mistake". Pain. Terror. Horror. To reclaim control in the face of that reality, especially when the only sex I've had has been under the control and behest of an abusive asshole will not only be defiance. Will not only be my socratian argument against my newfound depression; against my every attempt to end my life....It will be a war cry. I will not self-harm to keep the emotional pain away: flood my brain and dopaminergic circuitry with endorphins, opiods, and analgesics that make me feel better. I will not pretend that I was not raped, sexually abused, overcome and undone, and allow myself to fall into compulsion.

My research claims certain areas of my brain will crave it. Specifically: the archipallium, wherever that is. Like heroin, like alcohol, like crack. However: two parallel areas are biologically wired to force my conscious mind to find it repulsive. If God and fear cannot occupy the same space: why can my revulsions, and my desire to re-invite this same abuse? This...comforting self-deception, borne of the fact that simulating these events of my assault over and over: degrading and humiliating myself, submitting to the pain and the lack of control may be the only way I can sexually hold myself up: by allowing someone else to tear me down? Verbally, physically, psychoemotionally...? To love people that do not care about me at all....

The apparatus of rape, this cyclically perpetuated psychological system of harm, will be in your body until you fade if you allow it. It's so frequently and easily ignored...all those issues of behavior systemically tied to structural problems in gender-indifferent spaces and communities.

...To molest me should not be as easy as the shared glass of celebratory delight with a trusted colleague: to violate my body should not be so simple as him claiming the intention, or desire. In analyzing things...I could question where his aggression stemmed from: but that would be diminutive of the mess he made of me. The mess I might seek to make of someone else now, because his family or his friends or his environment encouraged him towards the edge, and tipped him over until he'd happened to fell, face-first, into himself. Into my lap. Into my love. Into the basest natures of his carnality and primal desire, at the expense of my own flesh and blood...Tonight: I bled for the first time. The tearing was too much to keep protecting myself from.

As I bleed: I will not hate me. Will not be helpless, be hopeless, think negative, or repress the anger, the shame, the guilt, the rage, my suicidal ideating has a name. My difficulty trusting has a face. My inability to view myself as ever being capable of being loved by anyone else in the future has a pulse...

...And I will not forget...his ANYTHING.

I refuse my depression. I refuse my despair. I refuse to direct my anger inward when I know exactly where it belongs, and who it belongs to. The one who has taken everything from me.

.....And I WILL....destroy her."