Because I had convinced myself that colored girls had no right to sorrow

So after talking to my therapist and doing some real hard thinking I don’t know if I’ll regret this and I don’t even know if I’ll even read this to you but I just feel like I'm keeping a secret. Well actually I feel like I'm walking around with a secret that I can’t tell anyone. It’s like once people know your secrete they eventually leave or use it against you. And then you can’t tell everyone because there are people out there who intentionally will hurt you because that’s what they look for. I think I'm scared to tell you because as open as I am with you I'm still scared of getting hurt and I'm actually worried that this will hurt you too…….

I was watching a documentary called The Invisible War; it’s about rape in the military. There were all branches, men and women, sergeants, solders, and people who had really high ranks who were rape survivors. I don’t use the word victim. I feel as if you’ve been raped and you’re still breathing you’re a survivor. But yeah they were talking about how the military doesn’t handle rape cases and that they are pushed under the rug. The survivor usually is the one who gets punished in the end. Like they were talking about how they lose rank and end up on extra duty and things like that, and that’s just for reporting. One woman was raped and the man who did it was her Sargent and when he raped her, he broke her jaw. So she reported him and nothing was done, this man was harassing her and she reported it and they did nothing about it. So she ended up leaving the military and was not able to get disability. The military said she was 2 months shy of her 2 years and the only reason she left 2 months early was because she had been raped and still had to work underneath her rapist. Another woman who had been raped by another recruit has back and leg problems because of the injuries she had during the rape. There was a man who was raped while he was in the navy and nothing was done. When they started with the statistics I wasn’t surprised at all. Out of the 3500 cases that they took only 157 rapists were punished, noticed I said punished and not put in jail.

There’s a big stigma behind rape and I don’t think people understand how much damage it actually causes even after the rape, years after. The flashbacks don’t go away, the panic attacks don’t go away. As much as I wish I didn’t have to but every man I see even if I'm just in the grocery store or getting gas or running errands, hell even at work every single man that I see the first thing that comes to my head is the thought, is he going to rape me?  Could he? Has he done it before? Dating is a lot worse it’s a constant on guard feeling because you don’t know what this person might do. Its nerve wrecking and then you’re sitting there trying not to have an anxiety attack in front of them all because they gave you a hug or touched your arm, or did something that reminded you of the rapist. It could be something as small as a word and it triggers you and you can’t tell this person that. It’s the first date, we all know the truth it will scare them off, and it always does.

And then I have this thing just going over on my head, over and over again and I’ve been thinking about it for years. Once they know they know it, you can’t change that. They will never look at you the same way again, it’s basically over then. It destroys a lot of relationships and friendships and that’s the truth. That’s was rape does, it breaks people and it breaks families and it breaks friendships. A lot of people, most people cannot deal with it so they say things they don’t mean and do things they don’t mean and they leave. They leave because they don’t know what to do or how to handle it, they leave because it’s too much work, they leave because they don’t want to deal with it. And I try to put myself in the other person’s shoes and be sensitive to them and how it affects them. But lately I'm starting to feel so much worse about it. Because to me, personally I feel like it’s my fault. Especially when I'm with someone and when I start to talk about what happened and I can see their expression and mood change I feel like it’s my fault because I'm talking about it. And then they’re pissed off because it happened and I feel bad for even bringing it up. I feel shame from my partner and guilt from the rape. It’s like what am I supposed to do? I’ve done it both ways and I feel so much worse when I talk about it than when I try to hide it. So I have two choices I can either not say anything and hold the pain in or I can talk about it and risk the chance of being alone for the rest of my life.

Today has been really hard. I didn’t sleep last night, the night terrors and flash backs are happening a lot more every day. This morning I woke up and I couldn’t get the taste of him out of my mouth. I felt like I wanted to throw up. He just makesme sick everytime I think about it. I tried a hot bath and had to throw up. I thought the bath would relax me but it just made me so anxious. I felt like I was in a swimming pool of his semen. Like every time he would rape me or make me give him oral  I felt like I was in the tub dying. It was so disgusting it made my skin crawl. Ive never wanted to peal my skin off more than that. I scrubbed iuntil my body was red and I still didn’t feel clean. I don’t want to be touched, I don’t want anyone to say their sorry, I don’t need your pity I just want to feel ok for a day. I want to wake up and not have a flash back or think about being raped or constanctly freak out that my daughter will have to suffer like I did. I'm so scared she’s going to hurt like I am, she’s too innocent for that, and I used to be that innocent……

Some days I don’t want to do this anymore. Some days I don’t want to be a nurse, I don’t want to go back to school, I want to change my major, a lot of days I want to delete my blog and everything on my computer that even mentions the word rape or sexual assault. I’ve thought about just erasing it all and pretending like it never happened and never tell anyone else. Hide the panic attacks, the night terrors, go back to putting on make-up on my scars and pretend like none of this ever happened. Some days I dread doing group because the pain is just too much and some days there’s nothing you can say to make other survivors feel better. Some days I spend so much energy telling others that everything will be ok, that it’s not your fault that they are going to make it, that they are stronger than they think. I forget to tell myself those things, I forget to take care of me, and I forget that it is me against the world.

It’s just a hurt feeling that I have right now. Until I started getting help for the Bi-Polar I didn’t realize how much being molested changed who I would have been. It changed who I was. I remember being happy before he started molesting me. I was just another kid and everything was a perfect innocent world. He was already 2 years older than me and still in kindergarten. I was not good in elementary school when it came to school work. I Ummm………I had speech therapy in the 2^nd grade because I couldn’t say the word yellow anymore. I couldn’t say aluminum or abominable I still can’t say the last two words without stuttering. He molested me for 2 years and my mother still made me play with him every day. He lived on my street. We rode the same bus and were in the same classes. Our last names started with the same letter and I had to sit beside him while he kept touching my legs under the desk. I didn’t realize how much it changed me in elementary school and middle school. Once he left high school in the 10^th grade I was fine. I took college classes in high school doubled up on my math and gradated with top 20% of my class. But yeah I was in remedial math and English in elementary and middle school. It was like from the time he molested me until he left high school I couldn’t concentrate at all. In elementary school I was in remedial reading and math and I remember my mom would always compare me and my sister. She told me that if I didn’t get my act together that my sister was going to pass me. That she was on a higher level than I was because she was smarter and was in the advanced classes and I wasn’t. I didn’t like school, I hated elementary school I hated him, I hated my sister and my mother. Then I still had to play with him and be nice to him. I cried all the time in school because no one else would play with me and I didn’t want to be left alone with him because he would touch me. They called me cry baby and no one knew the reason why.

I had to sit beside him on the bus in middle school. I stopped playing with and talking to him then. The kids in the neighborhood stopped talking to me then and I had to deal with them teasing me and bullying me. I remember my first middle school boyfriend lol. He went to a private school but he was really nice and I liked him a lot. I was actually 2 years older than him but it didn’t matter. Oh man my dad liked him, my mother couldn’t stand him because was younger than me. I remember her words to this day. You’re supposed to learn from the man not teach him. As if 2 years really made that much of a difference. She talked my dad in making me stop seeing him. I’ll always hate her for that. I met frank 2 years later. Lmfao so I was with someone older now and I did learn from him. I learned how to give head and make any man cum, I learned how not to gag, let’s see what else did I learn from this older man, oh year I learned that a fist could fit into my vagina and anal sex hurts a hell of a lot worse when you clinch up instead of relaxing. I learned how to separate my body when I'm being intimate so I can’t feel anything, I learned to ignore my feelings and just lay still and do whatever I can to hurry up and make him finish, I learned that no and stop don’t mean shit to some men. I learned that some men look for women to pass around to their friends; I learned that my virginity didn’t mean anything; I learned that when someone says they’re trying to get you pregnant that they will do anything to get you pregnant. I learned to hate and be disgusted with my body….I learned to cover up my scars and smile. I learned to smile and pretend like nothing ever happened, I learned that some heartbreak just can’t be unbroken, I learned that this is one of them…..I learned a lot from an older man…….

My mother and sister knew for 21 years that I was being molested; my mother knew the whole fuckin time and didn’t do anything. My sister knew from my mother and didn’t say anything to me until I had brought the subject up and slipped it in like it was nothing. Like it was perfectly ok that it happened. My mother, the woman who gave birth to me knew her daughter was being hurt and still to this day says it was my fault. I will never understand why she didn’t do anything. Her brother raped her when she was a teen, her mother helped her, she was there for her, and even with all of her 13 kids she still managed to be there for my mother and even got her help. And what does my mother say to me? What did you do? What am I going to tell the neighbors? I will never fuckin understand it.