It feels like I’m going crazy. You’ll never understand unless it has happened to you. I can’t stand the skin I’m in some days. It hurts. The scars the way it feels period. There are some things I can never get back and I’ll just have to live with that. The panic attacks, the nightmares, my hair falling out, the stress, not being able to be close to anyone. It hurts so bad I want to be that "normal" female. But it will never happen.

I feel so disgusting. I feel like there’s a pound of dirt on my skin and there’s nothing I can do to get it off. I feel like no matter how many times I scrub my skin it will never be clean again. I fight this feeling every day, all day long.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m single now and I’m free. Like I feel everything they did to me. Last night while I was sleeping I could feel Banky inside of me. I felt him inside my vagina. It felt like I was on fire…

I need to write more. I feel really hurt right now. This bath isn’t really helping either. It feels like I’m swimming in a tub of their semen and I can’t get out without cleaning myself first. It just feels like my skin is on fire all the time and I can’t stop the burning. Last night I had night terrors. I could taste his semen in my mouth, I tasted him and I still can taste him and it just makes my stomach hurt and upset and I wish I could just throw it all up so I can get it out of my body. Every place on my body that they touched me is burning right now. It’s like their fingerprints have been burned into my body and I’m trying to cut them off just to get my skin back.

The good thing about us separating is I can stop pretending. I can stop pretending that it doesn’t hurt when it’s really killing me inside. No one will really understand how it feels unless they've been through it before. I can sit here and explain until I’m blue in the face what the flash back feels like. I can try to tell you what it feels like to have the same nightmare about being raped over and over again. And as many times as you may tell me it’s just a bad dream, it’s not. It really happened. It’s a reality that keeps replaying its self over and over again. Yes I know and understand that it may not happen again but the fact that it has happened already hurt. Living that same nightmare over and over again hurts. Being raped over and over again in that dream (that really happened) hurts. It’s not just a mental thing it’s physical also. What they did to me was not right. It hurt me in so many ways I didn’t realize until now.

They took a part of me I can’t get back and that’s what hurts. I was a child when I was molested the first time. For 2 years I didn’t say anything because I was scared I would get in trouble by my mom. She knew and didn’t do anything. She knew and made me play with him anyway. She still fuckin knows and still lets him come to the house like its nothing. Frank hurt me. I don’t want to talk about that right now because its making me sick thinking about it. I pressed charges against Banky and somehow or another they still made it my fault. Why did I left him touch me? Why did he drive me home? Why did I let him give me oral sex? Why? Why? Why? Who fuckin cares???? My dad told me not to tell anyone about what happened, my mom said something about therapy 5 years after it happened. You stupid ignorant bitch, that would have helped me 5 God damn years ago. The damn damage is done now.

Like how do you explain to someone new you’re dating that you have flashbacks and panic attacks. Every single time you have to start over with a new person. You have to re-teach your body to get used to that persons touch and what they look like and constantly remind yourself that they aren’t going to hurt you. Like it’s just an awkward conversation to have with that person. And then when they leave because they can handle you. Like what do you do in that situation? You can’t be mad at them because they can’t handle it but it’s more like putting the blame on you. You’re the one who’s feeling guilty even though you know it’s not your fault but you feel like it because you’re the one who’s suffering. It’s your partner who can’t handle what happened to you because of what someone else did to you. People don’t fuckin understand that no matter how people react to you it always comes back to what happened to you and it makes you feel like it’s your fault. You feel bad when partners leave you ,you feel bad when you jump at him touching you even though you know that he’s not going to hurt you, you feel bad when you want to kiss that person but can’t because you’re having flashbacks of your rapist holding you down, you feel bad. That bad feeling doesn’t go away overnight. 

Damage….such a funny but hurtful word. So many times I've been referred to as damaged good. As if I’m some kind of damn broken package instead of a person with fuckin feelings. I am not what happened to me. I am not rape, I am a rape survivor. Do not fuckin define me by my past.

Unfortunately, even if you have got your mind around the trauma, your body has a memory of its own. Many women report having episodes where they involuntarily cringe when a loved one touches them and many more report problems when actually having intercourse. Vaginal dryness, a muscle tensing, or the impression of leaving one's body during sex are all common for somebody who been sexually abused. It is going to take time to get past all of this and an extremely patient partner.

I’m having really bad body memories right now. I don’t really have an appetite anymore, I have to force myself to eat everyday which kind of sucks. I just don’t feel like eating. Like I have this horrible taste in my mouth and I was actually kind of hoping that his Dr. Pepper would take it out but it’s not working.

I’m feeling kind of sad and really emotional and I just want to cry. I wanted to cry on my way to work yesterday. Like my body doesn’t even feel like it belongs to me now. It feels like it’s theirs, like I never had my body after I was 6 years old. Someone else was always touching me and hurting me that I don’t even know what my own body feels like. I don’t know what I like to a certain point and it’s really frustrating.

It’s like hands all over my body and I can smell Banky and Frank and it just turns my stomach. I had accidentally put on exclamation perfume (I was wearing it when I was raped and I only wear it around my husband. So I went into work yesterday and my coworkers told me I smelled like a baby and I couldn’t figure out why and I thought it was because of my daughter and her things. I had put on a little bit of lotion on her but it wasn’t that. As soon as I got off from work it clicked in my head and it had triggered me because Franklin used to tell me that all the time when I wore it with him and my stomach just turned over and I just felt so sick and disgusted.

Like it’s to the point right now, with the body memories and how I’m feeling that I don’t want to be touched at all, and it’s been like years since I've felt this strong about it. I don’t want anyone touching me or anyone looking at me. I can feel my senses getting stronger and my body just feels like it’s on aren’t right now and that’s also kind of hard to deal with. Like I can feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up right now.

We are calling it theft. As if he could pluck open your ribs like cello strings, Pocket your breasts, steal what makes your heart flutter and tack its wings to his wall. Some days you will feel dirty! Some weeks you’ll remember how hard it is to breathe in public, like your heart beat is climbing to the attic of your throat only to suicide itself on the pavement. But know this: the person who did this to you is broken, not you

I just feel really shaken up right now. I feel lonely and I feel like breaking down and crying again. Last night was horrible and I don’t really have a lot of days like that in a while. I had seen someone walk past my house last night and I had a panic attacks, so I hurried up to close my blinds and it hit me in the head and knocked a statue over. So I was on the floor crying trying to glue back the pieces and I had this horrible flashback of Banky raping me and I had broken down. At first I was angry and then I was sad. I got up and sat that the computer and cried. I cried so hard that after a while I got tired of crying because it hurt too much so I had to stop. I had another flashback but this one was about Frank and it felt like the 2 years that we were together had been crammed together and I had felt every single time he touched me and it was in such detail like I was watching a movie but I couldn’t stop the movie from playing. After I had caught my breath and stopped having the flashbacks it felt like my body was here but my head wasn’t. My body didn’t feel like it was mine. And all I wanted to do was get the pictures of them out of my head. The flashbacks became nightmares the whole night and I got no sleep.

I just feel so hurt right now. I woke up this morning and I feel like I have to throw up and my stomach is so upset right now. Like for the first time in months I’m actually scared to be in the house alone. Like I feel like I’m becoming paranoid again. Like I can feel them watching me. So when I woke up this morning I didn’t want to get out of bed because my vagina hurt so much. Like it felt like I was burning and I can still feel it. I’ve tried everything to get that feeling out of me but nothings worked so far. It felt like that after Banky had performed oral sex on me and before he raped me. It’s like that feeling just won’t go away and it just makes me sick to my stomach because I can smell him on me and no matter how hard I scrub I just can’t get it off of me.

 Someone to tell me it’s going to be ok, someone to hold me and just be there for me, I need to hear that it’s not my fault and that I’m still normal and beautiful and that I’m not damaged. I can’t do this part alone. I’ve tried so hard and I can’t so I’m reaching out to my support system. I’ve tried doing it alone and it doesn’t work, I only hurt myself and everyone else around me when I do it alone. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s ok to lean on other people when I need help. That I’m not weaker because I need help, that I deserve to be happy just like everyone else.

 I’m trying so hard not to cry because my daughter is here and I don’t like crying in front of her because she picks up on emotions so easily.  My daughter has changed everything for me recently. I was so selfish the past couple of years, especially after I had her; I was selfish to my ex- husband and everyone else. But just being around her more and actually spending quality time with her and opening up has changed my life.  I want to be there for her when she’s 100 lol I know that it’s not going to happen but I want to make sure that I’m around for her. She’s my heart and if it wasn’t for her, I would still be drinking and trying to kill myself. I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a mother like I did. That is the 2nd worst thing that could happen to her and I would never want that for her. Every day I look at her and she gives me a hug or says I love you mama I think about why I’m fighting so hard. Why I keep fighting to survive, I’ve been raped and hit and abused (sexually and emotionally) enough times so that maybe one day she will never have to go through what I went through.

Each day is hard; it’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed, some days I just want to fall asleep and never wake up again because on my bad days I feel like I would be so much better if he would have killed me and then I have days where breathing hurts so much that I’d rather hold my breath until I die. But then there are days where I have really bad panic attacks and I have control over them, and that makes me feel really good because I know that everything I’m doing is finally working. The emotions that I go through every day I can’t explain it. There are a lot of highs but so many lows to go along with it. It’s a draining and exhausting process that I’m scared that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get better, to be normal again; I guess I just want to be a normal woman. Someone who has no problems with her sexuality. A woman who doesn’t have the flashbacks, panic attacks, triggers or the jumpiness when she’s touched by her partner. I want to feel like my body belongs to me again, that someone never touched me in the most intimate place every. I can’t get that back, none of it I can get back and I don’t want to say its ok because it’s not but I’m determined to heal from it.

Sometimes I think about if there’s actually healing from this. Is it something that you can actually be cured of or will it kill you slowly in the end? Do we actually heal from the flashbacks or do they eventually go away for a while and come back again when you’re not expecting it? When it does come back do you have to start all over again with therapy and healing? I wonder how many hours of my life I’ve lost to being raped and fighting this battle. Who would have ever thought that it would cause so many problems and so much heartbreak that a lot of people just don’t understand. I just want to know if I can actually get better from this or am I just holding on to false hope…..

And it isn't just about you and the way your body responded either. It may also have been one of the repertoires of dirty tricks rapists use to get their victims to feel responsible. Diana Russell writes that "Some rapists think they're lovers" and tells us:(These rapists) think that if a woman is stimulated in 'just the right way' she will enjoy it. The conquest may seem more important if the rapist believes he has turned the woman on physically, particularly if it is against her will. Getting the victim to respond physically may also alleviate the rapist's guilt feelings.

I feel so disgusting right now. I don’t really know what’s going on with me or even how it happened but I feel like I’m having a minor setback. Through everything I’ve been through the past 2 weeks I’ve made such good progress with deal with panic attacks and flash backs and the anxiety.

When Banky raped me we were kissing and I let him perform oral sex on me which was so disgusting. He had finished smoking before he did it and to this day I’m not too sure what he was smoking but when he performed oral on me it burned really bad. It was painful even when I had to have the rape kit performed. So to this day oral sex is a really sensitive subject for me but  I am comfortable with it as long as I’m calm and relaxed.

About an hour later my anxiety goes up and I feel like I’m losing control over my emotions. I wanted to crawl in a hole and just cry my eyes out. The first thing I felt was Justin’s fingers inside me, after I dealt with that feeling the next thing I felt was Banky performing oral sex and then Frank holding me down and raping me. I dealt with the flashbacks and didn’t freak out but it felt like it just kept going around in a circle and wouldn’t stop.

Like my body felt like it was being violated over and over again and I can feel them touching and grabbing and I smelt every sent and my body just feels so worn out. I couldn’t even lay down in my own bed by my husband and feel comfortable. I felt like my body was betraying me and I couldn’t control it. My vagina and anal area is still throbbing and I just feel so disgusting and dirty and tainted. I know that I not but that’s how I’m feeling. I just feel so uncomfortable in my own skin, I just want to peel it off my body and find a new skin, something that’s not so dirty.

A hot bath would feel wonderful but I just feel so nauseous and so out of control. I just want to be able to relax. I feel disgusting because while I was being raped I was wet, I didn’t have any control over it and I know that it’s nothing that I did but it just feels so bad……..

Where the fuck is my parole board? Where is my hearing going to happen? How many years do I have to serve before i’m free again?

If rape was committed in the per-pubertal stage then it will cause certain difficulty in understanding what sexual intercourse is really about. At puberty, rape becomes the determining factor of how sexual relationships should be. It has a remarkable effect on how the person expects sex to be later in life.

I don’t think I’ve every been so angry in my life. I don’t even know what to say or how to say it….

I don’t feel lost, I feel hurt, I feel like i’m carrying around blame that is not mine to carry but because of its results, i’m the only one who has to deal with them, he doesn’t.

People don’t understand what rape does to a person. They don’t fully understand that after it happens its not over. It could be a situation where a woman is raped, her rapist gets caught and put to jail for life, that doesn’t mean its over. There are so many different  layers that are under it all that it feels like you’re pulling them all the time.

Its such a stressful and painful feeling when you have to deal with the flashbacks and panic attacks especially when you’re in a relationship.

For me its embarrassing. Like how do you explain to someone that they did nothing wrong but you just had a bad moment. And then it gets to the point when it starts to affect your sex life and its not even your fault.

I don’t understand why we are the ones who are violated and put through hell and then still have to suffer through hell in our every day lives. Why we are the ones suffering with panic attacks and night terrors, affecting our spouses, our children, our families. Meanwhile they walk away free of charge.

Its not fair and i’m pissed the fuck off. This whole time I haven’t been angry at any of the men who raped me until now. Now its starting to affect my family and i’m angry. I’m the one having flashbacks while being intimate with my own husband. I don’t see how that’s a fair trade. Like I haven’t dealt with enough pain already.

I’m angry because I feel like i’m being punished for something that I had no control over.  I’m angry at them because I’ve worked so hard to get to this point and now I have to start over again.

I have enough things to read and research on, it feels like everyday week there’s another book added to my library of problems. Sometimes I feel like it would have been so much easier if he would have killed me instead of being toured right now. Some days I feel like I don’t deserve my husband because I think that it would be so much easier if he was with someone with out my problems. Sometimes I really do think that if given the option, most men wouldn’t date rape victims.


Today we were driving to run some errands. And it was warm and sunny outside. I’m sitting in the passengers seat having a flashback because it felt exactly how it did I was raped for the first time. The sun was in the same spot, the wind was blowing in the same direction and the air had the same scent to it. I blinked my eyes and saw my ex and me in his car driving up the road to his house. I had almost lost it until I touched my ring and snapped back to reality.

I don’t like the summer because of everything that happened between us, I
still remember it all…….

She's got eyes of innocence, the face of an angel, a personality of a dreamer, and a smile that hides more pain than you can imagine.

        So the past couple of days I’ve been sleeping ok. I haven’t really had any restless nights but I have had nightmares. It was nothing serious though, just petty irrelevant nightmares that really didn’t bother me they were just stupid. Last night I was just kind of irritated, we had the window open to get some fresh air but that didn’t really help me because I was still having hot flashes and I was restless and couldn’t get comfortable so I didn’t fall asleep until about 5:30am.

        When I woke up this morning I felt like total crap. I fed the little one, went to the bathroom then came back and say down on the bed to see if I could relax but I couldn’t. So I jumped in the shower. Like I had felt so dirty, like my vagina was dirty because of the rapes, my vagina started to hurt like the feeling I had after I had been raped so I got in the shower. I did feel a little better but not really. So I put on lotion thinking maybe that would make my body feel better but it didn’t. My skin felt sticky and I had still felt dirty, like there was nothing I could do to get that sticky dirty irritating feeling from off my skin. I had felt so disgusting with my body but I knew what was going on.

        I’m trying to pay more attention to my body and how it reacts to certain situations that way I can pinpoint what’s going on with me and how I can make myself more comfortable and relaxed. I can start to feel when I’m about to have a panic attack or a flashback and usually it helps me to really calm down and handle them without hyperventilating which is good. It is very annoying and embarrassing when my body feels like that sometimes. It feels like my body is betraying me but I know its not. I know that its apart of the healing process which sucks ass but im dealing with it. I’m trying to try out different ways of coping with what’s going on. When my body feels sticky and dirty I usually jump in the shower put lotion on and then baby powder. I know it sounds crazy but the powder does relax me and it does take that sticky feeling away.


      For me personally sometimes I do feel like I’ve been damaged, like there have been parts of me that were taken away that I cant get back and that hurts. Someone took a part of me that no one was suppose to see until I was ready to show them. It feels like I’m not “pure” anymore is the best way to put it. I use to have a really big problem with feeling like “damaged” goods and I’m still working on it.