Interpersonal Violence 344U

For those of you who have stumbled upon my blog and don't know me this is going to be a graphic blog. Please be aware.

I took a one credit course over the past two days, and was in no way prepared for what I experienced. I spent the first night sobbing all the way home, went straight to Rae's(because Andrew had to load the truck for the market the next day), and then sobbed some more. When Andrew got home I went home and was then able to calmly explain what had happened and kept him up until 2 in the morning. Yesterday when I was done with class I came home drained, lay down to take a nap with Andrew at about 6, and we woke up at 1:45 this morning...and decided it was best to just sleep through it.

With all of that said, it was clearly painful. I questioned whether or not I will ever have the capacity to be a therapist, because I will have to go through all of the classes first. Rae was kind enough to tell me that people who have had these experiences are drawn to the field because they possess empathy and want to help others who experience the same things.

I was raped when I was 17. I never thought of it as rape because I had been drinking, but it was. Only 5% of campus rape is reported, because the victim claims responsibility as there was alcohol involved. Shame, fear of being called a liar, and social pressures confirm these feelings, so the incidences go unreported.

I was 17, and had already started talking with Jason. Because he was older my step-father's friends then thought that it wasn't that I was interested in Jason, it was that I must be interested in older men. False. Besides the point. The Saturday following my high school graduation, two of my step-father(Frank)'s friends came over. One of them came inside and said "come have a shot of tequila with us, but tell Frank it's your first time." To which I replied "no thanks, I've had it before and don't really like it." Pushing me physically out the door he said "oh c'mon, just one..."

Six shots with my mother, step-father, and two of his friends later, I left for a friend's graduation party. I was so intoxicated I had to ask a friend from school to take me home after only 20 minutes. When I got home there was a new male there, and Frank had gone to bed. This guy's name was David, and he was 21 at the time-much closer in age to me, which is why he had been invited by Frank's friends. Frank had been put to bed as he was so intoxicated he could barely stand, and tried to pick a fight with David because he said he could "see right through him, and knew why he had come."

My mother told Frank he was being silly and sent him to bed. So, just clarify as my writing I'm sure will get more and more confusing: My mother, three men, and I are sitting out by the pool and continue to drink. Everything gets fuzzy here, but I didn't think anything bad would happen because I was in my own home, with my own mother, and she would take care of me if anything were to get out of control. Next thing I remember we were walking through the neighborhood as we had heard a house party/band playing a few houses over. Next, we're there. Next, somehow I'm back home in my pool with David, just the two of us. Next, I'm on the floor in my living room and he's having sex on me. I pushed him off and started crying, ran to my room and locked the door, where I cried for the duration of the night.

The next morning I woke up to find he had spent the night in the guest room, my mom made pancakes, and the four of us had breakfast together. She gave him my number because she didn't approve of me dating Jason, and wanted him to call and take me out. Later that day I told her I ended up having sex with him on the living room floor, and she said "yeah, I figured that would happen."

I told Jason that week at church camp, yes-really, and I cried and apologized. It was my fault, I had been drinking. Evidently, drinking means you're asking to get raped. All these years I had been told and affirmed, mostly by members of the church, that when a girl does something "bad" and something "even badder" happens to her-she was asking for it. Not only that but it's just how society as a whole views it. I got intoxicated, being sexually violated was my consequence.

Moving on. We then went on to talk about victims of childhood sexual assault. I know, and have always known, that I was sexually molested as a child. However, I have many snippets of foggy memories, of many different men, from my childhood. I had always hoped that maybe I had manifested those, maybe they were from a dream and not from life. Maybe I wasn't molested by Robert, maybe he just physically abused me.

Bessel A. van der Kolk, a professor of Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine, and also a Professor of Paedagogics at Harvard University, is a leader in the field of trauma memory. This is from an article he wrote:

While ordinary memory is an active and constructive process, traumatic memories are stored in ways that are different from the memories of every day experience, namely as associated sensory and perceptual fragments of the experience.....Trauma narratives can be understood as attempts to make sense of these dissociated, fragmented memory imprints. The transcription of sensory experiences into narratives may result in "distorted memories.".....It is now understood that early affective experiences, as well as traumatic memories, are primarily processed in the right hemishpere[of the brain], which makes them relatively inaccessible to verbal analysis and interpretation.

So roughly 20 minutes after realizing that I was, in fact, raped, it was brought to my attention that these foggy memories are real and they did happen. Which was only helpful in this way: to recognize that I was repeatedly sexually assaulted as a small child, from age 2 forward(that I know of), it would make sense why when I was again assaulted I would not recognize it as that. I would see it as my fault, as I had always been used sexually and therefore if anything was out of the norm it was my fault, my manifestation.

We then went on to discuss PTSD in great detail, which I was diagnosed with at the age of 12 by my first therapist, and was affirmed by my subsequent two, the one in Oklahoma City was basically incompetent, and he didn't really have much to say period. For some unknown reason I had been living under the impression that my PTSD had "gone away." To be honest-I'm not really sure why. But looking at the symptoms of PTSD displayed as far as social behavior, I am the poster-child for a childhood sexual assault survivor with adult PTSD. Truly. So let me list a few of symptoms of PTSD:

• Alterations in emotional regulation, which may include symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger.
• Alterations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body.
• Alterations in self perception, which may include a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, as well as a sense of complete difference from other human beings.
• Alterations in perception of perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship with the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge.
• Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or repeated search for a rescuer.
• Alterations in systems of meaning, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.

Or my favorite "The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person's ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting."

I could go on forever about all of this, but instead will say that I asked my professor for some therapist recommendations locally as she works in the field, and tomorrow I'll be scheduling my first appointment in over 4 years. I need it, I know I do, I can see how all of this has manifested in my life and how I should be handing people who want to be a part of mine a user's manual with a HUGE warning section...lol. Andrew was even understanding enough to say yes, when I told him that after seeing the therapist for a while I would want him to come in to work together for some tools to help us work around my disorder, so that if I ever get out of control or am being completely irrational-we'll have the tools to work with it. The end for this moment.