Rape: Healing From Broken

 74. RAPE: HEALING FROM BROKEN 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end for you to enjoy my gem of positivity.

Have you ever dropped something precious on the floor, and watch it smash into fragments? It’s not a good feeling. You look at the broken pieces and just think it can never be put back the way it was. Well, people can be like that. I know; I’ve been broken too.

After my virginity was cruelly stolen from me at the age of four, something inside me seemed to just snap, like the shattering of a favourite piece of porcelain. Then there was each and every further vile and horrific beating, and savagely brutal gang rape. Degrading actions by depraved perpetrators. It kept snapping that precious piece up into smaller shards.

However, after I was free from the physical bonds of those reviled men, that feeling of being broken didn’t go away. Because I picked up where those perpetrators left off. I told myself I had deserved to be treated the way I had. Chink. I wasn’t worth any better. Crack. I believed it was some fault in me that made men act that way toward me. Snap. Smash.

I was completely broken. In pieces so small I thought there was absolutely no way of healing all those small bits together again. But there’s one protective trait about me that made me still want to glue my life back together again. I was (and still am) a fighter. And that has been the best glue of all.

I had to fight put my life back together. And that meant I had to stop breaking myself any further. Those ruthless men had broken me enough. I didn’t need to continue the cracks they had already made. In fact, I didn’t need to stay broken at all.

I won’t fool you. The journey of healing isn’t easy. In parts of my life I now find that the original piece that had been broken off, just doesn’t fit anymore. And that’s okay too. Not every piece will fit into the life I am creating by healing. But it is still a valuable life, with a beauty all of its own. And that’s worth healing for.

What about you? Do you feel broken and shattered by the evil crimes inflicted on you? Even now, you can start to piece your life together again. No, it won’t be the same life you had, or even what you think it would have been. But it is still a worthwhile new life. As you put those pieces of yourself back together, you will find yourself on your own journey to new growth, just as I have.

The gem of positivity this time is simply one word:

Kintsugi.  

This is the Japanese craft of mending broken pottery with gold, to make the original piece of more value. I was that broken pot. In fact, there are days I still feel completely shattered, like there is no point in putting any effort into my healing at all. But as every time I do make progress in healing, I’m finding that my life can still be just as  beautiful as it would have been. And I am healing myself into someone even more precious than I already am, and ever would have been. That is the pot of gold in my journey of healing. How about you claim that gold for yourself, too?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what is one piece of gold helping you to heal. It might help someone else in their own healing. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and Negativity

 73. RAPE AND NEGATIVITY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me in a short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

There is one thing that I’m finding to be similar in the other experiences from sexually traumatised people who have shared their own stories and struggles with me. That one thing is negativity. Let me try to explain how it is for me.

After the childhood sexual abuse, I became extremely emotionally sensitive. I’m told that before the abuse by pedofiles, I had been an outgoing, happy, cheerful child. But afterwards I changed, and my family couldn’t understand why. I became what they called “the ultimate Negative Nancy”. 

In my mind, there was no possible way of any given situation having a positive outcome. I was sure that if something could go wrong, it would. That negativity has carried over through all aspects of my life.

After the horrific sexual assaults as an adult, that negativity was then reinforced onto myself. I couldn’t think or feel, or even say enough negative things. These were, and in many ways still are, negative thoughts and feelings about myself.

If I dropped something, as we all do from time to time, I wasn’t “just a bit clumsy”. I was a “clumsy stupid slut who wouldn’t know how to not drop something if my life depended on it”. That’s how I talked (and sometimes still talk) about myself. I was a slut; a whore; an evil demon. I even turned something Dr Q said around on myself so that I wasn’t even counted as a human being.

This negativity drove me to the darkest places within myself. I honestly thought that there was absolutely nothing positive to say about me. If given a compliment, I always turned it into a negative. If someone said I looked good today, my autocorrect would say “yeah, I thought I’d be a bit different from my usual ugly self”.

But all of that negativity didn’t help me to heal from my tortured past. In reality, it actually helped to keep me trapped with my toxic perpetrators. You see, I was in fact blaming myself for something I hadn’t done. All my negativity was just hurting me, and I’d already been hurt enough.

Even to this very day I battle with my feelings of negativity. My thoughts still always jump to the negative as a matter of course. It’s a long hard fight each and every day. Unfortunately most days, my negativity wins. But no longer always. And each time I do win over my negativity, I’m beating those perpetrators. Little by little, thought by thought. I’m getting there.

And what about you? Do you struggle with your own negativity too? You don’t have to. You deserve to live your life to the fullest, without the baggage left behind by your past traumas. And that includes all the negativity. To heal, the negativity needs to be left behind. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Just like me, you can start to heal too.

This time, the gem of positivity is a quote widely attributed to Simon Sinek:

“People who say the the glass is half empty or half full are missing the point. The glass is refillable.”

This is so true of negativity. I don’t have to keep myself in the half empty glass. I can refill my life with good memories and positive thoughts. That’s how I know I’m on the road to healing. How about joining me?

Thank you for taking the time to walk this short while with me in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you are refilling your life. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby

Rape and Accepting Help

 72. RAPE AND ACCEPTING HELP 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

One of the challenges I have faced in my journey of healing, is that of getting help. At first it was because I didn’t know there was any help to be had. Not for everything I’ve been through. I thought I had to face my past on my own, isolated and alone.

Now that I know there is help out there, now it’s accepting that help which has been my biggest problem. For me to accept help has seemed like such a failure on my part. So accepting that I have needed help was, and to some degree still is, a personal battle of wills for me. I have never liked to admit that all is not going well. In fact, I have prided myself in not needing any help to cope and be able to move on with my life.

There are people who can help themselves and move on in a healthy manner. I am genuinely pleased for those people. However I find that for myself, I haven’t simply moved on with my life. So I do what I promised to never do after my sexual assaults. I have had to rely and trust other people. I have had to accept help. 

In the past when I have tried to reach out for help, I didn’t get the help I needed. It compounded my feelings of worthlessness and loneliness.

I have had to accept that I need help to move on from the past. Help to live the life that I deserve. The life I should have had in the first place. It has taken me courage to survive and still be here today. But it’s taken all the strength I have within me, to accept the fact of needing help to truly heal.

What about you? Are you like me? Admitting that you need help to move on and actually accepting that help, will be one of the strongest decisions you can make. This is of great importance in moving forward. I know only too well that admitting I need help and actually accepting help are two entirely different processes. But when you do finally admit you need help, and accept that help, you will find yourself where I am. You will be on your own journey of healing.

This time the gem of positivity is a quote attributed to Kiera Cass:

“Accepting help is its own kind of strength”.

And this is true. Once I realised that it was a strength to accept help, rather than the weakness I had always thought it was, I found that I was able to start healing. Yes, I’ve had the courage to survive my traumatic past. However it takes all my strength to accept the help I need to move on. And that’s proof I am healing. Don’t you want that proof too?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what is one way, big or small, that you can do to show that you’re strong enough to accept help. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

A Cathartic Letter

 71. A CATHARTIC LETTER

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity 

Writing can be cathartic, or healing, in your life’s journey through the ups and downs of being a rape survivor. Especially when you feel so much anger towards certain people. I have added as an example, a letter I wrote “to” my family, although I never sent it to them, and never plan to. But it has helped me in my healing nonetheless.

To My Family:

This family has absolutely no understanding of what it means to love and be loyal, within itself. Yes, you love and are loyal to each other. But you also have no idea what it means to be loved despite pain and isolation. 

You think that I have isolated myself of my own volition. Yet not one of you are willing to look back at yourselves and see that in every way, you all have isolated me out of your family, and your lives. But despite this, I have been under the misapprehension that you would one day see me and maybe even include me.

But as I say, it was a misapprehension. Not one of you realise that the reason I exclude myself from your family gatherings, because not a single one of you have ever bothered to try and find out what I am actually thinking or what I care about. What’s more, you don’t even notice I’m not there. And yet, knowing this, I have continued to do what I thought was my job to do.

I have, even after all these years, and no matter what each of you have said to me at different times, thought that you were all worth it. So, let me tell you something of what I have thought you have been worth all these years.

I lost my virginity when I was raped at the age of four. I have a complete recollection of that evening and night. I can even tell you what I ate. But I never mentioned a single thing until I was twenty two years old. Why? Because my rapist told me that if I ever told, the family would be broken up. And I actually thought you were worth keeping together.

Then we come to the school years. You all poo-poo me for what you see as my lack of respect of Dad as head of family. And yet not one of you have bothered to find out why. The fact is I didn’t even realise Dad was related to me until we moved. I just thought he was married to my Mum.

Here’s another fact for you. I thought a paedafilic police man was my father. Remember all those times when you were telling me to go away and play by myself? I went down to the swamp, and met with the man I believed was my Dad. He listened to me, he spent time with me, and yes, he gave me what I thought was “love”.

And while you choose to ask how dare I be so selfish and self centred, and always ruin everything, let me remind you that I was the twelve year old who saw a doctor uncomplainingly on my own, because one of you was too scared to see their doctor on  their own without a parent in tow. And when we got home, and the other parent was told what had happened, their response was “good”.

All those times that my much older siblings told me to “grow up” and “act your age”, you forget that I was. I was eight years old, and nine years old. And I had the unbearable cheek to actually act those ages.

You all know that I worked for two years. I know that some of you won’t want to hear the following because it upsets your sensibilities. It upset my sensibilities too, but I didn’t have a choice as to whether I got to ignore it.

I spent those two years in hell. I was hit, kicked, spat on, pushed off moving farm vehicles, urinated on, had human excrement rubbed all over my body, and without a doubt, raped. I was not only raped, but gang raped on multiple occasions, including having foreign objects shoved up my vagina until I bled.

Now, I put up with that for TWO YEARS. Why? Because I was constantly threatened that “my” family would be killed. Not me. But YOU. I thought enough of all of YOU to put up with an atrocity that you’ve probably only ever heard of as happening in some third world country. But it happened to me.

All of this has cost me dearly. I lost my daughter, Muriel Ashlynne. She came too soon, breathed exactly six breaths, and then was gone. I lost the twins I thought I might actually keep, Charles and Olivia. They came too soon as well, sooner than Muriel; so soon they never got to breathe. I lost the ability to even get pregnant after the twins.

I lost any self confidence and self esteem I might have ever had. I lost my ability to ever work again. I lost my peace of mind. I lost my mental health. Instead, I gained fear. The constant fear that the very people who make up this family will still be killed should I speak out about what has happened in my past.

So before you continue to call me a “witch bitch”, or how dare I say anything about the family, or how my “communication skills aught to be better than they are considering how long you’ve been in therapy”. Please stop and think. Are any of you going to behave like your lives have been worth the ruination of someone else who you all speak and act with such scorn and revoltion? Or was it all for nothing?

In closing, I want to make one thing absolutely and completely 100% clear. I want nothing from any of you. I never have. I have always had to stand on my own two feet. I have never been protected, or even wanted by any of you, and that’s fine by me. You keep yourselves close as a family. But after all’s said and done, I will not put up with your slander of me for one minute more. Because I thought you were a family worth saving — don’t keep proving you weren’t.

Ruby

As you can read, I was very angry when I wrote this letter. But it has, in its own way helped me to heal. You see I got to take out of myself all the pain and frustration I have held so long. And it can work for you too. Simply write what you feel, whether it be to perpetrator/s or someone else. Get it out, so you can heal little by little yourself.

This time the gem of positivity is attributed to Anne Frank:

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

And that is what I have found, to an extent. My sorrows don’t exactly disappear, but I do find new courage, when I write something like my cathartic letter. I’m able to put all of that pain, misery, and yes anger, into it. Which means that it is no longer sitting inside of me, burning me up. Why don’t you give it a try?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk through my journey of of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what you do to get the pain and anger out. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.