Rape and Valentine’s Day

 47. RAPE AND VALENTINE’S DAY

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

For many, Valentine’s Day is a special day for expressing your feelings of love, affection, and gratitude, to those people you care most about. But for myself, and others, Valentine’s Day can be heartbreaking. One memory of a particular Valentine’s Day is dark, and seems to have traumatically overshadowed all positive experiences of that date.

When living under the influence of the man I refer to as Alex, he brutally and mercilessly used me as an enslaved sex worker. This was all simply to fund his illicit drug use and alcohol addictions. However it also meant that if and when I fell pregnant, Alex couldn’t be sure that the baby was his.

So, tragically, when I fell pregnant yet again, Alex was totally furious with me. I always dreaded the positive pregnancy test because I knew what it meant. Alex would  drag into his doctor’s clinic. They bound and gagged to stop me screaming in agony. My pregnancy was traumatically terminated against my will, without anesthetic.

On one such occasion the forced abortion was on Valentine’s Day. I was devastated. More so the doctor said I was pregnant with twins.

I understand that not everyone will agree with me on the following sentiment. However to me, those foetuses were real, alive, living people in their own right. From the moment of conception, they were real. Given that is how I feel and what I believe in my own thinking, I named them Dallas and Dakota.

I spent the rest of that Valentine’s Day, crying inconsolably yet silently. When Alex saw my tears, he said that it was poetic justice that the babies were removed from my body on Valentine’s Day. If I hadn’t been so stupid as to get pregnant, he had raved, then he wouldn’t have been forced to be so harsh. But if I said I was sorry, he would  “forgive my stupidity”. Then he forced me straight back into prostitution.

I am no longer living in that particularly cruel and abusive situation. Yet, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten. As would be expected, I am still recovering from re-living those traumatic events. Particularly on Valentine’s Day, I can’t help but remember those traumatising days. But the best thing I can do for those babies, remembered as my children, is heal.

What about you? Do you have memories of a traumatic Valentine’s Day? You too might feel that your trauma is far too hideous for you to ever forget. But you don’t have to forget that, despite the pain, you tried to care for another person. Rejection is not failure. You can turn your trauma into something positive. You can heal.

This week’s gem of positivity is a affirmation:

I am a warrior in my own life.

A warrior is strong, resilient and a fighter. And I am a warrior who is strong, resilient and a fighter.Don’t you want to be your own warrior too? You can be, by making a simple choice. You can heal.

Thank you for taking this short walk with me in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what Valentine’s Day means to you. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby 

Rape and First Consensual Orgasm: Part Two

 46. RAPE AND FIRST CONSENSUAL ORGASM: PART TWO 

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

Part one of consensual orgasm was to show you there is hope for sexual pleasure to occur after the violence of rape. This part two highlights some of the issues that can arise in the process:

After my foreplay orgasm, I felt a bit rejected because I wanted to try and give him as much pleasure as he had given me. But this wonderful man wouldn’t let me. He kept saying I wasn’t ready for penetration, but I felt like I’d been used. Yes, I’d been given pleasure, and I still felt happy. However, it felt wrong for me to have such pleasure and not be allowed to respond in kind. 

The reason I felt used stems from an underlying use and abuse. It now felt like my lover had gotten his way, simply by getting his hands “on the goods” as it were. It felt like he had just taken what he wanted, then dismissed me like a used condom. I understand that healing takes time, yet this limitation was just wrong in my thinking.

I remember asking him if I could play with his dick. He said that was only something for later in my healing, to minimise the risk of dissociation. So, rejection again.I felt I wasn’t good enough to give him any pleasure. 

In some ways I felt like a little kid, because this loving and caring man had to explain why I wasn’t ready to give him the pleasure I had been given. I felt like bursting into tears then. It was like he’d taken my orgasms and said that they weren’t worth his orgasming too. It actually physically hurt. Like I’d been punched in the gut. But I didn’t say anything about that. I didn’t want to lose the cared for love I felt I had shared with this loving man.

I tried to rub his leg near his groin, but he wouldn’t let me do that either. All he said was “I think that’s enough of that”. Then I felt dirty as well as rejected. So although I was left feeling physically euphoric, at the same time mentally I felt I had been used and abused. However the positive post orgasm feeling made me tired enough to sleep on and off until morning. It was good restful relaxing sleep. And the nightmares stayed away all night.

As you can see this week, there are mixed emotions when having consensual sexual contact for the first time, particularly when it’s after forced sexual trauma. Hopefully you have also noticed that consent works both ways. My lover refused his consent to sexual contact on him. As distressing as this has been, I need to respect my lover’s decision. This is truly caring for someone you love.

After past traumatic sexual abuse and sexual assault, it is  easy to forget that your sexual partner has the same consensual rights as you do and it can feel like rejection at the time. However as you heal, you will come to see the importance of consent on both sides. That is how you will know that you truly are healing. Aren’t you excited?

This time, the gem of positivity is a quote attributed to  the actor Vincent Rodriguez 3:

“Rejection doesn’t always mean I’m not good enough”.

I have come to learn this to be true. My lover was not rejecting me because I wasn’t good enough, even though that’s how I perceived it at the time. He was actually protecting me from further traumatic sexual harm, based on my current stage of healing. That’s the relationship I want to have. Don’t you want to heal into that sort of relationship? 

Thank you for joining me on this short walk with me in my journey to heal. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you view the word “rejection” . And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and First Consensual Orgasm: Part One

 45. RAPE AND FIRST CONSENSUAL ORGASM: PART ONE

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

This is an account from my journal. My aim in sharing this with you is to show that there is hope for sexual pleasure to occur after the violence of rape:

The foreplay was a quite scary at first. I wasn’t sure how I would feel. However my lover explained about foreplay, and  waited for me to say “yes, go ahead”. 

Although I knew where his hand was, I was starting to feel a tingly warmth in my back, breasts and groin. I didn’t know if it was a normal feeling and it worried me a bit, but he asked me what I was feeling. I explained the sensation and he said that it was perfectly normal. Although it was normal, it still scared me a bit, which made me nervous.

When I invited him to put his fingers inside the lips, he said my body wasn’t ready yet. He stroked my outer labia. I could feel myself opening up. It felt a little weird, but nice.

Then I started to feel trembly, and it scared me. His fingers moved in to stroke the inner lips, and I really could feel sparks flashing. I felt extremely good, wanting more, but that brought on panic that my lover would go further than I really wanted, as I stared getting flashbacks.

After a pause for reassurance, his fingers got to my clitoris. That frightened me the  most, because I didn’t know what was happening . He explained that it was an orgasm. I was like wow, really? I’d seriously never felt that before. Each rape before had been traumatic convulsions not this unknown orgasmic pleasure.

There was a buildup of pleasure, then just as it was going well, a traumatic image of a past paedofile reoccurred there again. I couldn’t see anything or any person. I struggled blindly, but my lover was there and I could hear his voice. He was telling me to smell him, which I did for safety.

I think it was that sense of security that made the orgasms so pleasurable. Soft, gentle foreplay orgasms. No penetration.

.

What about you? As you can see, there are mixed emotions when having sexual contact for the first time, particularly when it’s after sexual abuse and sexual assault. However there is the hope that as you heal, you will enjoy consensual sexual contact safely.

This time, the gem of positivity is a quote attributed to Rupert James Alison:

“Enthusiastic consent is the start of a conversation, not the end of it”.

Consent is not something that can be taken for granted nor treated lightly. It can mean the difference between pleasure and pain, enjoyment and fear. The more I heal, the more I am finding this to be true. And as you heal, you will learn this too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk with me in my journey to heal. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you view the word “consent”. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and Identity

 44. RAPE AND IDENTITY 

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

I have the trauma of losing my virginity at the age of three by a group of paedophiles. Bewildering, I was later raped by three school teachers, and then a horrendous work experience of being gang raped and physically abused on the job. Further I was forced to live with the man I call Alex. During this time he brutally beat me, horribly raped me, and traumatically used me as an enslaved sex worker to support his drugs and alcohol addictions.

Many people only see me as a victim of sexual violence. I’m “the rape victim”.  That is the identity that they have labeled on me. But, how do I see myself?

I’m not a “rape victim” in my eyes. There are underlying qualities that make me who I am. I’ve been told by one of my therapists that I have a wicked sense of humour, and I do. I even tell Dr H jokes during therapy sessions. It’s a great way to relax after a particularly difficult and painful session.

I have a passion caring for animals. In fact I’ve kept just about every species of domesticated animal there is as a pet. And yes, that does include sheep and cows, too. I love bottle feeding young lambs, and excited seeing them grow from birth through to having offspring of their own.

I love to write. I even enter writing competitions. My journals are overflowing with ideas, observations, and poems I write myself. It’s not unheard of for me to fill a 400-page notebook in just 6 weeks. I get twitchy and have a physical ache if I can’t write each day.

I love to sing, but usually only when I’m at home and all alone. I don’t have any voice training, as it were, I simply sing for myself and to myself. I find it very freeing. I don’t always hit the right notes, but even that makes me happy and laugh.

I’m also a bit artistic. I usually draw with just a black ink pen on white paper or even canvas. I keep a stack of colouring in projects, as a change from drawing. I’m also keen on diamond dot art painting. I don’t always make time to indulge in this creative identity, but when I do it’s always relaxing and I lose myself in the process.

I enjoy aqua aerobics. I can spend even 2 hours just in the pool, either jogging on the spot or doing “weightlifting”. It’s lovely while I’m in the pool, but gosh, I don’t half feel exhausted when I get out.

As you can see, these are all characteristics that make me the person I am. The inner me. And none of them have anything to do with whether or not I’ve been raped or sexually abused. They are what I see of as my identity, not the sexual traumas. But it has taken me years of therapy to understand that.

And what about you? How do you see yourself? Do you think of yourself in terms of you being a “victim”? You are not. You still have all the same lovable traits as you did before the sexual trauma. Your qualities are still there. Your sexual abuse and assault is not the whole of who you are. It will take time for you to shed that label, and start believing in that again. But when you do, you’ll be just like me. You will be on the journey of healing.

This time the gem of positivity is an affirmation:

I am not defined by the opinion of others.

This is a key part of healing. I am not defined by what those perpetrators did to me. I am not rape nor molestation. I still love humour. I am still care for animals. I am still creative. Those attributes have never left me. They were overshadowed for a time. The further I travel on my path of healing, the greater my attributes shine through the darkness. And yours will too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what different parts make up your identity. And until next time, just breathe and believe. 

With love and care, Ruby.