Rape and Apology

  80. RAPE AND APOLOGY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. I’m glad you can join me on this 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 you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

Have you ever heard yourself apologizing for things that weren’t your fault? That you feel like you need to say “I’m sorry” simply for breathing?  I understand that feeling. Because I say sorry too.

It started with pedofile Mr S stealing my virginity, as a toddler. I began to believe that if I said that I was sorry enough, and really mean it, bad things wouldn’t happen. The tragedy and trauma of that night would somehow just disappear.

It didn’t. As I have grown from childhood, through my teenage years and into adulthood and I continued to survive through further cruel acts of sadistic tortures, I apologized even more. 

This extended to common everyday things. Here are some of my own examples. 

If a piece of paper fell to the floor, I apologized. If a door is blown shut at the other entrance of the house, I apologized. Even if I hear about a person within my circle of safety just having a bad day, I apologized even more.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…. I didn’t mean to do it….. I won’t do it again….”

Over time, I have been conditioned by other people to apologize simply for existing. This is especially true of my own family. They blame me for things I have no control over, particularly when I was a small child.

Now obviously, challenges do happen. For me, it’s taking on my own responsibility by acknowledging when I am to blame. However, I don’t need to apologize for being alive. 

Automatic self criticism is often how my thinking circles. The perpetrators have destroyed the normal course of how my life would have turned out. Through complex trauma, it was always going to be a high risk outcome to the rapes that left me feeling powerless.

Yet now, in my therapy sessions, I am slowly starting to come to a truthful conclusion. The molestations were not my fault. The rapes were not my fault. So there is nothing for me to apologize for.  

So, how do you feel now? Are you, like me slowly reaching the truth that you are not at fault? You are not to blame for the decisions and actions of others. Even if you are raped because you refused to listen to the advice of the people who are in your circle. Or your mom and dad, if you’re molested as a child. That doesn’t make rape your fault. And when you start to accept that for the truth it is, you will find yourself on your own journey of healing.

Child sexual abuse is never your fault.

Rape is never your fault.

And now for your gem of positivity. This time it’s a quote attributed to Paulo Coelho:

“Never apologize for being you”.

This is a truth I’m only just starting to accept. It was not my fault that I was molested. It was not my fault that I was raped. And it is not my fault for being myself. So I don’t have to apologize for being me. And as I heal I’m finally learning to hold that reality close to my heart. And you can 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 to tell me one thing you are going to stop apologising for. Remember, sharing can help someone else decide to stop saying sorry for simply existing. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

    

Rape and Shame

 79. RAPE AND SHAME

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you join me on a short walk through 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.

I know the feeling of shame only too well. It started with the first violation of my three year old vagina by the traumatically cruel adult penis. That particular perpetrator taught me that sex was a shameful thing, because if I tell on him I would be punished.

To me, anxious shame feels like my stomach has gone into free fall. It’s that feeling you get when you’re in an elevator that has just started going down, and the world has shifted beneath your feet. You’re helpless and everything is your fault.

Every further rape as I have grown up into adulthood, has simply compounded that shame. The thought that I am so dirty that other people must be able to see my dirtiness too. It’s a pervasive a dirtiness that can’t “just” be scrubbed off. Believe me, I’ve tried; even with steel wool until my vagina bled.

The shame of what all those vile evil acts of sexual torture has seared a deep and lasting scar on my mind, body, and soul. It’s like I’m going to suffocate from the sheer weight of this shame. That my chest is being crushed and I just can’t catch my breath.

And now, I am in therapy. And I am being taught a new reality. Slowly I am learning that the shame was never mine to bear in the first place. That just because toxic people have tried to make me as despicable as themselves, doesn’t mean I have to take it on board and carry their sludge. 

The shame belongs with the perpetrators, and the perpetrators alone. Even those do-gooders in society, who said the rapes were mine by choice to own, and are even crass enough to say that I’d asked for it. Their opinions still don’t make the shame mine. That is my new narrative, and I’m holding on to the truth. And that is proof that I am healing.

Have you felt that dreadful, choking, suffocating shame? The shame that you put on yourself from the actions of a cruel, demeaning perpetrator? You are not alone. It is an inbuilt trauma reaction to something that you had no control over. But you don’t have to stay crushed under this burden. You have done nothing wrong. It was not your choice, no matter what society tries to guilt trip you into believing. And as you learn to put the shame fairly and squarely on who the shame actually belongs to, the perpetrators, you will find yourself where I am at right now. You will be stepping along healing, too.

This time the gem of positivity is an affirmation:

I will not allow anyone to guilt trip or shame me into believing I am less than who I am.

This is a truth that I am learning to believe. Perpetrators, and even society, would like me to think that the shame of the sexual traumas are mine to carry. But it’s not. Believing that the shame is mine makes me less than I know I am. I am strong. I am resilient. I am a survivor. And I will not let anyone else shame me into believing that I  am not. And these are your strengths 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 one thing you are doing to defeat your feelings of shame. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby

Rape and My Vagina

 78. RAPE AND MY VAGINA 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite 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.

Back in post #25 I talked to you about my breasts. More particularly, how my thinking is changing from wanting to cut them off to accepting them as I heal. This time, I’m going to talk about that other sexual organ. That is, my vagina.

Just as with my breasts, I have hated my vagina for as long as I remember. I think of it as filthy, painful and weak. And those thoughts stem from being raped, from both my  childhood as a toy in a pedofile ring, and as an exploited adult.

During adulthood, my reviled perpetrators, were (and are) filthy. I don’t mean that they physically stunk, although many of them did. It was more their words and actions, that made them filthy.  Telling me that I’m “an animal in the sack” was never going to make me agree their evil treatment. Not when my animalistic tendency came from struggling to fight those graphically violent and cruel acts of depraved terror.

Pain, because there is nothing more excruciating than having an adult penis penetrate my three year old child vagina. As an adult, the pain didn’t get any less. Not when I was having to cope with thick piping being brutally thrust in me for the perpetrators enjoyment, while being pinned to the ground.

And weak? I can hardly feel strong when I’m having my vagina penetrated and violated. Traumatically, I often feel like if I had no vagina, I would never have been raped. In order to cope with my distress, I have from time to time even thought about cutting my vagina out of me. I have, in self harm, got as far as cutting my outer vaginal lips in the past.

Now as I heal, I’m also trying to reconcile myself to living with my vagina. And that means also changing the way I think about my “den of shame”. One of the first things I have done, is to name my vagina. The first name that came to my mind, actually means “strength, beauty, and peace”. I didn’t go looking for a name that meant these values.

I will admit right now, that this reconciliation between myself and my vagina, is still very much a work in progress. I haven’t just woken up one day and thought to myself, “I love my vagina and all it stands for”. There are still days where I have such intense hatred of a body part that has been so tormented and abused. Yet those days are becoming less. I’ve even managed to look at with fascination, appreciate, and draw my vagina. Which just goes to prove one thing. I can heal, vagina and all.

And now what about you? Are you stuck in the hate of your most precious self? You don’t have to stay that way. There are little things you can do to help yourself slowly learn to love your own vagina. Try giving it a name. Your vagina is your friend, and not another enemy. Just like the rest of you, your vagina deserves to be loved, respected, and even appreciated. And when you realise this one truth, you will find yourself on your own journey of healing.

And now for your gem of positivity. This time it is a simple, yet beautifully empowering affirmation:

I love and accept myself exactly as I am.

I am finding this myself. I can’t just cut off or remove intimate parts of my body, as much as I may want to at times. My vagina is part of me, for better or for worse. The key is how I view myself as a whole person. And part of that whole is my vagina, and I can accept myself for exactly who I am. I’m not just my vagina. But I can learn to accept my vagina as naturally part of me. Do you want that acceptance, too?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey to heal from sexual trauma. This time, I invite you to share what name you call your vagina. There’s no judgment here. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape, Orgasms, and Sexual Pleasure

 77. RAPE, ORGASMS, AND SEXUAL PLEASURE 

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 violence. Don’t forget to stay to the end for you to enjoy my gem of positivity.

It is fairly widely known what an orgasm is. And most people would naturally say that orgasm is enjoyment. Orgasms are supposed to be the ultimate goal in sexual pleasure. But what about sexual pleasure and orgasms in the context of rape?

Because of my childhood sexual abuse and further rapes as an adult, I hated the thought of sexual pleasure. I actually came to hate even the word orgasm. It always sounded so dirty. In fact, I didn’t link orgasm to pleasure at all. It was a foreign concept to me; orgasm meant pain and fear, not pleasure.

Every time I have been raped I have had involuntary orgasms. There was nothing pleasurable in having these reflex orgasms. I came to strongly link orgasm with then violation of my body. Why was my body screaming, “yes, yes, yes”, when my brain was saying “no” loud and clear?

I felt like my body was letting me down by making me believe that I had enjoyed the horror of the unwanted sexual attack. What’s worse, it made the perpetrators believe that I was not just okay with their traumatic and brutal penetration of my vagina, but actually a willing participant. I would have orgasm after orgasm. And there was nothing pleasant about them. This is because they were trauma driven.

But what about now? Is sexual pleasure possible after rape? Are orgasms still that same horrible heinous feeling?  Well, no. It has taken many years of therapy and retraining my body and brain. The reflex pain and dissociation became less. Touch has moved from numb, then neutral. Finally the touch has become pleasurable. The orgasms I have now, as a general rule, are not just good. They are fabulously great! 

My numbness started with around my legs. Just a complete loss of sensation. Therapy started by reducing my numbness to my labia. As the inner thighs became less traumatically reactive to touch, I began to regain the smallest of sensations around the outer lips. Then into the inner lips. And after all that, I began to get sensation in my clitoris.

I noticed the same transition happened with my breasts. I have now discovered the sweetness of having my nipples and areoles played with to a safe breast orgasm. The sheer delight of having my clitoral horns and clitoris stroked into a great clitoral orgasm. I never knew that an orgasm could give me such ecstasy. That it was even possible for my body and brain to shout that “yes” together, and truly mean it. 

And what makes these orgasms so much more enjoyable? Simply the fact that they are consensual.

I will tell you now, it has taken years of somatic therapy for me to get to this level of healing. It is a work in progress, and I still find vaginal orgasms far too painful to get any enjoyment out of them. However it does show, that even after the terror of deeply traumatic rape, there are sexually intimate enjoyments still to discover. And it does prove one thing. I am healing.

Rape doesn’t mean that you will be numbed from sexual pleasure in safe orgasms forever. And orgasming during the act of being raped does not mean that you were asking for it or that you enjoyed it. The orgasm is simply a natural body reaction to the stimulus. It is automatic, no thought involved. 

It’s the same thing about your vagina getting wet. They are naturally occurring mucus secretions. They are to protect against infection and damage done by the penetration. When you say no, it means no. No matter how your body is responding, you have said no and that is enough. 

No means exactly that, no.

When you are with a lover who truly cares for you, you have permission talk about your needs. It isn’t all about the fireworks in your groin, nor theirs. It’s about meeting your needs in what should be a mutually beneficial relationship. Mind, body, and soul. And when this is the case, it’s the greatest way of deriving sexual pleasure and satisfaction. It means that you are healing too.

The gem of positivity this time is a quote attributed to Dr Nazanin Moali:

“Our sexual self is not only about sex. It’s about pleasure”.

I’m finding this to be a key to my healing. It’s actually okay to want to have sexually derived pleasure. A history of rape doesn’t have to get in my way of enjoying great orgasms. And as I heal I will be able get more pleasure from sex. And you will find that you can, too.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing. Please feel empowered to leave a comment about what gives you pleasure. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby