Keeping On

 11. KEEPING ON

Hello and welcome. At this time, I invite you to take a short walk with me, as I share my journey of healing as a sexual assault survivor. Don’t forget to stay to the end, to enjoy my gem of positivity.

No journey is smooth. I’m finding that out only too well. I have been sinking into the gloom of my sexual assaults. In fact, I have been taking the role as a victim, and not a survivor. I had even sunk so low as to not continue to share my journey of healing. In fact, I was allowing my abusers to beat me and win.

Some parts of the year are better than others. Sometimes, like lately, I have been sunk in the misery of my assaults. The memories have been too sharp and real. Like the dark man dreams. I’ve been waking up from these nightmares coughing and struggling to breathe. It is not conducive of good restful sleep.

This sleep deprivation is a great way for doubts and PMS (Poor Me Syndrome), to take a foothold. It increases the effects of depression and anxiety in my life. In short, I have been forgetting about how far I’ve come, and the people who are walking alongside me as I fight to not just heal, but claim my life back.

I have forgotten about the key of keeping on. To continue to move forward, even if it’s just millimetre at a time (or the smallest part of an inch). It’s still a move forward. Away from my past. Away from the horrors of the memories, the flashbacks, the physical sensations.

Keeping on is important in and of itself. You see, if I stop, the abusers win. And that, I am stubborn enough to not let happen. If they win, I lose the essence that is my life. I lose the chance to chase my dreams. In short, I lose.

Even when you think it’s impossible, keep on. Even if the people supporting seem like they don’t care anymore, keep on. Even when the nightmares, flashbacks and physical sensations overtake you, keep on. Be a survivor, not the victim. So long as I (and you) keep on, those abusers lose. For me, I’m holding that close to my heart, as I keep on.

The gem of this post comes from Winston Churchill, a quote taken from the Second World War:

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

The road in front of you may seem too long and winding. It may seem to be full of so many traps and potholes. In fact, it may at times seem like hell. But if you keep going, you will eventually walk into the sun. Hell will pass away, but you will find that you haven’t. So if you’re struggling, simply keep on keeping on. I had forgotten that. But now I’m back, actually stronger.

Thank you for keeping on with me. Don’t forget to leave a comment to share how you are keeping on. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

A Bit of Background

 10. A BIT OF BACKGROUND 

Hello there and welcome back. At this time, you get the chance to walk with me in my journey of healing as a sexual assault survivor. Please stay to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity.

I realise that I have jumped straight into my story and healing, without actually giving you an idea of where I’m coming from, abuse-wise. So, why did I name this site “Raped 25 Years” and what exactly qualifies me to write it at all.

My sexual abuse started at the age of eighteen months, when I became a plaything of a pedophile ring. I was introduced to the ring by a trusted family friend. It was without my parents knowledge, I would like to make that clear. It was the same trusted family friend, a staunch member of our church, who took my virginity when I was three years old.

Even when we moved away from the area of the pedophile ring, the abuse didn’t stop. One man, a NSW police officer, followed us. He was successful in grooming me into believing he was my real father, instead of the man who is actually my biological father being married to my mother and living in the same house.

During this time, I was also raped by two teachers, one of them because I caught him raping a class friend in the girls’ toilet block, and the other my high school English teacher. The rapes left their marks on me, by way of obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bleeding stomach ulcers from the stress of continuing to see these teachers. 

I only got free of the person I knew of as Dad, when we moved again. That was when I actually recognised my biological father as Dad. By this time, I was fifteen years old going on sixteen, and I was in the tenth grade at high school. All went reasonably smoothly until I got to grades eleven and twelve. That was then my English teacher at my new school decided to systematically rape me over my last two years of high school.

After finishing high school, I spent a wonderful year doing further studies. Then, I started what I thought  would be my dream job. It was, in fact, my worst nightmare. I became the butt of workplace harassment, including sexual (gang raping included),  physical and psychological harassment. It was also when I became embroiled in a domestic violence situation, which would not have taken place except for the workplace abuse. 

The domestic violence continued over the course of about eight months, but I stayed in my job for two years. Even when I left my job, I wasn’t safe. As part of my effort to heal, I joined a self-help group. The leader raped me three times, in the course of the year I was a group member, after which I left the group. I then met a man, again at my church, who raped me and demanded sexual pictures and videos of me. I complied because it never occurred to me that it was abuse. As it turned out, I found out later that this man whom I had trusted was in actual fact, a convicted sex offender.

To be blunt, all these things occurred over the course of twenty five years, hence the title of this site. I have spent more than twenty five years, however, being controlled by my reactions to all this abuse. In August of last year I decided enough was enough. I decided that it was time to start healing and get my life back.

Even in this short time of starting my journey, it has been really difficult. I have a new diagnosis as a result of the prolonged complex post traumatic stress disorder, which I will talk about at another time. I am trying to build a relationship with the man who, in every possible way, is my real Dad. I am trying to forge relationships with my siblings, the relationship that was also destroyed by the abuse. But most of all, I am healing to form a healthy relationship with myself.

I am most grateful that I am not alone in my journey to heal. Many years ago, I tried to start the process with Dr C. But I have come to the realisation that I wasn’t ready then, for the arduous process of healing. I am grateful, however, for Dr C’s efforts and input to my journey. My consultant psychiatrist is now Dr Q. A man who genuinely would like to see me heal. Yet, as of August last year, I am in psychotherapy with Dr H. And that’s when I I truly believe the journey really began.

In my opinion, every survivor of abuse, no matter what the type, should have a steadfast helper like Dr H. He is a man who unfortunately has had to pick up the pieces from many abuse survivors. And yet he is not daunted by the people he meets. In fact, he is grateful to be able to play a role in the healing journey of people like myself. I have the joy of working with him both face to face and by zoom each week (isn’t technology wonderful these days?). In fact, if you really must know, this site would not even exist without Dr H’s encouragement. Mostly because I never believed I had anything to offer other people. Slowly but surely, Dr H and Dr Q are showing me that I do.

Today’s gem of positivity is very personal to me. It is the inscription on a pendant I wear, one that was given to me by my sister:

Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go just remember how far you have come. Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome.

And it’s true. I do doubt my journey of healing, many many times. But this inscription reminds me that I have come so far already, even though I feel like there is still so far to go. So if I have made it this far, I think I can stick it out a bit longer.

What message or saying is helping you to continue your journey of healing? I invite you to leave it in the comments section. Who knows — it just might help someone else to start healing. Thank you for taking this short walk with me. Until next time, just breathe and believe.

Sexual Harassment

 9. SEXUAL HARASSMENT 

Hello and welcome. Come with me as I share my life as a sexual assault survivor. Don’t forget to stay to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity.

According to Rape Crisis England and Wales, sexual trauma covers: rape, stealthing, sexual assault, assault by penetration, child sexual abuse, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual harassment, spiking, indecent exposure (flashing), and cyber flashing. There are possibly other types of sexual trauma, but that was just a quick list I found.

Unfortunately, I have been on the receiving end workplace harassment , which included sexual harassment. And it was when I had found what I thought was my dream job. It lasted for two years, until I finally realised the men weren’t going to stop, and in fact, their actions were escalating. It was either I leave or I die. It was as simple as that.

The men didn’t stop at just talking crudely and the odd grope. It became rape, every single day, often as a group. They penetrated my vagina with objects, and it was this that was the cause of the miscarriage of my last pregnancy. They would hold my mouth open and put their cocks in my mouth. They raped me anally. They also hit me, pushed me out of moving vehicles, and even, I’m sad to say, urinated on me.

 It wasn’t just the “common” workers like me; in my memory there were three managers as well. As I say, in my memory. Those two years were the worst of my life, but I don’t have access to all the memories. What I do remember is bad enough, thank you very much. 

You don’t have to have had it quite that much. Any is too much. And it’s not just girls and women who are targeted. Boys and men can be singled out too. Workplace harassment and sexual harassment is not to be tolerated. It can ruin lives, and not only the lives of the recipients. Unfortunately, in many cases, the recipient feels that the only way for it to stop is to end their own life. Then the family and close friends are irrevocably injured too.

I didn’t speak up until after I left that “dream” job. It had turned out to be my worst nightmare. I still have panic attacks around men I don’t know, although I also panic in family gatherings too. I have lost my sense of safety. There are many days when I can’t even leave my bedroom, let alone the house. It has taken me decades to try to build my life again. However, I still can’t hold a job. It’s just beyond me now.

I would not wish what I’ve been through on my worst enemy. Nobody deserves any sort of harassment at work. What makes it worse, in my eyes anyway, is that when confronted the perpetrators will more often than not say, “Oh but it was just a bit of fun.” No. Not fun. It’s never fun to be on the receiving end.

If you, whether male or female, are being sexually harassed, don’t put up with it like I did. You deserve better than that. If in the workplace, speak out. Tell your boss. Tell your boss’s boss. Keep going up the chain of command until someone listens. You may still decide to leave the situation in which you are being harassed, but it helps to make things safer for everyone else. Especially those that come after you.

Today’s gem is an affirmation which I’m only now starting to believe. Just three words:

I Am Enough

You are enough to deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. You are enough to deserve equal treatment. Just plain you are enough. Not less than. Not greater than. But whatever your walk in life, you are enough.

Thank you for taking this short walk with me. I hope it empowers even one of you in a situation of harassment to speak out. Leave a comment to tell us what empowers you. Until next time, just breathe and believe.

  ,

Power

 8. POWER

Hello and welcome. At this time, I invite you to take a short walk with me through my life as a survivor of abuse in general and sexual abuse in particular. Please stay to enjoy my gem of positivity at the end.

I was in Year 8 at high school, when my English teacher, Mr K, offered to mentor me. I love to write, and I really wanted to improve. So I was flattered that Mr K was willing to give me so much extra time and attention. Just for me.

However, things changed. His moods towards me became unpredictable, and I became afraid of him. But I wasn’t so scared that when he gave me detention at the end of one school day, I worried about staying back. To cut a long story short, Mr K raped me that afternoon. After that afternoon, he would regularly bring his older male students. They paid him to have sex with me. If I refused to comply, Mr K whipped the back of my thighs with his belt. No one knew because I very carefully hid the evidence and I never said a thing

He was a teacher. He was an adult. He had the power. And he used that power to hurt me both physically and mentally. I was never the same person after that afternoon. I developed obsessive compulsive disorder, I became highly anxious — especially around adult males, I became anorexic, I developed depression. All because this one person abused his power against me.

I was still just as naive when, six years later, I became the victim of workplace bullying. The men were all far bigger than me, they attacked as a group, and they had seniority over me. My own boss threatened me with the sack, if I didn’t take Alex in as a housemate. But Alex is a story for another time.

In all cases, these people had power. Physical power, sexual power, employment power, financial power. And in every case, these people not only had power over me, but they also abused that power. Abused it to the point that there were many times I thought I would die. They used their power to try and make me their victim.

For the longest time, I bought into the belief that I was their victim. I, in fact, let them keep their power over me. Because you see, while I hid away, while I gave up all the things I loved out of fear of all those men, I actually let them keep their power over me. I was, in fact, choosing to let them keep their power over my life.

Now, I am slowly regaining the control over my life. The power. It has taken me decades to finally make a stand. I’m claiming the power over my life back. It’s not easy. There have been many people along my journey, who have been helping me to reclaim my power. There have also, unfortunately, been some people along the way who kept me powerless. 

There are still times that I buy back into the powerless victim role. But they are getting less and less. Slowly but surely, I’ll get the power over my life back.

The gem this time is a quote, attributed to Susan Gale:

Sometimes you don’t realise your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.

In my life as a sexual assault survivor, I have bought into the story that my perpetrators had all the power. That was my greatest weakness. Because they are all no longer in my life. But I’m finding that my greatest strength is in being the survivor, and not the victim any more.

What do you see as your greatest strength in your journey? Please feel free to leave a comment on how you are taking your power back. 

I thank you for walking this short while with me. I hope that it may have been of some benefit to you, no matter where you are in your journey. Until next time, just breathe and believe.

Motherhood

 5. MOTHERHOOD 

Hello and welcome back. I hope you can stay and walk this short while with me, a sexual assault survivor. And don’t forget to read to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity 

I never wanted to be a mum. I had what my family called an “unnatural aversion” to children. I thought and treated them as little aliens, not human at all. “Children should be seen and not heard”, that was how I was raised.

So when I was told at the age of 17 that I either had my children then or live with being childless, I actually didn’t care. I never gave the subject of having children a thought again.

Then, at the age of 20, I found out I was pregnant. It was the result of being raped by my brother’s boss. I felt fear, shame, incredulity, and anger. Fear of Alex (who was now living in my house) finding out I was pregnant because he would know, as I was fully aware, it wasn’t his child. Shame because I was pregnant outside of marriage. Incredulity that I had fallen pregnant at all; that pregnancy was nothing short of a miracle. Anger because I felt my body had let me down. 

I didn’t want to be pregnant and I didn’t want to be a mum. However, despite that, it never occurred to me to have an abortion. So maybe there was some part of me very deep down that wanted to be a mother after all. I must have had some sort of maternal love to not even consider killing them.

That pregnancy ended because of Alex’s violence at five months. When he found out I was pregnant, he took me to a doctor. He had to drag me into the clinic, pin me down and tape my mouth so I couldn’t scream for the procedure, and carry me out to the car afterwards. My little girl was too small to have survived.

After that, I seemed to fall pregnant with monotonous regularity. And each time, Alex took me back to the same doctor. Each time Alex did the same thing; dragged in, pinned and taped, carried out. My last pregnancy I only discovered after I’d thrown Alex out. So I thought maybe I could keep this one. A workplace incident (where I was violently gang raped) ended the pregnancy, fraternal twins in this case.

I did want to get pregnant in later years, but for the most selfish of reasons. I wanted someone who was mine alone. To love and be loved by. I wanted a real and tangible reason to get well, to actually want to live. However it just wasn’t meant to be.

To me, a mother is a picture of love. They love unconditionally and are deserving of love. When my first little girl was forced from me, I went numb. The doctor placed me on antidepressants, telling me that I’d “get over it soon”. But I never did.

To this day, I feel that I just wasn’t meant to be a mum. And I didn’t deserve to be either. Despite the violence that took my babies away, I feel that I didn’t love my babies enough to protect them. I was unable to provide a suitable, fitting and socially acceptable way of honouring their bodies — each and every one. Instead, I believe that I was the worst kind of scum.

Today’s little gem is a quote from Jodi Picoult:

You don’t love someone because they are perfect, you love them in spite of the fact they’re not.

That maxim can be applied to any relationship, not just that of a mother. And I do mean every relationship. Because, you see, my babies may not be alive and with me, but that doesn’t make me any less of a mother. So I am now learning to love myself — despite my imperfections.

What is your definition of motherhood? Please feel free to leave a comment as to how you celebrate motherhood, whether you have children physically with you, or not.

Thank you for walking this short while with me. I hope you’ll feel empowered to come back and visit again. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

Virginity

 6. VIRGINITY 

Hello and welcome. Come along as we take a short walk through my life as a sexual assault survivor. And don’t forget to stay to enjoy my gem of positivity at the end.

We are taught as we grow up (well, I was anyway), that virginity is something to treasure. It means you are innocent and pure. White like the driven snow, I believe is the old cliche. But what if your virginity was taken from you before you knew you had something to lose? That you were tainted, made dirty, broken, before you even knew you were pure and clean and whole? 

I know that feeling well. My virginity was taken from me at the age of three. It was taken by a man who was trusted. A family friend. But for years I blocked it out. The pain, the fear, the threats I was told. I remember it all clear as a bell. Now.

My moods were unpredictable, to say the least. I would blow up unsuspectingly at the merest thing. I swallowed my feelings until the cork flew out of my emotional bottle. But it never blew up on the things that mattered, just little trifles. But though the cork was blown off, it didn’t take long before I had my emotional bottle sealed again.

I was twenty years old before my mind finally said it was okay to start remembering. Even then, the memories would come to me as nightmares. How do I know the dreams were real and not just made up?

Well I guess to start with, I should tell you that most of my childhood is a complete blank to me. I don’t remember people, places or activities, whether positive or negative. I have patchy recollections, but that’s because they are linked to animals in some way (I absolutely love animals).

But from the nightmares I was having, and continue to have, I could give my family an exact description of the man I didn’t know, describe places and activities that have been verified. 

The man played games with me from the age of two. I didn’t know they were bad games, unhealthy games for a child to play with an adult, and certainly not a man. He had me right where he wanted me, trusting him, believing him. 

And then the night of pain. The night of blood. The night of knowing I’d done something wrong, yet not knowing what. The night I stopped being an innocent child. Yet afterwards, I always had to keep it a secret. If I told, he said, my Mummy would go away and never come back. I would be the one to break up my happy family. What a monster, to put that burden on a three year old child.

And yes, he is a monster. He is the dark man who haunts my sleep, to this very day. I doubt he will ever fully go away. And although I blame myself, he was the adult at the time. He knew what he was doing, what he was taking from me, even though I didn’t.

As you will read, if you decide to follow my story, my virginity was key for me to be a whole person. With every further rape, a little chink of me has be taken too.

And now how do I get through, knowing what I now know? Slowly, oh so slowly. Those chinks have done their damage. I can never be whole. But I can heal into something new. Someone just as precious, as now I have a choice.

Today’s gem is a Japanese phrase. A simple one to remember, but lovely just the same. Just two words: 

wabi sabi. 

Simple, yes? But it’s meaning is helping me to heal. Wabi sabi means (roughly translated) to see beauty in the imperfect. So while I feel that I am tainted and broken by what that man started, I can still heal into something beautiful. And that is a treasure worth keeping.

Thank you for walking this short while with me. What words or phrases help you to get through? Be sure to leave them in the comments. You might just give the gem to get someone else through. Until next time, just breathe and believe.