Life After Rape: Part Two

 70. LIFE AFTER RAPE: PART TWO

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

This time I am going to continue to let you see what my life is like now, after rape. A changed life, but a life nonetheless. I’m particularly talking about the changes in my life after my sexual imprisonment by the man I refer to as Alex.

Money is a huge problem for me now. Alex refused to let me handle money at all. I wasn’t even allowed to carry my own bank card. If he found any money on me, I received such a beating, I would be left whimpering on the floor. Battered, bruised and bleeding, I would beg for mercy. 

So I learned not to be caught. If I got any cash, I had to spend it straight away. It didn’t matter what I bought, because Alex never seemed to notice. Just so long as I didn’t have any money on me, I was fine. I even took to taking money out of his wallet while Alex slept, before heading off to work.

These trauma driven habits continue to this very day. I still feel like I have to spend all the money I have. If I have money on my credit card, it must be spent. Online shopping is where I fall down the most. The overwhelming trauma voice in my head, tells me that if the money is there I’ll get beaten.

Then there’s laxatives. Back then, I felt so dirty from the unceasing painful and devastating rapes, I had to get clean. And that meant being clean on the inside as well. So now, even though I’m free physically of that toxic situation, mentally I still have that contaminated mindset of needing cleanliness.

So I still take excessive quantities of laxatives. I must admit I’m down to ten or less laxative tablets in the one go, but it’s still for the same reason. I must be totally clean, inside and out. I have, in recent years been hospitalised for laxative overdoses. The last time was a mere 50 tablets, but it was enough to unsettle my heart from the sudden electrolyte imbalance. That hasn’t stopped me from trying to get clean though. I just don’t take that many tablets in one go.

Next is orderly preoccupations. Everything has to be in even numbers. Buying things in twos used to be enough, but the more I feel unsafe, the number has increased. At the moment, I’ve been able to hold at the number four, although I am very tempted lately to go up to six.

And we come to invisibility. I don’t want to be seen. It’s not enough to just stay inside my home to make me feel better. Even in my own home, the smaller I can make myself, the better. Because if I can’t be seen, I won’t be hurt. That is the thinking that drives this, and all the other issues that I have.

Do these sound at all familiar to you? Are you trying to make the fear of past rape go away by alternative methods? Or are you holding on to old ways that you learned under a tyrannical system fuelled by evil and cruel people? Neither you nor I have to. Because you and I are worth more than existing in fear. We deserve to live, without the fears of the past. We deserve a better life — we are survivors. And we can heal.

This time the gem of positivity is a quote attributed to Michele Rosenthal:

“Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.”

This is only too true. I have been traumatically changed. I did not choose what happened to me to make that change. And yet, despite this, I can choose to change myself for the better. I can choose to heal, and I am. How about joining me? We can heal together.

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you are choosing to heal. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.