The “R” Word.

Growing up I held onto the secret regarding being molested by my step-father because I believed John would kill my Mother if I did not.  He dragged me by my hair and showed me the little vials at the top of the medicine cabinet.  “See these?  I can kill her anytime.  I can kill her and no one will know I did it.  I am a doctor.  I know how.”  I believed him, and although I toyed with telling and letting her die, in the end I could not.  So, I kept my mouth shut and the secret buried until I was seventeen.  I held on in the face of everything, and I swore that when I grew up nothing like this would ever happen again.  If someone tried to rape me, they would have to kill me first.

I did not know that some promises–even the deepest ones of all–cannot always be kept.

When I first began to talk about being molested, I would say, “He touched me.”  I never used the “R” word–rape-to describe it.  In fact, I would secretly breathe a sigh of relief that he never had vaginal sex with me.  I would whisper to myself, “At least I was not raped.”  As a Junior at Wheaton College, I went to a meeting of “Christians For Biblical Equality,” where a woman spoke about sexual assault.  She described sexual assault–the real term for rape–as being whenever someone forcibly penetrates another, whether this be by penis, hand, bottle, stick, etc.  As she spoke, a little animated movie began in my head of this dark blackness–all in deep tones of gray–with a motion of a hand in-and-out, in-and-out.  It played over and over to the point I could no longer hear a word she said.  I could make that movie today or draw it for you–it remains so vivid.  This image thrust me into counseling within the week, which then led to a three week stint in a women’s mental health unit the following February.  Once the movie began to play, the truth did as well.  I became flooded with memories of being molested daily at home for five years.  All the images I pushed away in my fierce determination to survive rose up and spilled out like hot lava.  A purge began.  I had been sexually assaulted.  However, the “R” word hung in the air like a suspended universe waiting to fall or explode.  I just could not let the word fall upon me.

I still try to only say that I had been sexually assaulted or molested.  I tell people by saying, “This is not a secret…I was molested as a child.”  I just avoid the “R” word in its many manifestations.  I avoid talking about it…personally…seeing movies where there is a rape…listening to stories about rape…the news about someone being raped.  I try to keep the “R” word out of my life all together.  At one point I did try to let it sit on my tongue.  I leaned up against the word while going to a Rape Survivor Group circa 1992.  I just never could own it as a word to describe me or what happened to me.  I left the group–the women in it were too depressing–and for the most part try to keep anyone who has been molested or raped out of my inner circle.  I never want it to be the point of connection, for rape is not life-giving or hopeful.

I tend not to think too much about the particulars of what happened any longer–the movie does not play.  I dealt with the actual events a long time ago.  In fact, when I was in the women’s mental health unit, I can remember thinking about how the easy task was to deal with the rock thrown in the water–the molestation itself.  The hard work was going to be all those ripple currents of not what John did, but instead what I do to myself as a result.  I feel like I have spent the last fifteen years of my life chasing those down one-by-one and healing them as best as I can.  I keep at it because I want to be strong and healthy.  I keep at it because I do not want being molested to be the centerpiece of my life–I want redemption to be front and center.  Ultimately, I do not want that rock to fuck up not only the past but the future as well.  I do have deep moments of fragility, and in those moments I fear the rock is all there is.  I sink low some moments, terrified that “John won” and got all the good of me and the good possibilities of my life.  Just some…not all, and definitely not most.  But some.

Part of why I avoid any stories about rape is I do not want my own emotional dial to be affected.  I possess my push-buttons, just like anyone else, so keeping rape off of my radar screen keeps me focused on the living in the present, even as I am healing from the past.  I try, but I do not always succeed at this avoidance.  Most times I weather the conversation or topic well, but every now and again my wires become tripped and alarm rings though me.  When this happens, I know something still needs to be dealt with from the deep well of pain and loss in my life.  Case in point: While hitting the elliptical at my trainer’s, I was going through the channels.  I caught a clip of women talking on Oprah about rape in marriage.  I tend not to watch Oprah any longer, but I found myself mesmerized by this one story.  The “expert” on the show talked about how “no” means no–even in a relationship.  I was caught off guard, even as I know that to be true.  I preach it to my nieces.  I will emphatically say it to anyone listening.  However there was one night a couple of years ago where I pretended to forget this truth all together because the actual truth was excruciatingly painful.

The story is simple: I was making out naked with a boy, whom at the time was a new love interest.  This was probably our third or fourth date, and most definitely the first time we had been naked.  No sex…just kissing and cuddling after a great massage.  We talked about not having sex–I was clear I was not ready to sleep with him.  He agreed.  So there we are, in the first throes of attraction, lust and friendship, and all of a sudden I feel this sharp pain.  I thought I hurt my back.*  We shifted positions a bit.  Then it happened again and he said, “Oops.  I’m sorry.”  I repeated that I was not ready to have sex.  He repeated to enter me without my permission.  (I can still see the smirk on his face.)

I did not leave.  I did not argue.  I did not protest.  I just curled up in a ball crying softly while he drifted off to sleep.  About two hours later I woke him up.  I told him, “I did not want to have sex yet, but that cannot be our first time.  Please make love to me.  Make whatever that was go away.”  He did; it did not.  I tried to bury it to the point of never telling a soul.  And then I found myself on that damned elliptical with all my buttons pushed stopping to try and catch my breath that was knocked out of me with those simple true words: “no” means no.

I look back now and see how I needed to get up and get out of there.  I see now that I stayed with him for a long time after that–five months actually–needing him to love me because if he loved me then what happened would not have happened.  I stayed even when I knew he we did not share the same value regarding integrity.  I stayed despite the fact we were so different.  I stayed because I thought he was the best guy I ever dated.  I stayed because of all the other beautiful things I saw him to be, which is not dissimilar from John who was an amazing doctor and a pedophile.  I stayed even as I saw the deep rage within him and his unwillingness to deal with his own demons.  I kept trying to reinvent that moment right up until the moment he left me and left me devastated.   Lastly, I see how I held onto my rage at him leaving me because there was this part of me that could not understand how he could leave me after I stayed even after what he did.  He owed me.  He owed me his love and devotion–yet of what value were either?

(The truth can be so disjointed and tragic when we begin to finally tell it to ourselves.)

I know what happened with him happened because of those places in me still broken from John.  Obi Wan (therapist of all therapists) has really worked with me to understand how we are innately drawn to those who will hurt us in the most familiar of ways.  So terribly sad to think I somehow chose this little power play because deep inside it was known and safe.  (Safe in the way the devil you know is better than the possible devil you don’t.)  I realize now my part in all of this–especially in why I stayed long past the point I needed to leave.  But none of my own responsibility takes away from what happened that night, and the promise I made myself that was broken.  None of it takes away from what he did, which was to violate me and my stated desires.  None of it takes away from the fact that he penetrated me knowing I did not want him to and even after I asked him to stop.

I still cannot say the “R” word though.  I just cannot, although I know it fits.

*I recently read in Dan Savage’s column that the opposite of an orgasm is actually a back spasm, which makes sense to me given these events.

Note: This post took over six weeks to complete.  Secrets can be very powerful, which is why I finally forced myself to finish writing it–to eradicate the power this one has held over me for more than two years.  Frank Warren, who does Post Secret, stamps all of the books he signs with “Free your secrets and become who you are.”  I feel this is one of the messiest posts I have written to date, but also the most freeing.  Sometimes you just have to speak the messy truth in order to become who you really are–a whole and healed person.  If you have been molested, raped or date raped, please seek help.  None of us are innately prepared to heal from these things alone.  Cosmo (of all places, I know!) has compiled a short list of places to get help here.