Sankta Lucia in Chapter 8 : Time to Heal

So…

It never goes away. It’s always on my mind, it’s like a video that replays in my head constantly. A never-ending reminder, triggered by the least little thing, and just when I start to think I’m getting it under control then BAM it leaps out and grabs hold of me again, dragging me back under, drowning me in the memory of what happened. I’ve thought about it every damn day since it happened. I remember flying home after I decided to walk away, I openly sobbed in every airport, on every plane, on the train and in the taxi. I managed to compose myself before I walked in the door, and ever since everyone’s thought I was fine. Everyone thinks it was “just” a bad break up. They have no fucking clue, they have no clue how it feels to be so fucking terrified, even in your own bed. They have no idea what it’s like to live knowing that one deployment and he could wind up here, in MY town. Every night I wake up between 2am and 4am, just as that very nightmare peaks with his hand around my throat, as I jerk awake I’m breathless, gasping for air, scrabbling to get him off me, but he’s not there. It’s no wonder I’m so fucking tired all the time, I’m forever trying to run away from what happened, from the memories, from the nightmares, from my feelings, but no matter how fast I run, it always catches me, it’s always there waiting for me. It’s like I never left him, he still has this hold over me. I can’t control what happened, I can’t stop the video in my head, fuck knows I’ve tried. I feel like I’m suffocating under the strain of it all, and when I try to talk about it, I can’t even begin to find the words. When I told Rita, it literally fell out my mouth. I was angry, angry at myself and the shame was spilling over. Then I had an issue over the Christmas hols with Token, and I needed to talk to Pip about the whole issue with Token and I’d kind of backed myself into corner with it. I couldn’t explain why and what was making me so angry without telling her. Pip first met me about 7 months after it happened. I was freshly pregnant with Bub, his donor had run for the hills, and I was filled with all sorts of hormones, anger and then all the crazy rape shit going round in my head. I had a fair few breakdowns during that course, I’m pretty sure they all thought it was your bog standard single mother pregnancy shit, because I sure as shit wasn’t telling anyone what had happened. The police weren’t interested when I went to them, nor were his superiors, or anyone else, so why would I bother to tell anyone else? Until recently. I spoke to my GP about it when I went back on Prozac, I’ve been in with a therapist lately, but I’m not going back to her. I’m waiting on a local rape counselling service finding an appointment for me. I managed to open up to Gabby and Susan when they asked why I had an issue with Token all of a sudden. I believe his words were “I don’t mean to invalidate your life experiences but” because he believes in order to move on, a woman should try to forgive her rapist. Prick.

Why is it so fucking hard to just open my mouth and open up? I’m so fucking torn inside, such a fucking mess. I’m hurt and scared and worn down with it all, but at the same time I’m SO fucking angry. Angry with him, with myself, with fucking everyone. I want to find someone, anyone that will get it and just open up and tell them the whole sorry saga but how? Elle taught me that I really can’t tell someone I want/am in a relationship with this kind of shit because guess what? They’re going fucking bail out as quick as they can because they don’t want to deal with that shit. Friends aren’t interested, they have their own problems. My parents would find plenty of reasons as to how it was my own damn fault. There’s no point in going to the college therapist because I could be leaving in 4 months to go to Uni. So why bother starting what I can’t finish? Even if I could start to talk about it, who the fuck would I even talk to? Nobody has the time nor the inclination to sit and listen to how tainted I feel, forever contaminated. No-one gives a shit about how I feel inside. We all have busy lives. I just need people to stop telling me to fucking smile, that “it’s not that bad”. It IS that fucking bad. I’m a fucking idiot, maybe my parents are right, maybe there are a 1000 reasons why it was my fault. Maybe they’re wrong. I’ve spent the past 6 years trying to reclaim the control I lost and establish some sort of control and power to my new life by attempting to fuck away the problem, because obviously the way to heal from being raped is to jump back in the closet and show men who’s in charge; except it doesn’t work and before you know it, you’ve two kids AND all the same baggage you’ve been carrying around since you were raped. Suddenly it hits you that you can’t fuck the pain away, and now you’ve got two kids and you can’t go about hacking and burning yourself anymore because that’s a sure fire way to have the social take your kids away. You can’t purge anymore because you don’t even get a chance to piss in peace let alone anything else. You can’t starve because people will notice that. So what the fuck am I meant to do? How the fuck am I meant to get past this when I can’t do anything I would have before, and I can’t find the words or the courage to even speak about it properly?

I just want to move on, I want to feel better.

Last updated January 28, 2018