Pain doesn’t last

It is so hard to explain the way that reaizization hits you. I was asked recently why I didn’t go to the police. This is a valid question. I didn’t think they would believe me. I’m still not 100% sure if it’s real or not. It is so obvious but so subjective apparently. I seek validation for my feelings and my hurt and the part of me that is now missing. I want to know what happened to her. I want to know where she went and if {D} was always right about it and it isn’t what it seems.{D} spent way too much time in my head before, during, and after. {D} was the only person I talked to about it. {D} was my support system for my rape where {D} was the rapist. Does that shit make sense to anyone?

Standing far away from it I know what he did to me. But being in it was another story. You don’t feel it when it happens. You do but you don’t and you write it off when you’re in love with someone and they are telling you that is what love is. You invalidate your own consciousness and allow someone else to have the final word of whether you have been harmed in someway.

The reality is that you are the only person who can decide that.

I said no.

It hurt.

I was in pain.

I don’t like being in pain.

I wanted it to stop.

So what is that the definition of if not rape?

I referred to it as a bad night. I thought it was just a bad night but what the fuck does that mean and where is the line to be drawn. Through extensive therapy I’m learning it is where I draw the line. Wherever that might be. I did draw the line with him not just that night but on the nights he would do it again. I would tell him no and I would be ignored.

That’s his fault not mine.

I blame myself for him not being charged. It’s my fault because I complained wrong. I didn’t trust the police to do anything about it. The only thing I thought I could do was get him out of a position of authority and public trust. I knew I could probably do that. I wasn’t even sure about that actually.

It was a bad night. I’ve had plenty of those. That one did some physical damage, but a bad night nonetheless.

I’ve never gotten to the reality of Brian 2. It is so hard to explain. He didn’t hurt me. He would chase me sometimes and touch me when I didn’t want to ever be touched again. I had no say in or of control of my body. However, he didn’t do it with physical force like {D} did. I could register after a while that what {D} was doing was classic rape. Dictionary definition of rape is what {D} does. It’s force and it’s holding you down. The more you fight the harder it is going to be. But Brian 2, that was different. I didn’t fear him physically. He berated me. I can’t even explain he just would not let up. I was the worst person who had ever lived. I was worthless. I was horrible. I was crazy. I was every possible negative thing that could exist in the world.

The only way he would stop is if I had sex with him. He told me he needed the dopamine from an orgasm several times a day. It settled on 5 times a day minimum. Why? Early when we were just dating he asked me how many times a day I had sex with my ex husband, Brian 1. I threw 5 out as a number. We would have morning sex, sex when he got home from work and sex at least once before bed. Weekends you noontime sex. It was fair and 5 is a good number to average something.

I wish to god I had never ever told him that. Unlike Brian 1 the one minute wonder, god bless his soul, Brian 2 took about an hour each time. That’s 5 hours a day of sex. Minimum. Bare minimum. He didn’t let me work. He rarely went to work because academia is its own thing. He isolated me from my friends and my family and even my children. He constantly wanted my attention and if I didn’t give him the attention and the sexual gratification he would berate me and abandon me. He would kick me out of the house all the time especially when my kids were there. If he didn’t have my constant attention it was hell.

So, is that technically rape? Coercion at a minimum? I would ask him to stop when it hurt. His penis had a slight curve to the right and I would be raw in that one spot. I had a way to mitigate a little by twisting my body in an odd way to prevent the direct rub on the raw spot. I actually saw myself move my body like this that in the video with {D}.Old habits. It hurt and I would tell him but, deaf ears.

I don’t know that I would ever have called that rape. The only reason I realized it was a fucking episode of Handmaid’s Tale. That sounds ridiculous, it truly does. I haven’t see it since I had to stop watching the show after the realization. I want to say it was season 3 or something in there. She is talking about just laying there and allowing it to happen. Not because someone is holding you down but because you have to. You’re not doing it willingly, but fighting isn’t the answer. You deal with it and the uncomfortable and the loss of autonomy and the loss of your soul. You let it happen because it’s easier than not letting it happen. It’s just easier.

So back to {D} I was trained to submit regardless. It wasn’t fear of physical force per se, it was fear of being berated and abandoned.

And I want to explain the perfect storm that arose from that. That was my biggest fear was being abandoned. And he abandoned me when I needed him most to deal with the fact he raped me. That makes no sense, but alas, the traumatized mind does weird shit and rationalizes it.

I talked to a survivor by pure happenstance at work. That’s not my job. I work in sports. She was a cheerleader from Iowa who was trying to get to college on the other side of the country before her rapist was released. She was so fucking brave. I became inconsolable. I texted {D} and told him what happened. He ignored me. I watched the video. I lost it. I needed him to be my support system because he was the only support system I had. 

Had he responded to me and not berated me, if the circumstances of his relationships hadn’t been what they were, I would have talked to him about it and forgiven him. I would have. That isn’t what I should have done. I shouldn’t have been in that relationship in the first place given what’s on that video. But I know me and I apologize to people when they’ve harmed me for daring to feel harm. I was trained to do so.

He told me he loved me for the first time while I screamed and begged. Love is how they get you. Grooming, just like pedophiles do with kids. It means they love you. So having grown up in that type of trauma, of course I thought it was love and he was right anything I felt otherwise wasn’t possible.

Physical injuries heal up. Pain doesn’t last and if it does, you get used to that shit and you don’t even feel it anymore. It’s the mindfuck. That is wound that never heals.