Are you aware?

Apparently it is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Our wonderful AG posted about it this evening and now I’m not livid, which was my first thought, but rather indifferent. Like what the fuck does awareness even mean in that context?

“Did you know that women get beaten?” Yeah, it’s been happening since the beginning of fucking time—cavemen beating a woman over the head with a club and dragging her back to his cave.

You know what you say to a woman with two black eyes? Nothing. She’s already been told… twice.

So I’m so glad we can be aware of these things. Personally—and I don’t have a lot of backup in the literature—I think of my experiences with physical domestic violence in a relationship and sexual violence in a relationship, and I lump them together. The results for the woman, in my case at least, are similar. You don’t want to leave. You put up with it. You make every excuse for it because how could it possibly be true if they love you.

But I will say this: the sexual abuse was way worse on me emotionally. I honestly will never get over it. Hell, it’s been a year since Wolfson called me a whore for staying with him, and I’m still not okay. I don’t think it’s possible to really get over it.

Every time I have sex—which is a lot less frequent than it once was—I have some fear. I don’t like people putting their fingers inside me. I had this one guy recently, and I could feel his nails, and I just didn’t know what to do. I felt like I would be overreacting if I told him to stop, because it was nowhere near as painful as it was with {D}. But goddamn, I wanted him to stop.

It was an internal emotional pain of remembrance, not so much a physical pain. That was last night. I did kind of jet right after. Happy Awareness Month.

So while you’re making yourself aware of women getting beaten, remember we’re also being raped in those same relationships. And we don’t heal. Pain doesn’t last, but the mindfuck does.

Here are my words to Aaron Ford tonight:

You know relationship rape is real—and as serious, if not more so, than physical violence in a relationship. I’ve had bones broken: collarbone, eye socket, god knows how many ribs. And the thing that sticks out in my life is not those injuries, but the sexually abusive marriage and relationship.

I have video of your friend, the former Deputy Insurance Commissioner, assaulting me—and you won’t do a damn thing about it. And somehow you wonder why I didn’t go directly to the police. Hmmm… does that answer your question?

Because when I’d had enough with my physically violent ex-husband and I talked to the police, they said there was nothing they could do. I had a broken shoulder, but he was on top of me and I stabbed him with something that was laying on the ground to get him off me. They called it “mutual combat.”

Then my other ex-husband raped me five times a day. Metro wouldn’t even listen. They took me away and put me in a mental hospital. I didn’t have anywhere to live after that, so I built my life back from the ground up—living in my goddamn car.

And here I am begging, for once, that someone do something to punish the man who hurt me in our relationship. Who raped me not just that one time on video, but throughout our relationship over and over. I only had video of that one night.

I have it on fucking video and still no one gets held accountable. I’ve said this before, but I wonder: if I had video of getting punched in the face so hard it broke my eye socket and nose, he would have gone to jail. But I don’t even know if that’s true.

So let’s not even bother with an “awareness” month. Let’s try a prosecution month. You’ve been made fully aware. You just don’t give a shit.