Page 253 of The Monster and the Masochist

Because I didn’t tell them.

For seventeen years, I kept this a secret, because I’d convinced myself that it was my fault.

I shouldn’t have trusted them.

Why did I get in that car?

Why did I accept that drink?

I totally froze.

I never said no.

Why didn’t I say no?

If I didn’t say no, and there was alcohol involved, surely no one would believe that I didn’t want it if I told them what happened… right?

It didn’t matter that I was a minor.

It didn’t matter that I knew them and didn’t think they would hurt me if I accepted that ride.

It didn’t matter that I cried the whole time.

I’d almost convinced myself that it wasn’t rape. How was I supposed to expect anyone else to believe me if I told them what happened?

So, considering I was convinced what had happened wasn’t actually assault, I was having a hard time connecting my compulsive drinking to the trauma of that event… despite the fact that seventeen years later, I was still suffering flashbacks, nightmares, and several other very obvious PTSD responses.

PSA: Things are only ‘obvious’ if you’re educated on the topic.

Traumatized people do things that do not make sense to those who have no experience or understanding of how the human body responds to extreme trauma.

Unless you are a trauma informed individual, it is easy to write off PTSD symptoms as people simply making poor choices or, acting out.

As a by-product of my own healing journey, I now know a great deal about trauma responses, but at the time, I had no idea what the fuck was going on.

I just knew sometimes I couldn’t exist in my own skin and the only way to get the overwhelming feelings of shame, self-hatred and anger to stop was to drink myself into a damn coma.

There was a turning point a few years ago, where I was triggered unintentionally by something unrelated, and all this shit I’d been burying and avoiding for nearly two decades just kind of… exploded.

I went off the rails, and after a few very serious incidents, I made the decision to go back to therapy.

I’d been in and out of therapy for years – I think I knew on some level I needed it – but up until this point, I hadn’t been able to actually talk about the rape. I danced around it, focusing on everything but the actual issue.

Because talking about rape is fucking hard.

And unfortunately… I really hate to tell you this bb… it’s the only way to start healing.

I can’t put into words how much talking about it helped.

Especially with a licensed professional who not only knew how to help me change my own perspective on the event, but she was also there every step of the way to help my partner cope.

Now, because talking about things like this is so very challenging, especially for the people who have lived through it, many of us are unfortunately floating around like little isolated satellites, without ever feeling seen or understood, despite the fact that so many of us have been forced to live through similar experiences.

This means we’re all left in our own heads, which is usually a pretty depressing place to be if you’re a survivor.

And that’s because the mind of a survivor tends to be filled with shame.

We’re so hard on ourselves.