New Member - My story - TRIGGER!!

Hello all,

This is my first post and I've decided to jump in with both feet...showing no shame in my story. Be forewarned that it is graphic and may cause triggering, but the end result is positive....as I am a survivor and have come out the other end!! Ok, here's my story.....

It was during summer break from school, and Mom and Dad had taken a vacation to Hawaii. My sister was away at school and I was holding down the fort, as they say. My first time alone, and I was excited about being on my own. I remember feeling very grown up. My parents trusted me to make the right decisions. I hadn’t given them any reason to think I would do otherwise.

One day, my girlfriend, Andrea and I were at the local ice cream shop. We would often hang out there, just talking and giggling. A dump truck came by and Andrea recognized the driver. He pulled over and she and I ran across the roadway to talk to him. Andrea introduced me to him. His name was Rob (not his real name). He was in his late 20's and had a beard and mustache. The conversation lasted less than 5 minutes and then he was gone and Andrea and I were back at the ice cream shop...sitting on the trunk of my 1975 Monte Carlo, giggling again. The rest of the day passed by unremarkably.

It was about 10:30 that night when the doorbell rang. I had just finished showering after a long evening of swimming. I was wearing a big T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts. When I opened the door, Rob stood there and smiled at me. Surprised to see him, I smiled back. He asked if he could come in so I stood back and let him step into the foyer. As soon as he came in, I realized I didn’t have a bra on and immediately felt indecent. Up until then, I had only kissed a boy. I guess I was naive, but I prefer to think of myself as having been innocent. Oh sure, I knew about boys and sex, but had not really given it much thought. I took Rob to the kitchen and offered him a glass of sodi. He asked for a beer, but I told him we didn’t have any. I invited him to take a look around in the fridge and to help himself while I went upstairs to the bathroom. Instead of going to the bathroom, though, I went to my bedroom to put on a bra. Just as I pulled the bra out of my top dresser drawer, I noticed a movement by the doorway to my right. Rob had followed me up the stairs. Suddenly, I felt like something wasn’t right; the hairs on my arms stood up as if electrified. I didn’t know it at the time, but my intuition was telling me to flee. I set my bra on the dresser, embarrassed that Rob might have seen it. I asked him if he had found something in the refrigerator to drink. He stunned me with silent anger. His brown eyes became dark little slits, accusing me without words. He leaned against the doorframe, blocking exit. He asked me why I lied to him. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I looked at him questioningly and shook my head, confused. He asked me again, “Why did you f*cking lie, you little *****?” I asked him what I lied about and he said, “You said you were going to the bathroom. This isn’t the bathroom, is it?!” I couldn’t figure out why he was making such a big deal about which room I was in. None of this made sense to me. I tried to be nonchalant about it — but I knew I had to get out of that room. I smiled at him and said, “I had to stop in here first. I forgot something. Here, let’s go back to the kitchen and I’ll dig you up something to drink.” I tried to push my way past him, but he wouldn’t budge from the doorway.

Rob punched me in the face, then grabbed my throat and shoved me backward. The next thing I knew, I was on my bedroom floor. The back of my head had hit against the metal bedframe. I was stunned and don’t remember feeling any pain. When I struggled to my hands and knees, Rob stepped up to me and kicked my ribs like he was kicking a field-goal, as he yelled, “Did I tell you to get up??” The force of the kick landed me on my back. I remember curling up like a ball, trying to protect myself. The next part of the attack was a blur. Rob hit me, kicked me, slammed my head into the floor and against the wall. A couple times he played cat and mouse with me. He’d let me get close to the doorway, then grab my ankle and drag me back in. For some reason, I felt that if only I could get outside the doorway, I’d be safe. Like it was some kind of finish line. I felt that if I could get out of that room, he wouldn’t be able to hurt me anymore.

After he tired of beating me on the bedroom floor, he dragged me up and threw me across my bed. My aching body slammed into the wall and rolled back onto the bed. I curled up into a ball at the head of my bed, as far away from him as I could. Rob grabbed my foot and pulled me down toward him. All this time he was yelling at me. He was full of rage and kept saying that he was going to teach me a lesson. He continued to beat me. My lip was busted open and my nose was bleeding so much that I couldn’t breathe out of it. Soon I could feel both my eyes swelling shut. This is when I really started to panic. I wasn’t able to see straight and I could only breathe out of my mouth. As Rob took both hands to rip off my t-shirt, I lashed out and punched him in the face. This must have startled him because he stepped back long enough for me to try to get off the bed. But he recovered quickly and was madder than ever. He said I was going to pay for doing that — and somewhere inside, I knew he was right. As he pulled at my shorts, I desperately held onto them...trying to keep them on. No man had ever seen me naked. Once I was naked in front of him, he took the time to insult every part of my body. He told me how fat and ugly I was, and that I should be glad he was going to do this, as if no other man would have been able to stand to look at me, as if he was doing me a favor.

He raped me vaginally, anally, and forced oral sex on me. As he entered me vaginally, he commented that I couldn’t be a virgin because I wasn’t bleeding. Then he turned me over and forced **** sex on me. I remember how painful that was. I felt like I was being ripped open. Warm blood trickled down between my legs. Then he forced oral sex on my body and bit down on my genitals until I screamed out in pain. Then he laughed and said he had only just started. As he hurt me, he watched my face to see if I was crying. When he saw that I wasn’t, he became even more brutal. I’m not sure if I didn’t cry because I was in too much shock or because it was the only thing that I could control. I filled up with rage. I wanted to kill him. But instead, I just let him do those awful things to my body...and to my soul. He grabbed a blue ball-point pen that was setting on my night stand and stabbed me in the chest with it. As he told me that he was going to make sure I didn’t forget what I was, he wrote “Ugly Slut” across my chest. Then he flipped me over and stabbed me again in the lower part of my back. He wrote “Fat Assd *****” (sic) across my backside. The blood from the puncture wounds mixed in with the rest of the blood and sweat that covered me. And just when I thought the pain could get no worse, Rob did something to me that haunts me to this day.

I had just tried to kick myself away from him, and in the process, I kicked him near his groin. That really pissed him off. He climbed off the bed and I heard the rustling of his blue jeans. At first I told myself that he was done and I felt a sense of relief that I had survived the attack. But then I felt him back on the bed. My eyes were completely swollen shut, so I couldn’t see anything. Rob put something next to my left ear and I heard an unidentifiable flicking noise. He told me I was going to pay for fighting back. He roughly forced my legs open and then sat on them so I couldn’t move away. I heard the flick again, but still didn’t know what it was. As soon as I felt the searing heat on my genitals, I knew that the clicking object was a cigarette lighter. The pain was indescribable. Suddenly I heard a horrific scream. It sounded like an animal being tortured to death. It was deafening. My heart went out to that poor pitiful creature. Then it hit me. I realized my mouth was open and that horrible sound was coming from me. Realizing it was I who was screaming snapped me back to reality. Rob laughed, then shoved his penis in my mouth. I was forced to perform. My nose was full of blood — I couldn’t breathe. I had no choice but to swallow his ejaculate. I wanted to throw up, but part of me was afraid that if I did, he’d just make me eat my own vomit. After Rob was done, I just lay there, not making a move. I heard him put his clothes on. Before leaving, he came over to me, pulled my head up by my hair and told me that if I told, he’d be back for more. I don’t know how long I lay there. I heard him go down the stairs and go out the front door. Slowly I got up and after locking the front door, I made my way into the bathroom. I turned the shower on and climbed in the tub. I stood and started washing myself. A loofa sponge was hanging off the shower head, so I used that to try and scrub myself clean. The ink stayed on my body and I still felt dirty. So I got out of the shower and, in a zombie-like haze, dripped water through the house as I made my way through the kitchen and into the garage. Not being able to see very well, I stumbled around until I found the shelf that held the car washing stuff. I picked up the plastic tire brush and made my way back to the shower. I sat in the tub as the shower beat down on me and I scrubbed my skin until it was red and raw. It took cleanser and nail polish remover to get the blue ink to disappear. Although the words were no longer visible, I felt as though they were burned into my soul. I put on a robe and went to the couch to rest.

Out of sheer exhaustion, I fell asleep for nearly an hour. When I woke up and realized that what had happened was not a bad dream, I slowly made my way to my bedroom to clean. The process lasted well into the next morning. I don’t think I got to sleep until close to 9 A.M. I found that cleaning the blood wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I threw away the bedding, wiped the walls, and scrubbed up as much blood as possible off the shag carpet. Once it dried, I took a razor blade and scraped the rest of the blood away by running it up each bloody strand. Once the room was clean, I went downstairs to the family room and fell asleep on the sofa. When I awoke, my body was sore and stiff. The swelling in my eyes had gone about halfway down so I was able to see myself in the mirror. What stared back startled me. I saw a young girl who resembled me, but this poor girl’s eyes had lost their spark.

Two days after the attack, I put some make-up on and drove myself to the local woman’s health clinic. I was checked over and given some pills to start my period, just in case I had conceived on that horrible night. Although they tried to get me to report it to the police, I refused. X-rays showed fractures in one of my cheekbones, two ribs, and one eye socket. They had me come back in a week, so I could be tested for STDs. At my follow-up visit, I asked to be put on birth control pills. I felt that would protect me from at least one worry if this were to happen to me again. My next concern was to stop the rectal bleeding. Every time I used the bathroom, the wound reopened and bled. I decided to stop eating for awhile. I didn’t take anything in but fluids for the next week, and finally the wound had time enough to heal.

This is what happened to me 18 years ago. I didn't tell or seek help until the year 2000. During the "in-between" years, I threw myself into achieving external goals...keeping so mentally busy that I didn't have time to deal with the emotions locked inside. I suffered from eating disorders, rage, night-terrors EVERY SINGLE night, cutting myself, depression and total distrust of men in general. Eventually, I emotionally crashed. It was then that I realized how unhappy I was in my life, and knew that if I didn't seek help, I wouldn't make it another 6 months (s*#cide). I spent a full year in therapy and kept a private journal of the process - something that helped me sort through all the emotional baggage. After a year of EMDR therapy, I am now mostly happy and healthy. Ok, so there are some not-so-good days still cropping up from time to time...., but nothing compared to what it used to be.

I have since taken the advice of my therapist and psychiatrist and have published my private journal. I'm proud to say that mine is the first book of its kind -- a book about the EMDR process from a patient's perspective. It's a brutally graphic and honest book - completely uncensored from my private journal. I am very proud to say that it is being used in 2 University psych courses and has helped a handful of people already...which was the true purpose of allowing it to be published. (This IS NOT a plug or advertisement, just my FIRST accomplishment that I TRULY am proud of!!)

Healing IS possible. Therapy doesn't erase what happened, but it certainly makes life worth living again.

I'm here to help others who are in the shoes I was in a few years ago. I'm here to listen and chat. Feel free to contact me at any time.

Hugs to those who want or need one!
Peaceful Heart

"When your roof burns down, enjoy the chance to see the moon from your bed."

Hi Aimee and welcome

I am in awe of how courageous you are. I went through something very similar a few years ago.

Your story made me realize how far I have come as well....thank you.


Heather

Hi Heather,
Thanks for the welcome! And congratulations on your successful healing!!! I hope to get to know you better very soon.

Hugs,
Aimee (PeacefulHeart)

"When your roof burns down, enjoy the chance to see the moon from your bed."

Hi Aimee,

I just read your story, and have bookmarked your website also. Thanks for sharing. You are such an incredible person to be able to use your experience and turn it around in such a way as to help someone else.

(((((((((((((((((hugs)))))))))))))))))))
Wendy

<font color=orange>There is an easy answer to your problem that is neat, plausible, and wrong.

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Hi Wendy,
Thank you for the kind words. I look forward to getting to know you better!!!

Hugs to you too!!!

PH

"When your roof burns down, enjoy the chance to see the moon from your bed."