[cosmospanda]

Trigger warning: sexual assault.

Hi,

My first sexual experience was sexual assault.

This happened almost a decade ago. I had run away from home and a guy offered me money to have sex with him. I refused. He asked several more times and pulled off the road into a selcuded area just outside of the town I lived in and didn't take know for an answer. Common theme with my previous story, I finally said yes. He refused to have sex with me and instead suggest oral or I get out of his car.

He gave me money.


I never fully talked about this experience. It was always pushed more to the back of my mind. Had I fully addressed it? Maybe. Had it been talked over with a therapist? Once. Maybe it was the factI spent seven months in the mental hospital after that for many other reasons that I was better able to deal with it. Maybe it just didn't bother me. My mom didn't believe me. I started therapy a few weeks back, and I haven't brought up this, as if it doesn't exist.

I was diagnosed with PTSD from the experience and from my childhood. In the hospital, thinking about it made me stop whatever I was doing and just try not to let it take my focus. But it did.

But when I was sexually assaulted and raped three times more three and fours years after that incident, I am having a hard time accepting and processing that any of it was assault and rape.

I seem to have let the first experience go entirely in some ways, but I'm still upset by it when regarding my newer traumas. Was it really that bad, that first incident? Was it really something I didn't want, because he gave me money...? Should I never tell my therapist about it? Maybe.

But maybe because I let what my mom had said and so many people had said and never got the help for the first incident that that is why my newer traumas haunt me the way they do. I didn't get help right away like last time, even if last time it was against my will

[gmts]

Why did you run away from home in the first place?

[cosmospanda]

Originally Posted by gmts

Why did you run away from home in the first place?

Maybe this is out of context, but the insensitivity in this reply bothers me. In the first place? Really?

[nicoleflynn]

Perhaps you would consider seeing a therapist....this was a horribly traumatic experience. I have heard good things about RAINN (for rape survivors). With love, Nicole

[gmts]

Dear cosmos panda, I'm so sorry, I have quite a reputation for being a bit too straight to the point.

So, you said you had run away from home when you had this first encounter with this stranger. And my question was directed to what had happened that made you run away from home. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say and sorry again

[cosmospanda]

The point wasn't that I ran away, though. I had a rough day in general with my moods, so I apologize for coming across as overly sensitive. It's justsl something that I never fully addressed because it never bothered me until a few years back (and yesterday, obviously). I was just letting off steam. Pointless, I suppose.

My mother was absuive so I left. Yes, that is much like junping fron the frying pan and into the fire.

[gmts]

I believe what most victims of any type of abuse have in common is to have a very hard time saying "no" and sticking to it. I don't know any details about your history, but I still have -a good 25 years after leaving home- to say "no". For fear of being yelled at, fear of being punished, rejected, abandoned, love-withdrawal ... those kind of things. I believe this is what happened to you then.

[cosmospanda]

I've noticed this pattern, too. I think in most cases, the fear of saying "no" is constantly repeating itself, and it makes each successive incident that much more difficult to cope with. I see this in other people as an outsider looking in. Standing on my own front porch, I don't see the whole thing.

[gmts]

You can train it almost daily by rejecting people trying to (up-) sell you something and be it just in a restaurant declining to have desert or coffee after the meal.

Over here that latest gag in a bakery chain is that after ordering the loaf of bread you came for they don't ask "would you like anything else", but rather " what else will you have" (a bit difficult to translate) I give this person just a blank stare and say nothing. And I don't move or say anything before they give in. I know that they have to do it and I wouldn't get aggressive with them, but some small thing like this is a good training.