End of the Semester: About Concentration and the Fragmented Life

I’ve blogged about most of that first year after my SA and what it was for me, in a way.

But before I move on to the second year, there are few more things to mention.

Oh, and for those of you new here who are new to the story, if you scroll over “Story and Background” you can choose time period, and then go backwards in it to see what I’ve written. I’ll soon add few pages with chronologically linked posts for easier access. I’m also possibly writing a memoir book/guideline for those going through rape recovery. I’ve learned some things on the way of getting here, and although I am not an expert, there are things I learned in the past year that I wish someone had told me when I was first struggling with this. Anyway, that book is in the process of making, and meanwhile, there are few more things I would like to share.

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1. Counseling

I’ve mentioned in a previous post, that counseling somehow helped me, even though I told the counselor very little. One thing that struck me though- and that I tried to conceal from her, because I thought it made me a freak or crazy- was my inability to separate how I feel.

She started asking me things about how I feel.

I remember I mastered some answer, even though I knew that at best I’m twisting the truth.

But she kept asking me how I feel, and what was I supposed to say?

I was spending most of my time at my favorite university, with my friends, completely miserable? And despite that most of the time I am not sure how I feel? I can’t make difference between good, bad, sad, angry? Everything had somehow blended together and it wasn’t that I was running from how I felt. I had no clue how I felt. None. I ran her question through my head many times after that, for myself, and found it disturbing that I still didn’t feel in way. There was no separation of feelings within me anymore. I was an emotional time-bomb waiting to explode.

2. Fragments and concentration

Now, that is the other thing about my first year that I’d like to share. Mostly because while going through it I constantly wondered if I’m going crazy or have somehow broken my brain beyond repair. Only now, getting out of it, I can see how it was, and that it wasn’t forever. I wish I’d known that what I was going through was perfectly fine considering.

The day when you know you CAN

In recovery from rape, there are are many important milestones, some more important than others.

There are 2 days that seems to be from the more important ones for me.

The first one is the day in which you know that you CAN’T.

That isn’t attached to anything- you simply can’t anymore.

You relinquish the fake feeling of control that avoiding the subject of SA gives you. You stop pretending that you can keep going just as if nothing had changed in your life. You stop pretending that you can use that as the best challenge in your life and get out of it unscratched, unbruised and uncaring. That is the day that you let yourself be vulnerable and say what really happened to you. Not in a matter-of-fact way, as if it’s as important as going to the store. In a real way, with every tiny ugly feeling hiding behind it. For me that day was now more than a year ago, somewhere in the last april or may. One would think that I would remember the date, but that isn’t so important. I remember the moment though. The gut-wrenching feeling of crying for 5 hours until I can even pronounce the word rape (or stutter-cry through it anyway) and admit that it has really happened to me.

I had said it before, of course. Once I implied it, once I admitted it while drunk, and few times I admitted the situation and almost said it, but instead lied saying that I managed to safely get out of it. Before all those instances, for the first 6 months, I reluctantly searched abuse and sexual abuse forums when I felt lost, and then convinced myself that it’s not what happened to me. Then I promptly managed to push it so far down my mind to start thinking that it really didn’t happen. So that is the first moment in which I really realized that isn’t something from the movies, and that it happened to me, was that day, those 5 hours. That’s when I gave up. On trying to pretend it wasn’t happening…but also on thinking that I can do…well, a whole lot of stuff. I just felt exposed, like I had peeled off all my skin and I was bleeding, and by my own choice at that. THAT day can feel like one of the worst days that you’ve had (the occurrence of the SA excluded).

But that is in fact a good day.

THAT is the day on which your true recovery begins.