Rape Survivor: My experience, and journey of healing

I've been shaking for weeks. My wedding anniversary was wonderful. I've been married 8 years. My birthday is a couple weeks after our anniversary. That's when the shaking started, because after my anniversary, I think "it's my birthday soon". But it's not always super exciting, happy, because when my birthday comes, I think "I am __ this year, and it's been __ years since I was raped." There's no just "it's my birthday!" the rape part follows. It's not always bad. Every year is different. Some years I am really proud of where I am. Some years, like this year, I am mad, because after 11 years, I am still shaking. I had to accept that the PTSD will never leave. I get better all the time at handling it, but it will never leave. Lately, even the slightest inconvenience sets it off. I spiral. I panic, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's the only thing I hate about myself. For a long time, I felt like...

               Today is the day. I am finally ready to write about my ex calling me. I don’t really know what has taken so long for me to write about this… I think I have been feeling apprehension because he told me he wanted to read my blog, and I was a little nervous (yeah, he said that. Maybe he did, I’ll never know). Nonetheless, today is the day.                Let’s start from the beginning, meaning the beginning of two years ago. I was in a car accident that has rendered me mostly incapacitated. I have a condition called Occipital Neuralgia, it is the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I have had migraines and headaches almost every day for the last two years. This will hopefully be coming to an end, as I will be having surgery soon.                Also, ...

  I can't believe it's been over a year since I have posted in here. It has been almost ten years since the rape. It is interesting that at one point, it brought me physical pain to even think the word "rape", now I can say it, talk about it, talk about my experience. It gives me pain, I sometimes get choked up, but I can talk about it. I can share it and maybe help someone else struggling with even accepting what has happened to them.   I still have nightmares. I still have panic attacks. I sometimes will even have flashbacks if an instance causes enough grief for me. Sometimes I'll click on an article about someone else that was raped or assaulted, and it will cause a flash back or a panic attack. I don't think that will ever completely go away. The instances are farther apart, but the PTSD remains.   Sometimes it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes I lay in bed at night, afraid that he will come to find me. I wish he was dead so the fear would leave, because ...

    This post will be a little bit different than my other posts, mostly because it delves into other aspects of my personal life that I don't usually talk about. The holidays this year have been really hard for me, starting with Halloween. My son is autistic, he doesn't care about things like that, which is fine. He is his own beautiful person that I wouldn't change for the world. But for some reason this year, I've wanted to pretend like the holidays don't exist. My son wanted to go on a walk while the trick or treaters were out, and it broke my heart a bit. To add to my anguish, I was in a pretty bad car accident that thankfully was not my fault, but it has rendered me unable to perform a lot of the things that I need to. The day after Halloween, I had a nervous breakdown. Because of my existing issues with anxiety and depression, everything hit me pretty hard. I've also had to work a lot more than usual, hitting almost full time every week since the accident...

    I've been told by one of my therapists, that I still suffer from PTSD. I didn't realize it, until I saw my ex a few months ago for the first time since the rape. I was pissed. I'm still pissed. I saw the bastard while I was working. He wasn't supposed to be there. He doesn't even live here. But there he was. I sensed him before I saw him, then I broke down. I tried to stay strong, but I couldn't. I had a full panic attack in the back of the restaurant, with sobbing, horrifying flashbacks for two hours. I wasn't safe anymore. He saw me. He knew where I worked. I hate that. I felt safe, and now I don't. You know what else? Now I have been having nightmares ever since. I've had to get on an anti-depressant and sleeping pills. I've had to get a prescription for Xanax for the freak outs. I've been reading articles on how to help my PTSD symptoms because it doesn't seem to be getting better.    And guess what. I am pissed. It will be 8 yea...

     In about a month, I will be 26 years old. Every birthday since the rape, I am reminded about the attack. I’ve never told anyone this, but every year I am older, I think “It’s been ___ years since the rape, and I am doing pretty good.”, or “not so good” when it was the first or second year mark. This year will mark 7 years. It’s interesting that thought comes to my mind around that time, but thankfully, every year I have healed more.      Today I was thinking about the effects that the rape still has on me. When I get really bad, shaking anxiety, sometimes for no reason, I think about the rape. Mostly I am angry that I still have anxiety. “I wasn’t always like this” I think to myself. Sometimes I am ashamed of my anxiety. I feel like I should be able to control it more by now. I mean, it has been almost 7 years, what is the deal? I decided that a lot of times, I am too hard on myself. My anxiety used to be paralyzing, I used to get triggered into f...

Sometimes I get discouraged. When I look back at who I used to be, I know I am not the same. I know I will never be the same. My anxiety will get the best of me every now and again. I will have flashbacks when I feel threatened by a man. I will be overly observant when I am out and about. I will be less forgiving, and I won’t trust anyone right off the bat. I struggle to find the ‘good’ in people when all I see is ‘bad’. When someone betrays me, I almost can’t get over it. Every effort to trust or forgive someone that hurts me now is almost impossible. Sometimes, I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I used to be so much more positive, naturally happier, so much more loving. That person is gone. If I want to keep my sanity, I have to try to always stay positive. I have to push out my anxiety-prone thoughts. I have to make such a great effort to be happy, and see the good in people and myself. I get pissed so easily now it’s like the flip of a switch. I have to control th...

Right after I was raped, I struggled with every day things. I was going to a community college close to where I lived, and there was some time where I didn’t go to my classes, or do any of my homework. I literally could not handle menial day to day things.  There was a few times where I called my mom to pick me up in the middle of my class because something triggered a flashback, and I had a breakdown.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t eat. I felt empty, broken. My chest was an abyss of complete and utter pain and heartache, and nothing I did filled the void. Nothing I did seemed to matter. I felt like all of my actions were worthless, and every move I made was pointless. It was the most numbing, miserable, unbearable time of my life. Since I was in denial for so long, and had such a hard time coping with the reality that I was raped, it took longer for me to start recovering and healing. It took me almost 3 years before I hit rock bottom, and realized I needed some serious hel...

            One of the hardest things for me to overcome is trusting men. Sometimes I still struggle with it. For example, the other day, I was at Wal-Mart by myself with my little boy, and there was this man that I kept seeing around the store. There was something about him that gave me the creeps. There was one point where he stood in front of my cart and wouldn’t move and was just staring at me. Usually I try to be nice to people, but this guy I was pretty short with and told him to get out of my way. I was afraid that if I was nice to him, he would follow me out to my car. I started to get scared, and I didn’t even finish my shopping because I was so freaked out by this guy. So I bought what I had in my cart, and I left the store… Sometimes I just hate my anxiety.             There are times too where a guy isn’t even creepy and I still get freaked out. I have gotten significantly better, ...

            When I read back through my journal entries of that time when I began my healing process, it’s amazing to me how much I have changed, and how much happier I am now than I was then. My therapist had me write a little bit everyday about how I felt, and would have me put a number between 1-10 at the end of my entry for how my day was overall; 10 being the happiest and 1 being the worst. Most of my days were between a 2 and a 6. In my journal entries, I talked about how all I did the entire day was sleep until 6 pm, or how I cried all day when I thought about something minor that to me was huge. Some days I said how I didn’t want to wake up that morning, so I lied in bed for hours on end and didn’t eat anything or talk to anyone. I would write about how the only reason I got up to get ready was to see my boyfriend so he wouldn’t know that anything was wrong with me. Most days I cried all day. Most days I called my mom and would cry to her abou...

            It’s no secret that I have anxiety because of what happened to me. What most people do not know is that I deal with this every day, all day. It never goes away. I constantly feel unsettled and anxious. People with anxiety are always in fight-or-flight mode, they have a hard time differentiating problems that are small and problems that are a big deal. Every problem to a person with anxiety is a big deal to them.             I have gotten a lot better with controlling my anxiety. I can talk to people and not have a nervous breakdown, I can go in public and not feel like I am going to be attacked every 5 seconds. I can pretty much deal with every day things now. But there are still a lot of times that I cannot control my anxiety, and it comes about like I am angry.             My worst anxiety I get is when I feel out of cont...

            Since I have been writing about my story, it’s been taking a toll on me, more than I thought it would be. I knew it would make me emotional, but I am thankful for my family and husband for supporting me through writing this. It has made all the difference in the world.             Once I began the path to recovery by regularly seeing my therapist and talking to my church leader, I also started to date my future husband. We dated for a few weeks before I decided that I needed to tell him what was going on. I was nervous about this, because I knew that by telling him I was raped and the hard times I had for a couple years after, that he might not want to date me anymore. I really liked him, but he had to know, because for the first couple months that I was seeing my therapist, I would have a mental breakdown after every session.         ...

               I just found out recently that after I was raped I experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is a mental health condition that is triggered after a terrifying event. The sooner you get help for PTSD once you realize that you are experiencing symptoms, will help prevent long term PTSD. The symptoms can last for months or years and can completely turn your life inside out. Symptoms usually start within 3 months after the traumatic event. There are three types of PTSD:     Intrusive memories- symptoms include: Flashbacks, or reliving the traumatic event for minutes or even days at a time Upsetting dreams about the traumatic event     Avoidance and emotional numbing- symptoms include:         Trying to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event Feeling emotionally numb Avoiding activities you once enjoyed Hopelessness about the future Memory problems Trouble c...

               I apologize for not posting an entry today. The next subject I want to talk about is extremely difficult for me to talk about, and is a delicate situation. I am planning on posting it tomorrow once I feel I have expressed the situation appropriately. Thank you for your patience every one!

          I know that saying he would soon be serving a mission for my church may be confusing. I am proud to say that I am LDS, or Mormon. I love my religion, and I love God. I know he is there for me, and my religion is a big reason why I feel I was able to overcome what had happened to me.             In my religion, many people serve missions, which means they go out for about 2 years to places all over the world, serving God, people, and sharing our beliefs without pay. It is a huge sacrifice, and is an amazing experience for those who have chosen to do this. But to be able to do this, the person who chooses to serve needs to be worthy, meaning they need to be keeping the commandments of God, they need to not be using substances like alcohol and drugs, and they need to be morally clean, basically meaning not going around and having sex. If someone has made mistakes, they can repent and eventually s...