A Series of (very) Unfortunate Events

This was originally published elsewhere, but I think it should live here, too. TW: assault.

In 1994, I was raped. Twice.

Thinking back on it now, it’s hard to fathom how willingly I accepted the blame, even when one of the assaults involved my drink being drugged. Like some twisted knee-jerk response thanks to conditioning reflective of the times, I still called the other assault “date rape” thirty years later.

Like many women who have gone through the same thing, I did not report either assault to the police. I was living in a section 8 reduced-income apartment complex after emancipating myself and had lived there less than a year. I was going to college on student loans in a tiny town in Alabama, far away from my family who was dealing with their own traumas at the time. I feared losing my housing. I felt so alone.

After going through all the steps of self-hatred one goes through in these situations (re-tracing the night, counting drinks on the tabs, trying to remember if I led anyone on, telling myself I dressed like a slut) I didn’t need some male cop questioning me and not believing me.

Plus, I had a “reputation”. I was easy. I enjoyed sex. More than one friend during that time would invite guys they were seeing from out of town to bring a friend because I would probably sleep with them. They never even asked me.

So, in an effort to put all this unpleasantness behind me, I did what any girl would do: I found a string of abusive boyfriends to “protect” me. Better the devil you know, right?

No pictures please. For almost a decade after the assaults, I didn't want to be photographed and I avoided looking at myself in mirrors as much as possible. I'm honestly shocked I could find anything from that time period, but I think this was circa 1997.

Four years, an abortion and an arrest later, I managed to somehow climb out of that pit of self-loathing and crawled back to my mom’s house under the guise of “healing”. But really, I just wanted to disappear. Those first few years I slept like the dead, got up in the afternoon, barely functioned. Couldn’t work. Had no insurance, so any type of therapy was out of the question, as if I would have gone. I went on the cheapest antidepressant I could find and found a job for ten dollars an hour that I could never support myself on. Lost several teeth from lack of dental care.

And then I met the man who would be my husband. He was kind. Outgoing, loud, friendly, everyone loved him. The exact opposite of me. I just wanted to forget it all. And I did. So I leaped into a new life full of clubs, dancing, parties, ready-made friends, travel – extreme-level socialization. A numbness that could be easily masked. No one knew the real me because I didn’t know the real me.

I moved in within a few months. Married within a few years. Eventually, and not without significant hiccups, a baby.

Fast-forward ten years and it’s 2024. I had been dealing with all sorts of symptoms doctors couldn’t really help me with. Vertigo, pelvic floor pain, muscle spasms, neuropathy, joint pain that came and went. Up until this point, nearly all sex I’ve had since the rapes involved some substance or alcohol. Sometimes quite a bit. Sometimes just a little. But generally, something. One night we were fooling around and he tried something different, involving choking and a position we hadn’t done before.

Suddenly I felt sick. I stopped immediately, and he did too. And just like that, I was done.

He knew about the assaults, but never the details. I didn’t tell him, could barely let myself remember, really. I just wanted to forget.

I guess you can’t run forever.

In the year since this has happened, I’ve made it my personal mission to process this trauma, as well as the cornucopia of other trauma that has risen to the surface since then. I say this like I have a choice, of course. I started having meltdowns at work. My blood pressure skyrocketed. The body keeps the score, indeed. There’s also been a neurodivergent diagnosis thrown in there for good measure. And to top it all off, healing isn’t linear. Who knew? (Literally everyone but me).

This whole experience has made me wonder just how common it is to be triggered by your partner. Do people come out on the other side of this?

Not gonna lie, we aren’t in a good place. I have a lot of anger I haven’t felt since the old days. Anger towards the people who hurt me, at myself for allowing this to happen to me in some new fresh layer of self-blame. Anger at this world and its systems that allow this kind of culture to thrive while leaving women to pick up the pieces. Anger at the institution of marriage and its restrictions, or the fact that many women must factor in survival when considering relationships.

Also, for someone like me who never truly got to be an adult on my own, how important is autonomy to the healing process? I find myself needing more and more alone time to quiet the clutter in my mind in order to do this work. The desire to prove to myself that I am capable of being on my own and trusting myself seems crucial to building my confidence.

I haven’t had sex with my husband in a year at this point. And I really don’t want to. I’m not sure if it’s the triggering or if the triggering uncovered what I’ve known all along: I attached myself to the first safe person I found, and was so grateful for that safety, I ignored the possibility that it wasn't what I truly wanted or that I could find safety in myself. That I should have found it in myself before making any major life decisions. While there are other types of love that we share, almost two decades of dissociating through sex, fantasizing about the what-ifs, I need to find the real me. There has been an undercurrent of guilt in me for so long, and I'm tired of being the villain in my story.

Right now I’m in this sort of in between phase, where I’m three years into trauma therapy, out of work due to the mental toll all of this has taken, financially dependent on the person I am simultaneously hurting as the initiator in wanting a separation, oh, and raising an amazing eleven year-old who is unaware of all of this (though not oblivious since we have been I separate bedrooms for a while now). It’s a lot. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do know that I’m heading in the right direction, and for now, that’s enough.

Onward.