I was raped this week, ask me anything

[Jamastiene]

224. I'm so sorry this has happened to you.

I won't tell you to seek help. I always took that as a disgusting reply from people in real life when I did finally did tell someone I had been raped. To be honest, my favorite part of the healing process was anger. When I finally got angry and told people I wasn't the one who needed to seek mental help for what happened, I started getting better. None of that freaking "feels good to the one giving the 'therapy' and everyone else but the rape victim" therapy ever helped when I did finally go to shut people the fuck up. Finally, I started pretending everything was ok and just jumping all up in people's shit when they said insensitive things to me. Everyone in my real life knows not to blame the rape on me or tell me to seek help for that shit. Because I was incredibly unlucky enough to get raped does not mean I am mentally off.

Why is it that the person who is a victim of rape is told to seek help? Fuck that. It is not the victim that needs mental help. It is the deranged asshole who would rape a person who needs the mental help. Someone who has been mugged is not told to seek mental help. Someone who is knifed is not told to seek mental help. Fuck that.

I took it the same way you are taking it, in stride. I halfway blamed myself for putting myself in such a precarious situation, but later learned it was not my fault. You never know what someone is going to do to you. You can even be in your own house, with the doors locked, and have someone break in and rape you. You cannot live your life in fear and blame yourself when someone does something hideous to you. Fuck that too. Protect yourself as you see fit and do the best you can. That is really all you can do.

I went on about my life right after it happened as if it was part of growing up. One of the two women who held me down for the guy to rape me was my boss. I still worked there for the next few years, but knew never to trust her again. Trying to take it in stride came crashing down on me later though, when I realized there are much better people in the world than that small circle of people I knew back then. I met better people who had better views of homosexuality and did not ascribe to raping lesbians to try to make them straight. That and Kurt Cobain's death were finally my tipping points.

I walked home the day it was announced on the radio that he had died, and I never went back to work there or even to see those people. It was a seven mile walk and there were no sidewalks and the only way was through the biggest speeding areas where the most pedestrians are hit and killed in this county. I didn't care. I just had to be free of that bullshit I had been through. I felt free that day for some reason. I cannot handle the heat and it was hot that day here, already, as usual, summer in damn April. I didn't care. I just walked until I was tired, then walked the other half of the way home. I don't know why hearing about Kurt Cobain's death on the radio and my boss' nasty attitude about that was my final straw and the thing that made me absolutely just quit and never speak to those assholes I worked with again. I'm glad it did though.

I was truly floored by his death and was a big fan and loved that he was against homophobia. I knew then, it clicked. I am with the wrong people in everyday life to ever find happiness. I didn't need to hear rude ass comments about that that day. I was already beginning to become violent toward other people and doing other dangerous things were starting to really horrify me about my own actions. So, walk, I did, and walk and walk and walk. I skipped home and walked all the way to the cemetery where my grandmother was buried, another 4 miles away from where I lived. No one was able to find me for the rest of the entire day. I was happy to be out in nature, with my grandmother's grave, and able to talk it out to no one, or everyone in that graveyard, or my grandmother, depending on what people believe. Me? I was just talking it out to any force in the universe who would listen and help. That was the way I was looking at it. It helped somehow.

It wasn't until I was away from the assholes who did that to me that I finally began to heal. I met some terrific friends not long after that who helped me through a lot of weird break downs I started having. I'm good friends with them even now. They are the right people for me, not those homophobic assholes who did all the worst stuff they could do to me for years. I'm better off for it.

I went through some sort of personal healing process that most people would not think of as real healing, though, because it did not involve a therapist treating me like I was some kind of mentally deficient freak. I even had one of those precious "therapists" tell me I should "get right with God" and become straight just to add salt into the wounds of already being raped for being a lesbian. Another told me I was "choosing" a lonely life full of the potential of being raped again. Fuck therapists. Therapist...the rapist. That's the way I finally saw them after being told all that shit for so long. I never did settle down on one therapist I would keep going to, until I was "lucky" enough to find one who ascribed to the "love the sin, not the sinner" view. At least she was able to put that Christian bullshit aside and help me with my hideous PTSD. Still, I was never going to find a therapist where I live who would not be a homophobic asshole. I finally had to get angry and heal my own damn self. Fuck them.

Yes, I still have some anger. It angers me when people tell a rape victim to go seek mental help. I think the asshole who rapes someone needs the mental help, not the victim of such a crime. Support, I can understand, but that support cannot be generic, especially for gay people. What we go through is already an entirely different experience than what the straights go through. If you do decide to find a support group, not a damn mental health therapist, I would suggest you shop around and ask THEM the damn questions, ALL of the important questions about how they feel about gay people. If there are support groups for gay people who have been raped, that would be the best ones to try to shop around for, not a support group for straights. They just don't "get it" and they never will. No offense to allies of the GLBT community, but it is just not the same experience for us, because we have to put up with a bunch of homophobic shit along the way in every damn thing we do, it seems.

So, I can completely understand where you are right about now in handling this the best way you can. Anger will come later. The only thing I can tell you there is don't let it consume you. Anger can be a positive thing or it can be negative. If you use it the right way, it can actually help you cope with the aftermath of this crime that has been perpetrated against you.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. I hope you are able to get through it without having to deal with too many overwhelming PTSD symptoms. I still cannot be in a room with 2 women I do not know and one straight man I do not know. That will probably never be possible without some apprehension unless I know the people and know they are truly GLBT allies, in other words, people I know are friends. It's for my own benefit to avoid that situation like the plague though, to protect myself. We all deserve the right to protect ourselves. What happened to you left you in a situation where you could not protect yourself.

IMO, the guy who did this DOES at least need to be confronted as soon as you are able. You will know when that is. No one else can tell you. If not by you, than by the biggest burliest friend you have, to let him know he had better not do something like, that again, to anyone, or else.

For me, being friends with a black belt in karate who also knew about almost every weapon, from the medieval to the modern, and every form of torture ever invented helped me. He taught me some self defense and made me stick with it until I could knock him down, taught me all sorts of dirty tricks to use in fights (because I was tiny and deserved the right to use whatever trick was at my disposal to bring down an assailant), and made damn sure the people who hurt me knew they had better not ever fuck with me again because he would be watching them.

Your situation is different than even mine though. So, what might work best for you, might be totally different than what finally worked for me.

Going to the cops isn't so easy for gay people. I don't think most people who are insisting you do that understand that. The cops make women and gay people and any other minorities feel like it was our fault and drag us through the ringer after the fact. Sulfuric acid in the wounds? Is that worse than salt in the wounds? It's worse than salt in the wounds, in any case. I always thought of dealing with cops after the fact to be the last fucking thing I wanted to do if therapists were telling me I needed to "get right with God" and giving me dicey speeches about reparative therapy and telling me I needed to try to make myself straight. Like they honestly think straight people don't get raped too.

I won't insist you go to therapy, like others here are doing, because all of my therapy experiences only made things worse. I did try the reparative therapy on myself for a while, because I was mentally coerced after the fact into thinking I needed to try to make myself straight. That was was bullshit and did NOT work. I ended up suicidal because of that bad therapist's advice. Being told to "get right with God" didn't help either, because that just made me hate all Christians for years and years and years. I still thank RevCheesehead and KitchenWitch here on DU for helping me see that not all Christians are assholes who hate gay people. And also, there was one preacher in Charlotte at the MCC church there who sent me tons of literature about the same time and took up LOTS of time with me talking on the phone and emailing back and forth to teach me that there are Christians who accept gay people and do not hate gay people and gay people who are Christians and do not believe gay people should be changed. I'm still not a Christian, but I don't hate all Christians now, because I realize there are some who are not hatemongers who ascribe to that hideous reparative therapy doctrine.

I also won't insist you go to the cops either, because I know what kind of horrifying sulfuric acid in the wound that is even for straight women.

If you do decide to go to a therapist though, please make sure you pick one that is not going to make things worse and fuck you up really bad mentally when you were fine mentally to begin with. That's all the advice I can really give, because I am a firm believer that when it comes to healing after a major trauma, one size does not fit all.

Other than that, all I can say is that I am really sorry this happened to you and I wish there was a way to send a to you.