It gets better.
I'm not sure how precisely to start this, but I suppose I'll just start.
It's been about a year -- a bit longer -- since everything in my previous post went down. All I can say is...moving on is tough work, but it's good work, and rewarding. In the beginning, I couldn't stop blaming myself: I let this happen, I made this happen, I clearly must have wanted this to happen, what the hell is wrong with me? And then I moved on to blaming him: he should've known better, why did he say yes? Why did he treat me so cruelly? Why did he hurt me repeatedly when all I wanted to do was show him he could still be a good man -- that people cared about him, that I cared about him?
You see, in the beginning, we started out friends. That in and of itself was a horrible violation of boundaries, but I suppose both he and I were messed up in our own ways...being together felt, at first, natural and easy. Then it turned destructive and forceful. Abusive. I would liken this progression from friendship to sexual congress and physical violence to what another friend (a burgeoning chef) artfully describes as "the humane way to boil a lobster": rather than dropping the lobster into a boiling pot of water, he elects to place the lobster in a pot of cool or lukewarm water, then incrementally turn up the heat (allowing the lobster to acclimate) until the creature is literally being boiled alive without knowing it. The comparison feels sadly apt and appropriate here.
It took me a long time to realize that while both of my aforementioned reactions -- blaming myself and then blaming him -- were accurate, to one degree or another, neither one was particularly helpful.
The fact is, yes, he shouldn't have lashed out the way he did -- he shouldn't have sought me out, struck up that friendship, then incrementally "turned up the heat" until I felt like I was being boiled alive unwittingly. I began to confuse my affection for and attraction to him with love; the first time, I came on to him. The second time, he came on to me. The final time, he forced me.
But here's the thing -- I didn't have to stay.
I don't mean that in the self-hating victim-blaming way; I mean it with a strong and ever-growing sense of clarity. I saw it getting progressively worse and worse, and still I made no move to leave. It was a strange and beautiful power when I began to discover just how much of it was my choice: not the rape, but the choice to stay by his side even after he forced himself on me. No one put a gun to my head and said, "If you leave, I'll kill you or myself." It felt akin to that, at times, but those words were never uttered.
I continued to work with him in group therapy after that final night, and I maintained our friendship outside of his office. Some part of me believes I did this out of love for him, though I don't believe I actually loved him: I did feel that previously mentioned affection for him, as well as an attraction, and when he was in a good mood he treated me well, and we had fun together. More to the point, I saw him as a victim for what had been done to him as a child: I tried to help him through his blackest moods, and more than once tried to tell him he had the power to change; I believed he was a good man underneath it all, and I think to some degree or another I still believe it...though now, of course, I sure as hell won't be by his side waiting for him to discover it.
Some part of me thinks, similarly, I stayed out of fear: if this was how angry I seemed to make him when we were together, I thought obsessively, just how out of control and violent would he feel if I up and left him?
But understanding my choice in this -- and I do consider it a choice, even though it felt at times like the choice was made for me, with threats and degradation and humiliation and manipulation -- helps me understand that my behavior, and my willingness to stay with him after all that had happened, had a huge part in this. That realization is such a monumentally GOOD thing, because in understanding why I did what I did, I can work to change that part of myself so I never do it again (stay with an abuser, protect an abuser, etc). My behavior is the only one I do have control over. I can never fix him; I can't change him, I can't save him, I can't control him, I can't rescue him, I can't make him see what he did was wrong, I can't show him who he was before all this started.
I can't ever love him, and I certainly can't respect him, but I can't quite hate him either.
You see, this whole experience helped make me who I am: strong, resilient, saturated with self-love and self-respect, a soldier -- no one's victim, no one's sex doll, no one's Barbie. Perhaps it stems from the fact that when someone treats me like shit it doesn't elicit the same feelings of self-disgust and self-loathing it did when I was a kid; conversely, it provokes a deep primal desire to prove them wrong, to say "I am fucking amazing, and I'm worth so much more than this! I'm sorry you can't see that, but I do. So fuck it, I'm out of here."
So there it is. A year down the line, and I still think about it -- it still hurts, it still angers me, I still get mired in memories and flashbacks and wishful thinking from time to time. But I no longer think about it every minute of the day. I have a job and I'm going back to school; I have an amazing girlfriend whom I am deeply in love with; I laugh and reach out and help others; I smile so wide my face hurts; I tell my story, and I listen attentively when others tell theirs; I go on long hikes and take road trips; I eat good food, I cook new things; I sing Taylor Swift and P!NK and Amanda Palmer at the top of my lungs; I make art, I write fiction; I sleep, and when I dream it's almost always about fantastical and strange worlds that give me fodder for another painting or story -- seldom, if ever, about him. Twelve months' distance from him and what happened, and I finally no longer obsess about it.
My new life is fulfilling and wonderful -- and it's one that he has no part of. I no longer pray that it could happen again and be different this time; I no longer see myself as used or victimized. He took something extremely important from me that night, but he didn't take it away for good. And more crucially, he didn't take all of me. I didn't let him. And so, now, thanks to him and this entire year-long recovery, I won't let anyone else do so, either.
It's been about a year -- a bit longer -- since everything in my previous post went down. All I can say is...moving on is tough work, but it's good work, and rewarding. In the beginning, I couldn't stop blaming myself: I let this happen, I made this happen, I clearly must have wanted this to happen, what the hell is wrong with me? And then I moved on to blaming him: he should've known better, why did he say yes? Why did he treat me so cruelly? Why did he hurt me repeatedly when all I wanted to do was show him he could still be a good man -- that people cared about him, that I cared about him?
You see, in the beginning, we started out friends. That in and of itself was a horrible violation of boundaries, but I suppose both he and I were messed up in our own ways...being together felt, at first, natural and easy. Then it turned destructive and forceful. Abusive. I would liken this progression from friendship to sexual congress and physical violence to what another friend (a burgeoning chef) artfully describes as "the humane way to boil a lobster": rather than dropping the lobster into a boiling pot of water, he elects to place the lobster in a pot of cool or lukewarm water, then incrementally turn up the heat (allowing the lobster to acclimate) until the creature is literally being boiled alive without knowing it. The comparison feels sadly apt and appropriate here.
It took me a long time to realize that while both of my aforementioned reactions -- blaming myself and then blaming him -- were accurate, to one degree or another, neither one was particularly helpful.
The fact is, yes, he shouldn't have lashed out the way he did -- he shouldn't have sought me out, struck up that friendship, then incrementally "turned up the heat" until I felt like I was being boiled alive unwittingly. I began to confuse my affection for and attraction to him with love; the first time, I came on to him. The second time, he came on to me. The final time, he forced me.
But here's the thing -- I didn't have to stay.
I don't mean that in the self-hating victim-blaming way; I mean it with a strong and ever-growing sense of clarity. I saw it getting progressively worse and worse, and still I made no move to leave. It was a strange and beautiful power when I began to discover just how much of it was my choice: not the rape, but the choice to stay by his side even after he forced himself on me. No one put a gun to my head and said, "If you leave, I'll kill you or myself." It felt akin to that, at times, but those words were never uttered.
I continued to work with him in group therapy after that final night, and I maintained our friendship outside of his office. Some part of me believes I did this out of love for him, though I don't believe I actually loved him: I did feel that previously mentioned affection for him, as well as an attraction, and when he was in a good mood he treated me well, and we had fun together. More to the point, I saw him as a victim for what had been done to him as a child: I tried to help him through his blackest moods, and more than once tried to tell him he had the power to change; I believed he was a good man underneath it all, and I think to some degree or another I still believe it...though now, of course, I sure as hell won't be by his side waiting for him to discover it.
Some part of me thinks, similarly, I stayed out of fear: if this was how angry I seemed to make him when we were together, I thought obsessively, just how out of control and violent would he feel if I up and left him?
But understanding my choice in this -- and I do consider it a choice, even though it felt at times like the choice was made for me, with threats and degradation and humiliation and manipulation -- helps me understand that my behavior, and my willingness to stay with him after all that had happened, had a huge part in this. That realization is such a monumentally GOOD thing, because in understanding why I did what I did, I can work to change that part of myself so I never do it again (stay with an abuser, protect an abuser, etc). My behavior is the only one I do have control over. I can never fix him; I can't change him, I can't save him, I can't control him, I can't rescue him, I can't make him see what he did was wrong, I can't show him who he was before all this started.
I can't ever love him, and I certainly can't respect him, but I can't quite hate him either.
You see, this whole experience helped make me who I am: strong, resilient, saturated with self-love and self-respect, a soldier -- no one's victim, no one's sex doll, no one's Barbie. Perhaps it stems from the fact that when someone treats me like shit it doesn't elicit the same feelings of self-disgust and self-loathing it did when I was a kid; conversely, it provokes a deep primal desire to prove them wrong, to say "I am fucking amazing, and I'm worth so much more than this! I'm sorry you can't see that, but I do. So fuck it, I'm out of here."
So there it is. A year down the line, and I still think about it -- it still hurts, it still angers me, I still get mired in memories and flashbacks and wishful thinking from time to time. But I no longer think about it every minute of the day. I have a job and I'm going back to school; I have an amazing girlfriend whom I am deeply in love with; I laugh and reach out and help others; I smile so wide my face hurts; I tell my story, and I listen attentively when others tell theirs; I go on long hikes and take road trips; I eat good food, I cook new things; I sing Taylor Swift and P!NK and Amanda Palmer at the top of my lungs; I make art, I write fiction; I sleep, and when I dream it's almost always about fantastical and strange worlds that give me fodder for another painting or story -- seldom, if ever, about him. Twelve months' distance from him and what happened, and I finally no longer obsess about it.
My new life is fulfilling and wonderful -- and it's one that he has no part of. I no longer pray that it could happen again and be different this time; I no longer see myself as used or victimized. He took something extremely important from me that night, but he didn't take it away for good. And more crucially, he didn't take all of me. I didn't let him. And so, now, thanks to him and this entire year-long recovery, I won't let anyone else do so, either.