Never Be Afraid to Tell the Truth: Part Three (TRIGGER WARNING! Extremely Descriptive and Sensitive Material)

This is probably the most difficult week of posts I have had thus far. I have confronted some controversial emotions about God and loved ones, and today, an essential seed of my self-hatred. I have battled for a while with this memory, written it down about a half a dozen times, and even today it is not complete.

Nancy Venable Raine spoke of memories, and the difficulty describing them in After Silence:

"Memories do not sit inertly in our minds. They are not like the videos we rent on Friday nights or the audio books we listen to in our cars. Memories are the raw material of our personal narratives, the insubstantial and elusive elements out of which we fashion and refashion our lives into patterns of meaningful sequence. But some memories seem to resist this refashioning and to possess a rigid, inflexible quality that resists the creation of a narrative"

As I explore this last portion I am willing to share, I will follow the same pattern of expressing my physical and emotional reactions at specific points. This is a fresh entry from my journal, so I will be reading it for the first time as I type it out. There will be no positive spin, as a forewarning:

I am sleeping on the couch. I feel his hand reach up my shirt and grab my chest. I try to ignore him. His hand is now sliding down my pants and he whispers. "Come down here, I want to play."
"I'm tired."
"I don't care." For some reason, I thought it would be okay to swat him away and say, "NO!"

Emotional: fear and frustration. Physical: stomach is already churning.

"You don't get to say no to me. I love you. You know no one else loves you like me. Besides, no one would believe a word you say." He was right, no one loved me. I had tried to get their attention...and they saw past my tears.

Emotional: anger, desperation, and continued fear. Physical: neck is hot, stomach still churning.

I lie there, soaking in the truth of his words as he continues his conquest. His fingers are already inside me. "Come on, Dana, I know you like it. Don't you like it? Tell me!" There was no point in fighting it, I told him. "Fine, you're right. Just do what you want. I don't care anymore." He grins, "Good girl, it's time for you to do some work then." First he pulls off my underwear and soon his head is between my legs. I am staring at the ceiling trying to ignore his tongue.

Emotional: all of the above along with sadness. Physical: all of the above along with bile rising in my throat.

Next he lies down, and pulls me over him. At this point, I am his rag doll. He orders me to sit up straight, then I felt him spread my legs so I am straddling him. He pushes himself inside of me without an effort. For this first time, I couldn't float away from my body and ignore the biological connection of his penis inside my vagina.

Emotional: all of the above. Physical: all of the above...the bile is almost at my lips...I have swallowed it back twice.

 He loses interest of not being in complete control and orders me off, only to hold me down and get inside of me again. At this point, I lose track of time until I have given into the natural reaction of my body, and reached orgasm. "See, I knew you loved me. Now go clean yourself up." So I did, and while I was wiping away his stink and my shame, I cried. I had been defeated."

I can read all the books in the world about rape victims and the physiological response that they may experience, how its "perfectly normal;" however, he took that understanding away from me and left me with a pile of guilt that will take me years to toss.

I am shaking. I have tears behind my eyes. I am going to vomit. Then I am going to scrub myself clean of humiliation, just like I did that night.