Rape and its Deadly Silence

After a recent heartbreak in the endless turbulent continuum called my dating life (or lack thereof), my best friend urged me to not retreat and ‘go back into my shell’ after hearing my woes of giving up on marriage and family.  After a week of tears followed by a week of anger, a memory gripped me and would not let me go. I have never faced the devastation of my rape. I’ve never really said much about it. I’ve been pretty silent actually. I would give small hints here and there to some, more just in passing, as if it were some small feat or adventure I had conquered. Nothing big, right?!  Nothing to concern myself with, right?! It’s not like I was a virgin. And now with the #METOO movement in full swing, everyone has a story to tell, so why tell it? In a sense, who else wants to read another story about this crime, that isn’t a crime, unless you have fool-proof evidence, a video, and can convince a co-ed jury that you didn’t want it, even though you said no.  What difference will it really make?  For fifteen years, I’ve lived in this dark place, so let me shed some light on it so that you can see, and possibly help me figure it out.

It occurred MLK weekend in 2003. My boyfriend and I had just recently broken up, but I was still living in his townhouse along with another roommate.  I was in a separate room and lying in the bed preparing to sleep with the door shut.  The other roommate wasn’t there. And he, the now ex-boyfriend, went out partying with some friends. When he returned, he was drunk.  I could hear him stumbling around. As began to drift off, I heard a knock on the door. I said nothing, figuring he would go away.  Next thing you know, he’s in my room. At this point, I’m almost in a full sleep, but manage to tell him to leave me alone.  He continues to advance, straddles me, and begins to loosen my pajama bottoms.  I’m saying no, and fighting him, but he still continues. I’m trying to push him away and still saying no, leave me alone. I’m screaming at this point.  He puts his hands around my neck and begins to thrust.  As tears roll down my face, my body releases in the midst of this attack and I have two orgasms.  I continue to say no, but it was faint amongst his thrusts.  When he’s done, I roll out of the bed, and run to the bathroom.  I close the door and cower in the corner between the toilet and the cabinets.  I ask God why. Why didn’t He protect me?  What have I done to be treated in such a way?  Have I been that horrible of a person? I’m in the bathroom praying, but it feels like God ain’t listening because my rapist opens the door after several minutes and asks me what’s taking so long.  I clean myself up and he escorts me back to my room, to which he holds me the rest of the night. I could smell the liquor on his breathe, it was sickening.  And I silently cried myself to sleep.

The next day, I confronted him. I told him that he raped me.  At first he said that he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. I told him, that I said no. This he followed up with “Who’s going to believe you?” And that was the moment. In that moment, I realized that my pain didn’t matter; that my life didn’t matter.  Who would care to hear my story, to understand my pain?  Since that moment, I’ve consistently cowered back to that place between the toilet and the cabinet.  Because who’s going to believe me? And to that effect, who’s going to love me? From that moment, my spirit was broken, whatever lust for life, drained; whatever joy, filtered.  I’ve only desired to have someone love me, but it seems that every relationship ends in the rape I’ve hidden in my soul.  No one wants to love me; I’m just an object of their pleasure to be bound, beat up and discarded. And if I’m to be discarded, what am I living for? And that’s what makes the silence so deadly.

In the past fifteen years, I’ve tried to cover the silence with alcohol, sex, overachievements, busy-ness, church activities, etc. to mask the sound of my silence.  There were (and still are) times that I wanted to die, and would try. Fortunately, I have a hard time taking pills, I don’t like needles, I throw up if I drink too much, I was taught to never point guns at people, and I need an emergency room visit for paper cuts, so slitting my wrists is not happening.  I’ve even tried not eating, but I’m on a smell food diet – it’s time to eat when I smell food.  I wrote a suicide note to God believing that HE would execute it.  It almost seems as if the more I try to die, the more God forces me to live. So here I am, Lord, what do you want from me? And still there’s silence.

I keep living, hoping to break the yoke of the silence that is trying to kill me. One minute, I believe I have overcome, and then the rope tightens, and I’m pulled back in.  I pray for my rapist and his family, though it devastates me to find him living happily and me still fighting to stay alive.  I don’t hate him, but, I am not trying to have tea and biscuits with him either.  I know that he’ll never apologize for what he’s done, but I would at least like to trip him down several flights of stairs and leave him there for a few days – not for him to die, just for him to suffer. I digress.  The silence causes me to misinterpret affection and build walls. These walls have been fortified with years of mistrust, fear, and defeat which is why very few have ever delved into the crevices of my heart. Ergo, relationships (romantic and otherwise) can only go so deep before I begin the fight to protect the remaining pieces of the shattered me.   And this fight never seems to end.

At this point in my life, the battle to rebuild the pieces of the former me are in the Lord’s hands. There is nothing I can do. The love, the joy, the peace, all lives with the promise that God is love  and  He loves me and would never leave me nor forsake me. So if I find myself in alone in a dark alley, or at the verge of committing suicide, or cowering in the bathroom between the toilet and a cabinet, I have a choice to make – either die in silence or live in love. If I choose silence, my soul will slowly deteriorate and destroy everyone and everything around me. But if I choose love, with time, forgiveness, and lots of work, my soul will live and construct a kingdom of joy in me.  So today, I choose love. Then again, maybe I chose it fifteen years ago.  And, it’s been keeping me alive ever since.
 
”Love never fails. “ 1 Corinthians 13: 8