I'm struggling lately. Feeling quite down. Transitioning to a new place and saying goodbye to everyone around me that I care for. It's not easy. I feel like crying every day. I just want to lie in bed and be miserable. So I do a bit. I'm also stress eating, but I still find some strength in me to exercise to keep my heart up. Playing a bit of music.
Today I wrote an impromptu song about the man I've been falling in love with. I hoped that he could hear my heart since he doesn't want to hear my voice. I believe that connection goes beyond physical actions. I believe thoughts can be heard by those we love. I try to hear his thoughts and understand without taking it personally.
We don't control our emotions and sometimes they overwhelm us. That's what this blog is for: to spill my overwhelming emotions into, to try to cope with feelings that I struggle to experience.
Life has grown easier in some ways as I experience more facets of it. I wouldn't go back in time.
It doesn't change the fact that I'm vulnerable. I'm not sure I'll find love, in fact I fear I won't. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe my purpose is just to spread love around rather than have it for my own.
Life is for me and all I can do is sadly carry on, until the sadness becomes less. Slowly, I can't force anyone to believe in love with me. But I'll continue to believe in it anyway. Silly me :) Forever hopeful. A blessing and a curse.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
The Next Stage
About a year and a half ago, I went through therapy for some of my issues relating to this story. I participated in an art group therapy with 3 other women and it was really fantastic. We still send out group texts once in awhile and I cherish hearing from these women. I never told them this exact story.
Now what? I'm still terrified of the world in some ways. I feel that I'm a failure at romantic relationships. I don't know if it's because I move so much or because I conduct myself poorly. I don't know if my terror is part of the reason why I move so much. At this point I've forgotten.
I feel a darkness in me when it comes to romantic relationships, a fear that I'm not good enough, that I'm 'used up'. That I'm not lovable. The feeling of not being lovable started way before the rapes began. I used to come home and cry at night when I was 12 because I was certain that no man would ever love me. I don't know why, but that fear of not being lovable is still inside me.
I find myself bending over backwards for men whenever there's a romantic spark of some kind and it's something I really don't like about myself. But it's also something that has lessened over time.
Unfortunately, I recently found myself in a relationship with someone that was really controlling. It scared me. I was afraid to break it off with him. I was afraid he would come to my house and break in for weeks afterwards and hurt me or rape me. I overreact to a lot of things. And it sucks.
I'm about to do a 10 day solo hiking trip and I'm terrified for all these reasons. Even though I know realistically, it's only 21% of the time that a stranger will be your rapist. None of my rape experiences were complete strangers, they were always someone I had at lease hung out with once or twice prior to the rape and they always involved alcohol.
I'm scared, but it makes me want to go more. I want to confront this fear, and I don't know how changed I can be in the span of 10 days, but camping alone in the pitch dark woods is a challenge for me, and it's one I accept. One challenge at a time makes me a stronger, better person.
I know I will succeed. I know it will build my confidence in myself, and that is what I need to truly say no and follow through with my actions and keep myself safe for the rest of my life.
Writing about this experience and how it has dragged out in my life has helped me to understand it and hopefully will help me let it go. I don't necessarily want to talk about it, but I may want some people to know about it sometime and it's nice to have a written copy. I cried more than once during this writing and I went to work feeling quite depressed when I first started. But I'm feeling stronger now and I'm happy to free myself from this burden.
Life will go on and it already is.
Now what? I'm still terrified of the world in some ways. I feel that I'm a failure at romantic relationships. I don't know if it's because I move so much or because I conduct myself poorly. I don't know if my terror is part of the reason why I move so much. At this point I've forgotten.
I feel a darkness in me when it comes to romantic relationships, a fear that I'm not good enough, that I'm 'used up'. That I'm not lovable. The feeling of not being lovable started way before the rapes began. I used to come home and cry at night when I was 12 because I was certain that no man would ever love me. I don't know why, but that fear of not being lovable is still inside me.
I find myself bending over backwards for men whenever there's a romantic spark of some kind and it's something I really don't like about myself. But it's also something that has lessened over time.
Unfortunately, I recently found myself in a relationship with someone that was really controlling. It scared me. I was afraid to break it off with him. I was afraid he would come to my house and break in for weeks afterwards and hurt me or rape me. I overreact to a lot of things. And it sucks.
I'm about to do a 10 day solo hiking trip and I'm terrified for all these reasons. Even though I know realistically, it's only 21% of the time that a stranger will be your rapist. None of my rape experiences were complete strangers, they were always someone I had at lease hung out with once or twice prior to the rape and they always involved alcohol.
I'm scared, but it makes me want to go more. I want to confront this fear, and I don't know how changed I can be in the span of 10 days, but camping alone in the pitch dark woods is a challenge for me, and it's one I accept. One challenge at a time makes me a stronger, better person.
I know I will succeed. I know it will build my confidence in myself, and that is what I need to truly say no and follow through with my actions and keep myself safe for the rest of my life.
Writing about this experience and how it has dragged out in my life has helped me to understand it and hopefully will help me let it go. I don't necessarily want to talk about it, but I may want some people to know about it sometime and it's nice to have a written copy. I cried more than once during this writing and I went to work feeling quite depressed when I first started. But I'm feeling stronger now and I'm happy to free myself from this burden.
Life will go on and it already is.
Part II: The first rape
What is rape? Growing up I thought I knew exactly what it was, I didn't realize that the definition could get cloudy and confusing. It was a time before alcohol had made it's way into my life and things were a lot more black and white, right and wrong. At the time rape was when a woman was walking alone at night and a man jumped out and grabbed her and physically overpowered her in order to have sex with her. This was before I knew that only 21% of rapes are committed by a stranger (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence). Not a lot of people were talking about rape to me when I was a teen. In fact, not a lot of people are talking to me about it now either.
I was unprepared. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and that summer I had more freedom than ever before. I was about to go to college in a few months across the ocean, across the continent even. So I think my parents decided that there wasn't a whole lot left to do at that point, not that my mom didn't at least try to keep some tabs on where I was if I didn't come home. But I had older friends through my job and access to a lot of alcohol and unfortunately a car. It's god's gift to me that I only damaged the car in my drunk driving escapades.
I don't remember exactly how I came to be on the east side of the island in the vacation home of a visiting Canadian college student and his buddies, but I was excited because one of them even went to the college that I was about to attend! There was a lot of drinking, these guys were over 21 so they could purchase alcohol in the states, and there ended up being a lot of sex, wanted and unwanted, but I never really knew which was which.
That night I was drinking, I was tired, and I had a long drive home, so I was ready to sleep in anybody's bed just to avoid the tiresome drive home and the alcohol made Sean attractive to me. When I was 17, I thought that anybody in their 20s was automatically cool because they have life experience, they're independent, they know what they're doing. I wanted to be cool like them. Now I'm 28 and I realize the opposite.
Sean and I did it, it wasn't too unpleasant, but it wasn't exactly great either and for whatever reason, maybe as a brag to his buddies, he left a very large hickey on my neck. It wasn't a passionate, heat of the moment, accidental hickey. It was a purposeful, deep dark bruise of a hickey.
Kiko took it as an invitation. Kiko was from my island and somehow had come to know Sean and Julian who were visiting from Canada and they all partied together. So one night, Kiko hands me a rum and coke in an orange plastic cup filled to the brim that is literally a liter in volume. I say thanks, thinking it's nice of him to offer me a drink and it makes me feel included in the group. I'm naive and don't realize that he's getting me drunk.
Kiko fucked me all night long, and from what I remember it was fun for the most part. I thought that we were doing what people do when they fall in love. I'm sure I thought at some point, that maybe this would be the man I married. I didn't know it at that moment, but he was actually already dating a girl who was 2 years younger than me.
I didn't call this experience a rape, but after writing this, I guess this was the first rape of this summer. I don't know if calling it a rape really helps me though. It's a scary word that I still don't know how to define. If you're drunk, but seem willing, is it a rape? If you regret it later, was it a rape? Are men to be blamed for 'raping' someone if it seemed like the person was interested at the time even thought they were wasted? At what age is one meant to take responsibility for knowing if it is an appropriate situation in which to have sex with someone? If the woman had an orgasm, was it a rape?
The rape that I felt traumatized by, was when I was solidly blacked out. I think we were taking shots of something and I had a friend with me this time, at the vacation home on the east side of the island. She had recently moved to the islands because she had been forcefully gang raped by a small group of boys that she went to high school with and she couldn't stay at her school with all the judgement and accusation that she was lying. She was taking refuge at her mother's best friends house, who was my drama teacher at the time. She too changed her name.
There were two reasons I pieced together that I was raped. The first was because of my friend's recount of me being pulled by the arm to a bedroom and saying to her, 'I don't know what's happening'. The second was because the following day Kiko bought me flowers and while he presented them to me, he made fun of how I was slurring nonsense while he and his friend fucked me during my black out the previous evening.
My first reaction was shame. I wasn't very experienced with sex and I didn't want to be bad at it. My second reaction was anger at my friend for not recognizing what was happening and preventing it. At this point in time, I'm sorry that after her own trauma that she was put in this position. I'm sure that she felt remorse about the situation as well, although I have not had the opportunity to discuss it with her, nor do I know if she wants to talk about it.
After all this, the other man I mentioned, Julian, whom I was so excited to meet because he went to the university I was about to attend told me, with entitlement, that it was now his turn to fuck me. I said no. He was so butt-hurt by the situation, that when I ran into him on campus thousands of miles away from all this bullshit, he continued to ask me for a couple of years. He even offered to have a threesome with me and his girlfriend at the time. He was really desperate to get his chance.
I literally could not get physically away from this rape. Kiko has tried numerous times to add me as a friend on Facebook. I got off Facebook for a few years because I was tired of his attempts. I felt harassed, I felt out of control, I felt terrified.
After the rape by Kiko and his friend, I continue to sleep with both of them, though never at the same time. I became close friends with the friend's girlfriend even because we were all hanging out together. Her name was Lauren and she was quite a bit older than me and I thought she was so cool and fun to be around. One night the friend told Lauren that he had been fucking me and she asked me point blank mid-sob if it were true. I remember her exact words because it was one of the most excruciating moments of my life, 'Casy told me that he slept with you to hurt my feelings, but it's not true is it?"
I said no. It hurt with my entire being, but to this day it feels like the correct response for the situation.
I felt like I had no free will that summer. I felt like I was being controlled by these guys who didn't give a damn about me. That summer Kiko went on to 'borrow' around $800 from me for various things. One time he came to my house for a few hundred to "bail him out of jail", and told me that his 15 year old girlfriend was waiting in the car and had made him pull over to fuck him before he saw me. He drove my car, he used me completely.
I just got back onto Facebook about 2 months ago. Kiko tried to add me as a friend. I finally couldn't stand for it. It's been over 10 years. I wrote him a message that I did not view the time we shared as a positive experience for me and that I wish he would never, ever contact me again.
I haven't heard from him since.
I was unprepared. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and that summer I had more freedom than ever before. I was about to go to college in a few months across the ocean, across the continent even. So I think my parents decided that there wasn't a whole lot left to do at that point, not that my mom didn't at least try to keep some tabs on where I was if I didn't come home. But I had older friends through my job and access to a lot of alcohol and unfortunately a car. It's god's gift to me that I only damaged the car in my drunk driving escapades.
I don't remember exactly how I came to be on the east side of the island in the vacation home of a visiting Canadian college student and his buddies, but I was excited because one of them even went to the college that I was about to attend! There was a lot of drinking, these guys were over 21 so they could purchase alcohol in the states, and there ended up being a lot of sex, wanted and unwanted, but I never really knew which was which.
That night I was drinking, I was tired, and I had a long drive home, so I was ready to sleep in anybody's bed just to avoid the tiresome drive home and the alcohol made Sean attractive to me. When I was 17, I thought that anybody in their 20s was automatically cool because they have life experience, they're independent, they know what they're doing. I wanted to be cool like them. Now I'm 28 and I realize the opposite.
Sean and I did it, it wasn't too unpleasant, but it wasn't exactly great either and for whatever reason, maybe as a brag to his buddies, he left a very large hickey on my neck. It wasn't a passionate, heat of the moment, accidental hickey. It was a purposeful, deep dark bruise of a hickey.
Kiko took it as an invitation. Kiko was from my island and somehow had come to know Sean and Julian who were visiting from Canada and they all partied together. So one night, Kiko hands me a rum and coke in an orange plastic cup filled to the brim that is literally a liter in volume. I say thanks, thinking it's nice of him to offer me a drink and it makes me feel included in the group. I'm naive and don't realize that he's getting me drunk.
Kiko fucked me all night long, and from what I remember it was fun for the most part. I thought that we were doing what people do when they fall in love. I'm sure I thought at some point, that maybe this would be the man I married. I didn't know it at that moment, but he was actually already dating a girl who was 2 years younger than me.
I didn't call this experience a rape, but after writing this, I guess this was the first rape of this summer. I don't know if calling it a rape really helps me though. It's a scary word that I still don't know how to define. If you're drunk, but seem willing, is it a rape? If you regret it later, was it a rape? Are men to be blamed for 'raping' someone if it seemed like the person was interested at the time even thought they were wasted? At what age is one meant to take responsibility for knowing if it is an appropriate situation in which to have sex with someone? If the woman had an orgasm, was it a rape?
The rape that I felt traumatized by, was when I was solidly blacked out. I think we were taking shots of something and I had a friend with me this time, at the vacation home on the east side of the island. She had recently moved to the islands because she had been forcefully gang raped by a small group of boys that she went to high school with and she couldn't stay at her school with all the judgement and accusation that she was lying. She was taking refuge at her mother's best friends house, who was my drama teacher at the time. She too changed her name.
There were two reasons I pieced together that I was raped. The first was because of my friend's recount of me being pulled by the arm to a bedroom and saying to her, 'I don't know what's happening'. The second was because the following day Kiko bought me flowers and while he presented them to me, he made fun of how I was slurring nonsense while he and his friend fucked me during my black out the previous evening.
My first reaction was shame. I wasn't very experienced with sex and I didn't want to be bad at it. My second reaction was anger at my friend for not recognizing what was happening and preventing it. At this point in time, I'm sorry that after her own trauma that she was put in this position. I'm sure that she felt remorse about the situation as well, although I have not had the opportunity to discuss it with her, nor do I know if she wants to talk about it.
After all this, the other man I mentioned, Julian, whom I was so excited to meet because he went to the university I was about to attend told me, with entitlement, that it was now his turn to fuck me. I said no. He was so butt-hurt by the situation, that when I ran into him on campus thousands of miles away from all this bullshit, he continued to ask me for a couple of years. He even offered to have a threesome with me and his girlfriend at the time. He was really desperate to get his chance.
I literally could not get physically away from this rape. Kiko has tried numerous times to add me as a friend on Facebook. I got off Facebook for a few years because I was tired of his attempts. I felt harassed, I felt out of control, I felt terrified.
After the rape by Kiko and his friend, I continue to sleep with both of them, though never at the same time. I became close friends with the friend's girlfriend even because we were all hanging out together. Her name was Lauren and she was quite a bit older than me and I thought she was so cool and fun to be around. One night the friend told Lauren that he had been fucking me and she asked me point blank mid-sob if it were true. I remember her exact words because it was one of the most excruciating moments of my life, 'Casy told me that he slept with you to hurt my feelings, but it's not true is it?"
I said no. It hurt with my entire being, but to this day it feels like the correct response for the situation.
I felt like I had no free will that summer. I felt like I was being controlled by these guys who didn't give a damn about me. That summer Kiko went on to 'borrow' around $800 from me for various things. One time he came to my house for a few hundred to "bail him out of jail", and told me that his 15 year old girlfriend was waiting in the car and had made him pull over to fuck him before he saw me. He drove my car, he used me completely.
I just got back onto Facebook about 2 months ago. Kiko tried to add me as a friend. I finally couldn't stand for it. It's been over 10 years. I wrote him a message that I did not view the time we shared as a positive experience for me and that I wish he would never, ever contact me again.
I haven't heard from him since.
Monday, August 8, 2016
A Root of Pain
I recently read a book by an author that dubs herself Aspen Matis, called "Girl in the Woods". I'm a big non-fiction writer and I'm somewhat obsessed with reading about distance hikes such as the PCT and the AT. I bulk ordered a bunch of books that I had made a list of through looking them up on amazon and then checking out the, 'these people also bought' section. I ended up getting more than I bargained for.
The premise: Aspen, aka Deborah, was a freshman in college when she was raped. Raised by an overbearing mother who didn't know how to foster independence in her child, she felt helpless in the situation. In order to gain the independence she lacked, and overcome this experience, she drops out of school and hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.
It was hard to read this book because I could relate to this girl's rape experience almost exactly. From the hanging out with a small group, having just started college, and ending up in a situation where I too felt helpless. I even ended up changing my name as well. It sucks in more ways than one, because now I kick myself wondering why didn't I just kick that asshole out of my house. Hah. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn't.
It became long and drawn out because Francois was butt-hurt that I didn't want to be his girlfriend, after he pressured me into having sex I didn't want to have with him. So he decided to punish me by harassing me with phone calls from him and his buddies about how they wanted to fuck me and slut-hate notes addressed to me on the door of my friend's dorm room. I eventually went to school services and they threatened to kick him out of school unless he left me alone.
But that wasn't my first rape, and it also wasn't the most painful.
It's unfortunate that these situations present themselves. I mean I think back now and I wonder why in the heck would someone want to have sex with an unwilling partner? How could we have been so on a different page that he thought that we should walk to school together the next day holding hands, when I couldn't wait for him to get the heck out of my house? Why didn't I feel that I had the power over my body to kick him out after the first few 'nos'? Questions that haunt me.
If this story isn't too difficult to read, then continue to Part II: The first rape.
The premise: Aspen, aka Deborah, was a freshman in college when she was raped. Raised by an overbearing mother who didn't know how to foster independence in her child, she felt helpless in the situation. In order to gain the independence she lacked, and overcome this experience, she drops out of school and hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.
It was hard to read this book because I could relate to this girl's rape experience almost exactly. From the hanging out with a small group, having just started college, and ending up in a situation where I too felt helpless. I even ended up changing my name as well. It sucks in more ways than one, because now I kick myself wondering why didn't I just kick that asshole out of my house. Hah. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn't.
It became long and drawn out because Francois was butt-hurt that I didn't want to be his girlfriend, after he pressured me into having sex I didn't want to have with him. So he decided to punish me by harassing me with phone calls from him and his buddies about how they wanted to fuck me and slut-hate notes addressed to me on the door of my friend's dorm room. I eventually went to school services and they threatened to kick him out of school unless he left me alone.
But that wasn't my first rape, and it also wasn't the most painful.
It's unfortunate that these situations present themselves. I mean I think back now and I wonder why in the heck would someone want to have sex with an unwilling partner? How could we have been so on a different page that he thought that we should walk to school together the next day holding hands, when I couldn't wait for him to get the heck out of my house? Why didn't I feel that I had the power over my body to kick him out after the first few 'nos'? Questions that haunt me.
If this story isn't too difficult to read, then continue to Part II: The first rape.
Monday, August 1, 2016
So I have a little love obsession...
Full disclosure, I came on the blog just now to rant about love, and saw my previous post. HHAAHAHA! Hilarious. A drunken rant about love that I had forgotten about because I had been drunk when I wrote it.
Well suffice to say, I'm not as baby obsessed. I'm sure it'll come back, but hopefully it'll wait a few years. I don't want to mate. I don't mind having regular sex. And I currently am, which may be the reason I'm feeling a little less obsessed with love.
I don't feel as occupied by it. Though, as always, I still feel like I could be even less occupied by it. But less will suffice.
Part of it is that I have a lot of other stuff on mind mind anyways.
I'm about to move, I'm about to do what is, for me, a fairly serious solo camping trip. I'm trying to sell a house and get rid of 50 years of accumulation of someone else's treasures. My eye won't stop twitching and I've become somewhat obsessed with exercising, but I'm still getting enough sleep.
I've actually been spending quite a bit of time alone, despite the feeling of being busy. Exercise is a lone activity for the most part. Even when I'm at the gym, it often feels like we're all in our own lone little worlds. I like it. It's like being at the library in a sense.
But love, love is stressful. Love is a hassle. Love is about convenience. Romance doesn't exist. Bah to love. And luckily love isn't bothering me too much at the moment.
Well suffice to say, I'm not as baby obsessed. I'm sure it'll come back, but hopefully it'll wait a few years. I don't want to mate. I don't mind having regular sex. And I currently am, which may be the reason I'm feeling a little less obsessed with love.
I don't feel as occupied by it. Though, as always, I still feel like I could be even less occupied by it. But less will suffice.
Part of it is that I have a lot of other stuff on mind mind anyways.
I'm about to move, I'm about to do what is, for me, a fairly serious solo camping trip. I'm trying to sell a house and get rid of 50 years of accumulation of someone else's treasures. My eye won't stop twitching and I've become somewhat obsessed with exercising, but I'm still getting enough sleep.
I've actually been spending quite a bit of time alone, despite the feeling of being busy. Exercise is a lone activity for the most part. Even when I'm at the gym, it often feels like we're all in our own lone little worlds. I like it. It's like being at the library in a sense.
But love, love is stressful. Love is a hassle. Love is about convenience. Romance doesn't exist. Bah to love. And luckily love isn't bothering me too much at the moment.
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