Ripped Open and Bleeding

In the past few weeks I have been in an emotional state I have not been able to penetrate through. I spent more time in tears then I had sleeping. I felt a sense of frustration as I emotionally had past sexual trauma weighing heavy on my mind and in my heart.

 

My conception was a product of rape. I grew up around abuse. I watched my mother and father argue with each other, sometimes leading to physical abuse. I suffered from nasty “terms of endearment” and never felt like I was enough. By the time I was five I had been sexually assaulted by a neighbour and an uncle. I look back now and see the things I did to make myself “ugly” as to not attract attention to myself. I wore dirty clothes, had greasy hair and always kept my head down. I somehow thought if I could just fade into the background life would be better.

 

Once my mother and father divorced life got a little better. Mom was not as angry, that was good. My dad was in and out of my life – I always wanted to feel loved by him but never really did. I remember the pain I felt knowing he lived in an apartment below me with another woman and her children but I still never saw him. When I did, he came bearing gifts but the visit was always short lived.

 

At around twelve years old I started noticing boys and they started noticing my developing body. I stopped trying to look ugly and started looking for ways to attract their attention. I became very active in sports and I found my competitive streak. I strived to be better then everyone else playing, running or competing. I wanted to hear how good I was and wanted to be the star. I became the over achiever in hopes of gaining the attention I wanted as a child.

 

At fourteen I was moved to a new town and immediately fell into the group of troubled (problem) teens. I was flirting with boys much older and experienced than me. I was walking a path that was filled with dangers such as drinking, drugs and sex. I was sneaking out of my house, sneaking into bars; sneaking out of class….I was doing a lot of sneaking. I was living a facade of being someone older, stronger and wiser then I really was.

 

At fifteen I had sex for the first time with my consent. It screwed with my head like no ones business. I felt used but did not know how to deal with that feeling. My answer…to have sex with more people. I never felt good about it. In fact I usually felt hurt, sad and abused.

 

At sixteen I was raped by a boyfriend. By this stage of my life I had to know tender love regarding sex. My self esteem was extremely low and I had zero self worth. Before I turned seventeen I was pregnant and in so much pain. I hated myself. I hated my environment. I hated and felt alone.

 

There came a time in my early twenties where I was determined to never be a victim again. I was going to be in total control of my sexuality. I believed my only asset was a great pair of tits and my ass was round and firm. I truly believed this was my worth – tits and ass. I partied hard. Drank way too much and often involved myself in casual sex with strangers. I was trying to fill myself up from an outside source. I allowed men to use me sexually and all the while told myself I was the one in control. If I did not want to engage in sex and the guy pushed I would convince myself that I had changed my mind as a way to ensure I was never raped again.  What I did not understand was each time I allowed for this I was actually raping myself, my soul; my inner child was being abused.

 

Yes, I was in pain. I was feeling for the first time ever the hurt, the sadness, the pain of every time my body was used in a sexual way. I felt like I was dying.

 

I spent the weekend volunteering at a relationship course. This is not the first time I have volunteered but this was the first time I really did not know if I could be of service to the participants. I was so full in my head I could not imagine stepping outside of it and not feeling the intense emotions that I was experiencing.

 

I went to the course and for the Friday and Saturday I was able to step outside my head and be of service to the people who were attending.  Sunday was another story. I woke up and was raw with emotion. I could not stop the tears that were flowing from my eyes. I drove to the course with the music blaring. When I got there I sat in my car and continued to talk to myself about “pulling it together”. I knew I had to be able to support others and this was not a good time to break down.

 

The day was an emotional hell. My friend put me into the process of the exercises and I went deep. I was not sure where I was going to end up on the other side but I knew this was the moment to go for “it”. When I was placed in the singles practice I started to gain some insight to what was going on. I felt immediate tension in my body because a man was in the room. Taking the time to assess the situation I chuckled knowing that the man in the room was one I trusted enough to walk in front of naked and know he would never violate me, yet I had this mistrust in my body….Oh, I am not trusting men in general right now…OK, I can handle that.

 

I went into the practice and I talked to my “perfect partner” about why I was making him wait for me. I talk to him about the frustration I was feeling about the blockage I was coming up against in the moment and how I just needed him to be a little more patient. I explained to him that I was so close to getting thorough this blockage that I could the other side, feel the other side, I just could not penetrate it. After the exercise was completed the facilitator (my friend) asked if she could share some insight with me. She suggested that maybe the veil I had referred to was not meant to be penetrated; perhaps it was meant to envelop me and be a part of my moving forward.  Immediately I made the insight wrong. It went against everything I had ever known about the moving through my sexual traumas.

 

The course ended and I went home. I continued to cry and continued to feel such sorrow and pain. I could not understand why now (this time round) it hurt so badly. I called a couple of friends and tried to talk through the process but continued to come against the same barrier.  It was during one of the calls when I was crying so hard I thought I was going to drown in my tears that I started to understand that I was trying to penetrate my emotional state. I was trying to penetrate, use logic and disconnect my emotions from the sexual traumas – just the way I was taught…OMG! I had never allowed myself to FEEL the hurt, or the pain. I had always disconnected myself from the actual act of sexual trauma and had used logic to work through what I was not allowing myself to feel.

 

Now I was a total mess. I got that I needed to feel and in that moment I allowed, gave myself permission to REALLY FEEL the hurt, the pain, the trauma. I gave my little girl the opportunity to be heard and not made wrong. I gave the teenager in me the opportunity to be angry and feel distrust. I gave the young woman in me the permission to forgive herself and feel the heartache of never allowing love into her life….Together we all cried. We all mourned and all felt the pain together.

 

I am now a few days into the mourning. My tears have mostly dried up but are still just below the surface. Once in a while I feel them flow and it brings a smile to my face and in my heart as I feel the freedom entering my soul. There has been a major shift in my relationship with the man I am “seeing” as we connected for the first time on a really deep level. He felt I was in pain and he wanted to make me feel safe – which he did. He got that I was okay, which I am. I got a real chance to show him I trusted him by allowing him the space to hold me when I felt such sorrow in my body. I trusted him to hold my space and he did it without fail. Slowly and all at once my healing is coming full circle and it is an amazing feeling.