A Response To A Personal Rape Story Post And The Struggles To Get Passed It (Touchy Subject)

Eventually, I started living all of my fantasies and being proud that I understood how to communicate to my partner my fantasies and my rape story. I am thrilled to be a member of such a welcoming community and I hope to learn how to help other rape survivors or sexual assault survivors reclaim their sexuality!!

My comment:

I too am trying to find myself…I lost my husband and I lost my friends and family and I am trying to figure out who I am after the fact. I stopped drinking and I have tried getting back up on my feet after it being two years since it happened. It changed me and not in a good way. I have no idea who I am anymore and what I am doing in this life and I felt like I would never get the fire within me back again. Reading things like this gives me hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. There is a chance to relive and maybe find a different self, one who might be stronger and more confident than the last one. What I am trying to say is thank you for sharing. Makes me feel so much better and happy that you have broken free from this. I am happy for you! Keep inspiring ❤

It has been a scary journey.

I have had difficulty trying to be normal. By normal I mean not freaking out or overthink everything.

Since the incident, I have had the reverse effect on me. I was not timid by sex, I have become an addict.  By that, I mean that I had no control over boundaries.

I lost who I was and all my morals went out the window.

I am not proud of the girl I have become.

I am ashamed of myself. I have been ashamed for a long time and I deserve to be ashamed. I ruined my marriage. I ruined my happy family because I let the abuser win. I let him get under my skin. It still does not excuse what I did.

I have been lying to my friends and I have been lying to myself but what I did was all my fault.

I am not talking about the incident, I am talking about the aftermath. What happened to me after the fact. I started to talk to people online because I had no friends at the time. By that, I mean I had no one close to me. I pushed my family away, I pushed the only friends I had away, and I pushed my own husband away. I let no one in. Not even him.

I drank and drank alcohol and I would not stop. I woke to drink and I went to bed with a bottle of wine. Alcohol was my best friend. It kept me at bay from the urge to go out of control. It made me feel numb and my head stopped spinning with questions and it made me think of one thing at a time. I could have talked to someone about what happened but I didn’t. That was my first mistake. I kept the information with me and I think I will until the day I die because it is something I think I would NEVER feel comfortable talking about.

The effects it had on me

My sex drive was a major problem. I went from wanting sex twice a day to wanting it ALL THE TIME. I mean I never wanted to stop. I found drinking stopped the train of thought for me and it helped me drastically. I went from never watching porn to watching it whenever I could. I was drunk at work and I came home and tried so hard not to go overboard while my ex-husband worked.

A little TMI, but sometimes when I tried to make love with my ex-husband I used to buckle up and freeze. There was a red flashing light of danger in my head and I would have to push him off while I cried. He tried to soothe me and hug me, but for some reason, I could not have him touch me for a long time. Other days I would be bringing sex toys, ropes, whips, and while he wanted to make “love” I wanted it “rough”. He was always confused on what I wanted. Some days I would be fragile, so paper thin that nothing could touch me without tearing me apart and other days I would be hard as stone and acted like everything was fine and I didn’t care what happened to me.

Porn was my best friend and I would watch and masturbate whenever I had the chance and then, in a flash, the urge was gone and I would feel horrible.

My ex did not like that. We tried to talk about it and because of the way my stupid brain worked, I built a wall and guarded myself every single time. He tried to set up dates and we tried to rekindle after the incident and it always ended with a fight, because I started it. I grew defensive over my actions because I had no idea how I felt about them myself because I knew that was not me. I was changing, every day I grew more and more impatient and more paranoid over nothing. I stopped talking to guy friends because I thought they all wanted one thing (even though I am a fat cow) but I could not shake the idea of someone wanting me for ME.

My confidence and self-worth took a plunge.

I did not want to do anything. I once had enough courage within me to get up every day despite my depression and my anxiety and tackle my problems as they came no matter how shitty I felt. But this was far worse. I felt like it was just me against the world. I thought I was competing with thousands of people and in reality, no one was. Nobody cared. I started to feel like a bother to everyone more than usual as days went on that I started to completely stop talking to the people I knew. I never left the house to our scheduled date night and even the ones that he suggested we do out of the blue. My ex-husband tried, again and again, telling me I am beautiful, smart, wonderful, etc and all I got from that was that I was SUPER needy.

Then it went from that to not feeling good enough for anyone. I would get kissed every morning and before either of us went to work as a reassurance we loved each other and I just felt like it was all a lie. No one loved me. I thought no one did but just pretended that they did to get something out of me and I had to figure out what it was. What did these people want from me? I thought my ex just wanted sex. That was all I was good for. We would kiss and get passionate and then, like a switch, it flipped off and I would tear away and I would go off and drink because I knew I was being irrational. I stopped going to my mother’s house where before I would visit her all the time and I would love to stay for hours. But with the competition mentality, I thought I was not good enough to beat my mother’s house. What kind of child am I? What am I worth to her? What did she want from me? More than what I was giving her and my siblings.

I grew guilty right in every situation and I could not help but feel helpless and trapped in my own mind. I knew this was all wrong and I needed to seek help because I was surely going insane. No people in the right mind feel this anxious and crazy when around people. I could not sleep. I stayed awake thinking about the past. I replayed EVERY SINGLE bad thing I have ever done and it would eat me up, no matter how irrelevant it was. I would have nightmares of people taking everything from me and tossing me away when they were done with me.

How I really ruined my marriage

I grew lonely. I had no one to talk to, I thought no one would understand me. I thought I was crazy and when I heard myself I knew there was something wrong with me and I did not want to be judged on this. I wanted people to see the happy Norma they all knew and loved, not the one who was paranoid and never spoke. I found writing out my problems was so much simpler and made me feel better. I would write in journals but it did not work. After a few entries, it felt like I was talking to only myself and I knew I needed to tell someone. I knew I needed to speak to someone about it. There was no use keeping it all bottled inside. I tried to bring it up with friends, but then soon realized I lost them all when I pushed them away. There were a few people I could have talked to but at the time I did not know how much I could share with a person. I did not know them well enough to talk about what happened with me that I ruled it out. Everyone knew me as something else. No one would understand.

So I decided to go online. One night I was talking to a few of my friends and one said she used to go on this chatting app where you can talk to people from all over. I decided to give it a shot with them because it seemed like fun. We had a few laughs and the night ended. I thought about how fun it was to be completely anonymous and you could just tell random people anything. I went on a few time on my own to get a feel of the chats and I soon grasped the ropes. I talked to a few people and I made friends but I never shared anything with them until one night I met someone.

We will call him Max.

Long story short, I confided in him. We talked for a good amount a day and we soon talked non stop. We went to the gym together (over the phone) and we motivated each other to seize the day. My ex-husband was not a jealous type and knew the old me enough that I would not seek anything more than just a friendly talk. He went off and did his own thing and bettering himself. He started to go to the gym himself and eating better and catching up on his video games and shows because he thought that was all I needed…a good friend.

What did I take his self-improvement as? Neglect.

I thought he was neglecting me and he wasn’t. Max and I would talk about it on day to day basis because he too had a daughter and a girlfriend that he had been with for a few years. We talked about what we didn’t like about our significant other and we would try to make each others day. He would complain and I would nag about literally nothing and it became clear that he wanted more than just to chat. After a while, he started telling me things like, “I wish my girl was more like you.” “I love the way you look, your man is one lucky guy.” “I wish I met you years ago.” And things started to drift that way while I did not stop it. I would accept the compliment. He was the first person I talked to about the rape fully and it was a breath of fresh air. I felt like I could fully trust Max.

But things went south.

I trusted Max too much. He was very manipulative and took advantage when I was down. I will take responsibility what happened next because I was the one who also did it.

Max would ask me why my husband would leave in the middle of the night to the gym. I would confidently say he was just working out, that is what he likes to do. Max would give the “Eh…I don’t know. Late at night? At this hour? Does not sound like that to me. To me, I think he is cheating.” I would refuse to believe it until I would say goodbye to him at the door or when he did not come home from work and go straight there. My paranoia was skyrocketing. I was fuming with jealousy thinking about a secret affair that was not happening. A simple talk to my husband could have stopped that train of thought right on its tracks, but I did not speak one word to him. I would drink and talk to this Max guy. Max gave me pointers on what to do to get his attention back and I bought the lingerie and all the kinky things I could find to make him “want me again”. My ex-was not that kind of guy. He could appreciate a good kink, but he was not one to need it. Because of the way I treated sex earlier he has been careful on the subject and took it slow with me. Max would tell me it was because this other girl was giving him what he wanted and that I was just something he could “do” in the meantime.

One night Max advised me to surprise him. To show up to my ex-husband’s work wearing my lingerie under my long trench coat and rock his world on the way home. I thought it was a great idea. Right when I got in the car and called, my ex told me he was already on his way to the gym, he did not need a ride. I was irrationally upset that night. I went home and drank soo much tequila that I was slurring words and was beyond the care of not giving a damn. Max was listening to me cry over the phone and then suggested I go on skype so I would not do anything stupid. I did. We chatted for a little bit and I started to change into pajamas out of view. Max seemed to like that and asked to see how my weight loss was going (at the time, I was progressing). I walked over drunk and laughed holding my fat telling him I looked like a whale and his look stopped me cold. His eyes were glued to me the way my ex husband’s were back when we first met. I grew embarrassed and put my coat back on. He asked me not to and he was saying all the right things to do things I should not have done.

I felt disgusted afterward and I kept thinking what I was going to tell my husband. This was not me. I would have never done those things before. But I did.

And I did it again and again, until the point where I did not feel guilty one bit, like if it was normal to be okay with wanting to have multiple sex partners. I thought sex was meaningless and that my worth came from how many times guys wanted me. I grew attached to Max and I told my ex about it. Not everything, but that I was “in love” with this guy and maybe it was best to break it off. My ex said no, he wanted to work it out. He said “take all the time you need. We will take a break. I know you will come back to me.” I took this as if he was being possessive. He thought I was his and it scared me. I was irrational and started making plans to run away to Max and start a new life. I became a cheating whore. He had a family and I wanted him to forget about her and for him to move in with me. Max saw how crazy all of this was making me and he cut me off. Blocked me from everything. But he too was right. He said, “Why don’t you work on your marriage and I will work on mine.” (I have always encouraged him not to speak badly of his girlfriend and to try to work it out numerous of times before). He was right. I was not myself at all.

After the incident and the Max thing…

I felt used, but I am sure my husband felt worse watching me crumble. But he could not take it anymore. One night I got hammered drunk again while my daughter was in the front room watching her shows when her dad walked in and saw me with the bottle in hand while I cried about how pathetic I was. He too saw how pathetic I was.  That was the first time he had EVER yelled at me.

It went along the lines of: “What in the hell is the matter with you?! Who are you?! I don’t even think I know you anymore! The Norma I fell in love with was not this! This is NOT YOU! What happened?! Let me in, God dammit! Why don’t you just help me and tell me what the hell is wrong with you!?” I shook my head and cried hysterically. By that time he had had enough: “Stop it! STOP FUCKING CRYING! PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER! Stop feeling sorry for yourself and just get passed this! You are stronger than this! I cannot deal with this anymore! I do not know what to do!…” He went on about how he has had enough of this behavior for the past five months and he was not going to put up with it.

I do not blame him. It was my fault. All of it. I let the situations that happened get to me. I had no idea who the hell I was anymore, I felt foreign to my own skin.

We stopped talking to each other and we were on and off again all the time because I suggested it. I started to feel distant and I started to think that just leaving was the best answer. He let me do whatever I wanted thinking I would come back, but I didn’t. It was me who left. Not him.

We grew so distant that we barely talked unless it was a friendly joke and no one else was around to hear it. We would try to sort out all our problems sometimes but my mind would go into FULL guilt mode and I felt unworthy to be with a man like him. He deserved better. There was no excuse good enough to excuse what I did.

I had a one night stand with a co-worker. I did things I did not know how to cope with. I got in deeper and deeper into this spiral of guilt and feeling free to do whatever I wanted because if others could, why couldn’t I?

My ex eventually moved out because he had it with me. I do not blame him. I blame myself. I started to talk on the chat site and that is where I met my current boyfriend and he had treated me with the utmost respect since the very beginning.

Dealing with it now?

Because everything I said until now was about a year or two ago.

I am still struggling to find out who I am to this day. I am learning to set up boundaries and what is a healthy sex drive and what are things I made up in my head.

Rumors and so many horrible things were said about me…and you know what? I deserve it. I do.

Max tried to come back into my life again and again and I have found that I was at least worth enough not to let myself be used whenever he wanted me. I cut all ties with the people I talked to during the dark time. I do not speak to the abuser. I do not mention him to anyone. He was a good friend of mine and we were close and I let him get too close. I should not have trusted to easy.

I am still stupidly trusting. I talked to random people online to meet up for a cup of coffee here in England because that is how lonely I feel now. I do not speak to the friends I have because I am ashamed of what I have become.

I was never a drunk when I was with them. I was not a cheating slut when I was with them. I had at least some self-esteem that I did not turn every conversation to something sad and morbid. I was not quiet, I was lively and bubbly.

Now I am none of those things and am scared that I will NEVER be again.

The original post?

I wish I could be her. I wish I did not go that low and let myself go. I wish I could be confident in my sexuality and I wish I was not the mess I am today. I admire her strength and I admire her vulnerability and I wish the healing process wasn’t so painful.

I am STILL trying.

I have decided to mark my progress here and there on my blog under Project Norma and it has been a horrible progress. It seems like I have gotten nowhere but I have support from my man, my ex-husband, and everyone else who still care about me when I did not care myself. I am grateful that I am not doing it alone and I feel like I should. I have hurt so many people and I sometimes still feel like I want to disappear.

I am not normal. I lost everything that was ME.

The hobbies I had before do not seem like hobbies I have now. I have tried to make peace with what happened and I cannot seem to. The nightmares are still there and my thought process is still the same. I cannot afford a therapist and I just want to bury it all in the past and I cannot seem to. It is all killing me.

The past always haunts me.

Hopefully one day I break free and I find some version of myself. Hopefully, I find a solid foundation and just build my way up…

One day, I will be strong again.