Not What You Want To Hear

I have briefly mentioned my rape. What a funny way to say that. Like I am claiming it as mine when I had nothing to do with it, no control, no choice and no means to stop it.

What it did to me was totally separate sex from love. Imagine a 30-something woman, wife and mother raised in a Christian home and your brain disassociates from this major belief.

It was my brain’s way of protecting myself from all the trauma, but the results were not good. Did I become promiscuous? Yes. A slut? No. Not in my opinion anyway. Just very nonchalant about sex. Even with my husband. I was open for new ideas. Ideas that put to the test that sex and love did not have to co-exist.

However, I eventually was able to connect sex and love again although it took years, literally. I was no longer promiscuous but love never meant the same as it did before. In fact, I am not sure I have experienced true love and not sure I want to give up that much control after I have worked so hard to regain it. This pretty much explains why I am lonely.

What I would like you to learn from this is to be honest with your therapist, but more important, yourself. They can’t help you if you hide any part of the truth from them and yourself, which I did. I couldn’t bear to tell them what the ‘real’ result of the trauma was and admit I was not handling it as well as I thought I was. RED FLAG!

I also suffer PTSD. At the weirdest times, I will have a panic attack at the sound of a gun being cocked on TV, walking across a parking lot in broad daylight, being alone in an elevator with a strange man, etc.

It has gotten much better, but I assume it will never go away completely. If after 30+ years it hasn’t completely left me, I live with it. RED FLAG!

Next, I will begin the talk about the financial downfall of my life and give you some insight on how to avoid the mistakes I made. Beware, this will also be a hard read, because I take the blame for the mistakes I made. The reasons for making those mistakes, I can’t accept all the blame. Interested? I hope so. Read on…