One Damned Thing After Another

"Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it, and privately we excuse and overlook it." ~ Victoria Billings (1856-1950) Pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw Irish playwright & critic

"Life is just one damned thing after another." ~ Elbert Hubbard

Last week the topic of conversation with my therapist was the ways sexual abuse altered my life. The obvious first answer to that would be the profound lack of trust I have in men. That doesn't mean all men, nor does it mean that I'm unable to be emotionally close with men. After all, I've been married for almost 31 years now to the same man. It's further complicated by the fact that my upbringing and the years of abuse I suffered in my childhood has also had a very negative impact on my ability to trust, generally.

In the course of exploring this issue, I related to her the circumstances of my first chosen sexual experience. The boy I dated in high school applied a lot of pressure to get on birth control pills so we could have sex. I didn't do it, in part because I thought there was a very strong possibility that sex had become so contaminated for me that I might find myself hating anyone I slept with. I loved Michael, but I broke up with him because of that fear. I decided that the best course of action for me was to find someone with whom I had absolutely no emotional connection and use that person as a test case.

My first week or so in college gave me the opportunity to carry out the plan. I kept seeing this great looking guy around campus, but I thought I probably wasn't good looking enough for him to notice me. One of my friends and I ran into him (Dave) in one of the co-ed dorm hallways and he invited us back to his room. Needless to say, we went. I'm not exactly sure of what the sequence of events were, but finally we were alone. We had been making out before, but when everyone else left, things just naturally proceeded down the road toward making love. That was fine by me. However, as he entered me, I began experiencing a lot of pain (I mean a lot). I asked him to stop, but he didn't. at some point, I began screaming for him to stop, but he didn't.I slept over that night and when we got up the next day, it was apparent that he wanted to have a relationship with me. I gave it my best shot, but I think I was enraged with him that he didn't stop. (Unfortunately, it's taken me 30 years to figure that out.) He continued to call and we continued to hang out together, but we never had sex again. After a couple of weeks, I managed to extricate myself from the situation.

The curious thing about all of this is that, up until last week, I didn't really count that experience as rape. If anyone else had related the same events, I would never have any hesitation to label it as such. I'm a feminista....how could I not see it as rape? Well the answer to that question is obvious in some ways. Gabrielle, my therapist, had no trouble whatsoever in identifying it as rape. At some point Saturday, I started to try to put that experience within the context of all of my relationships. It was quite unsettling. It was so unsettling, in fact, that I was too overwhelmed to continue. I think I need to make this exploration slowly, but now isn't the time. for now, I'm holding it in my heart and allowing things to come to fruition without intellectualizing.