In July of last year I wrote a blog post detailing my experience with sexual assault. You can read it here. It was therapeutic to finally open up about it and the response to it was so encouraging. I had so much fear when I wrote and then published it publicly for the first time, so to receive private messages from people sharing their experiences and the public support did my heart a world of good.
Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago. I am in school pursuing a degree in social work. I have hardly had any social work related classes thus far, but began a new class that was going to be relevant to my degree. I was happy about this….then I read the first week’s reading and assignment from the text. The title of the chapter was “Gender, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sexism. There were no internal alarm bells until I reached a section of the chapter titled, “Examine Rape and Sexual Assault.” At first I thought this would be good to look at from a social and human behavior perspective. It would be more clinical and less personal. The alarm bells went off when I read the definition of rape. The definition reads as follows (please understand that this definition does get specific):
“Rape is forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. This can include forced oral sexual activity, penile-vaginal sexual activity, and anal sexual activity.*”
When I read this definition I was smacked in the face with the reality that what I actually experienced was not sexual assault, it was indeed rape. You may be asking why this matters. It’s just semantics at this point, right? The realization that I was sexually violated is enough, right? No. It’s not enough. Language actually does matter. At least for me it does.
The importance of language in my story is hidden. You see, in my mind, for who knows what reason, sexual assault was bad. It was terrible. But it wasn’t as terrible as rape. Rape was a notch above. When I originally shared my story, calling my experience sexual assault was me still downplaying what actually happened. I still wasn’t holding that man to the full responsibility of his actions. I was still trying to protect the person who victimized me in some sort of way. I didn’t want to call it rape because I didn’t want to be another statistic. I didn’t want to exaggerate what happened. I didn’t want to believe that I was a victim of rape. By calling it something different, I was still avoiding part of the truth. I felt weak and angry about all it.
Let me pause and say that I understand that there is no difference between the severity of sexual assault versus rape. I in no way want to minimize another person’s experience with actual sexual assault as if it’s less traumatic than rape. When I talk about my mindset, I realized that I was making that distinction unconsciously as a way of coping and self-protection. Once I had this awareness, I was able to process how twisted my thinking was.
I continued reading the chapter and didn’t totally process it because I focused on getting my assignment done. I did have a short conversation with my husband about it and one of the things I mentioned was that I didn’t seem to deal with the after affects that many women do. As a result, I was experiencing a bit of survivors guilt. And then a couple days after this conversation, he was holding me while I sat on our stairs crying (my husband is awesome and I am so blessed to have him!). It was the first moment I had to really process the weight of what I realized earlier in the week. While I still don’t experience a lot of the serious side effects many deal with after going through this kind of trauma, I quickly realized that I’m not totally unaffected either. This man has had enough power over me in the past already, he doesn’t get any more.
Why am I writing this? It’s two-fold. First, it’s part of a healing process for me to talk about it openly. I know that I will never get the accountability/apology I deserve from that man for raping me. I’m quite certain that he would vehemently deny that he did it. I have decided, for many reasons, not to pursue anything in the legal system or personally confront him. So my healing process comes in other therapeutic forms. One of them is through writing—bringing dark things into the light.
Secondly, I hope that maybe my story will help someone else. Perhaps a woman or young girl will realize her worth. Perhaps it will help another process their trauma a little more. My faith tells me that God brings good out of horrible things. That is my hope. He makes beauty from ashes. So I hand Him my ashes and let Him make them beautiful again. How that will happen, I’m not sure. What that will look like, I’m not sure. But that is my hope.
Last, I want to speak to those who have experienced rape or sexual assault. Know that you are not alone. Know that what happened to you was NOT your fault in any way. IT. IS. NOT. YOUR. FAULT. You did nothing to deserve it, invite it, or desire it. You are not a victim, you are a survivor. You can heal. Reach out. Find a trauma informative therapist/counselor. You don’t have to carry this alone because….me too.
*Understanding Human Behavior and Social Environment by Charles H. Zastrow, Karen K. Kirst-Ashman, and Sarah Hessenauer 433-434
