SOUL CRUSHING PAIN

I was jolted out of bed about two hours after falling asleep last night due to a horrific nightmare I was having. I tried to open my eyes and focus in the darkness on the fact that I was in the safety of my own room and not back at the hotel where I was abducted to and raped at. There was a little bit of light coming in my window from the streetlight and within several minutes after looking around, I calmed down. I struggled to fall back asleep because I was still having flashes of that night. Eventually I fell asleep only to fall back into another nightmare of the night I was violently assaulted and raped. This pattern of falling asleep and waking up every hour and a half or so went on for the entirety of the night until I just got out of bed at five this morning.

It has been a long time since my assault has affected me in such a soul crushing way. I have kept is buried for so long. First with drugs and alcohol and then with the commitment to sobriety and rebuilding my life. Now I am trying to do the work to heal, and it is turning me inside out. It is extremely difficult to try to process and work through this completely sober. I see his face constantly even though he is nowhere near me. I hear his voice, his threats in my ear even though no one is speaking. I can feel his grip on my wrists as he is pinning me against the wall, but he is not here. These sights, sounds and feelings are intermittently taking over and tricking my mind into believing them. When I first awoke last night and slowly opened my eyes to the streetlight coming in my window, what I saw was the parking lot light peeking through the hotel curtain and illuminating his face just enough for me to see the rage in his eyes.

I’m trying my best to be present in my daily life; doing my best at work and being a present mom at home. I’m challenged; however, by my own mind. I’m typing at my desk one minute and in the next I’m being bent over a hotel room desk by such extreme force. One of his hands holding down my right wrist and the other holding down my neck as he rapes me from behind. The left side of my face smashed down on the desk, and pain just traveling through my entire body. I don’t know how to take back control over my mind. It comes out of nowhere and it takes extreme effort on my part to pull myself back to reality and out of the flashback. I keep trying to refocus my thoughts, but I seem to have minimal control. Maybe I am expecting too much from myself. Maybe now that I am sober, I just need to sit with the soul crushing pain that the memories bring on. Maybe what I need is to grieve everything he took from me that night.

My heart is aching really hard now as I remember what happened to me with a sober mind because I am reminded not only of the terror and physical and soul crushing pain but the fact that I was too weak to do anything about it and let him get away with it. I just let him think he could beat and rape and torture a woman and there were no consequences. The struggle to make peace with that is overwhelming. No one should EVER have to endure what I did that night. NO ONE deserves to be violated in such a horrific way. I’m feeling less than human right now. When I look in the mirror all I am able to see right now is someone who is damaged, dirty, less than. My therapist would say that is not true and if I was speaking to someone who had been raped, I would also tell them that is not true, so why is it that I cannot get past that thought when I look at myself?