I was raped three years ago. Feb 12. Somehow I’m still here.
La Llorona is back. That’s the “nickname” I gave myself. During the first several months I’d weep uncontrollably for hours every day. Rereading my diary entries from the past several weeks I see with astonishing clarity just how much I’ve been breaking down and weeping. Weeping for hours, with my head resting on the cool porcelain of the bathroom sink, my left hand under the cool running water or laying on my head or wiping the slobber off my face. It’s not pretty.
Going outside means the turning on of continual low-grade anxiety. Depending on how people are out there, it may stay low or may increase. Today I was at the LGBT center, attending my coming out support group. I signed up for it because I longed to be in a safe setting where I could interact with people like me. Realizing that I needed more support than a casual group could give me, I broke down and wept to one of the group leaders about how terrible life feels. We talked about starting individual therapy. Today he told me that things are set and I can have my first talk with the counselor. Lately I’ve been in a “people suck” mindplace. As I walked down the hall with new hope of getting some relief through therapy, I felt myself melting a little inside and relaxing into my body. Before leaving the building, I went into the female-identified bathroom. There was a group of people inside with a few men. I felt weirded out by it but thought, “well, it is the lgbt center , people are a lot more flexible with gender, let it go.” As I was about to go inside a stall, I heard one of the guys saying, “You look like Rihanna”. I felt my insides melting a bit more, thinking, “See, not all people suck. Maybe I’ll feel better one day.” I start to say “Thank you.” I never finish because the guy cuts me off with “Psych!”
All I feel is dumbfounded shock. Then as it sinks in, searing pain and all my melty insides shriveling up.
I fall silent, my jaw sets and locks. I do my business in the stall. I come out. As I wash my hands, the guy is next to me and I feel emotions swirling in my body but I don’t know what to do or say in response to him. Then he starts saying at me, “RuPaul is here. Look, it’s RuPaul. RuPaul. RuPaul is here.” And all I feel is a new future scar forming and the pain building and the sense of confusion at what to do. I want to hurt him. I want to make him understand what he’s doing to me. But I don’t know how to do either. I looked at him at one point for like 3 seconds. Then as I was walking out one of his friends comes up to me and says “You’re so pretty”. All I feel is humiliation and pain and helplessness. I don’t know if she’s sincere or sarcastic. I softly say a half-hearted Thank You, walk out, and cry a little in a secluded nook. Then I spend the rest of the evening feeling really small and ugly and anxious, the way I felt as a biracial russian girl growing up in moscow. Being bullied and unaccepted because of how I looked. That’s 12 years spent feeling ugly and anxious and out of place not because of one bully at school, but because everyone around you was different from you and therefore normal. Those are deep pains. If someone puts me down for how I look, it rips open all that pain. Moreover, applying my makeup makes me feel cared for and pretty and like a girl, it counteracts the feelings of being gross damaged raped piece of decaying matter. Doing my makeup feels creative, fun, calming, healing and delightful. So telling me I look like a man who is made up like an exaggerated woman, was like stabbing me in my gushing rape wound. After that I just felt so ugly. I looked down at the ground, avoiding people’s eyes. Everyone seemed to be running into me. I felt my shoulders curling forward, my back slumping. I felt like everyone saw me as a ridiculous ugly girl who looks like a guy that’s trying to look like a girl. On the bus ride home, I looked at my reflection in the windows. I found myself really pretty in a pleasing tasteful way. But those words continued to make me feel small and ugly, even in the face of my own uncontrollable positive reaction to my reflection.
People suck.
And I don’t understand why life keeps being such a bitch when I’m one of the most sincere, goodwilling, peace-loving, caring people I know.
Why is it that when I let something in it seems to go Jekyll and Hide on me and then proceeds to destroy a part of me?
I was raped by someone in my buddhist community who was an upstanding member. I trusted the demon because they told me painful storied from their life. I listened intently and gave comforting words. And then, out of nowhere, I was being raped.
When I told a few trusted people in the community about it, they didn’t believe me, sided with the demon and they’re all still there to this day. 3 years later. And I’ve been ripped away from what felt like my spiritual home, and I have Rape Trauma Syndrome /PTSD, and I have to pay rent and take care of myself on my own because my family cannot help me, and I don’t know how the fuck I do it. Sometimes I fantasize about breaking down and people paying attention. Oh, when my daughter told me she was raped maybe she did mean it that the pain of the fallout was unbearable. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her to just leave it in her past and try to build a new life.
I wish my apartment was soundproof. I can never really let go and have my crying match the intensity of what I’m feeling. You’d think that after having my heart shredded to pieces I’d have a comfortable setting in which to let the wails out.
People suckkkkk.
It’s 5am, i work at 2:30pm.
Haaaa. I can’t, even….
Thank you, my Tumblr, for listening.
