By madam diva

When I was 16 I frantically tore out the pages of my grade 8 diary and burnt them on my back porch. I was terrified that someone had been in my room and had read the gut-wrenching rendition of my rape.

The first time that I ever voiced the words out loud I was well into my twenties.

For many years there was no name to the awful secret I carried with me. Just the heaviness, pulling me down day after day. It was so painful, and I felt so humiliated and ashamed, like I had done something to cause it all.

He was a year older and quite a bit bigger. We had been dating for what seemed like forever to a 13 year old girl, but what was probably closer to 4 or 5 weeks. It was my birthday, he was my first ‘real’ boyfriend, and I was napping in his room after school when it happened.

Many of the details I have tucked away in the back closet in my brain, but the things I do remember where the physical weight of him pressing down on me, the pain, and the overwhelming feeling of fear and helplessness.

Afterwards he told me over and over again that he loved me and that I wanted it, that that’s what good girlfriends do, that now that we’d “done it” it was okay to do it all the time. I dated him for 5 months afterwards because I wanted to be a good girlfriend, and everyday I became more withdrawn and so unlike myself because I believed everything he told me. Every time we “did it” afterwards I felt worse.

I didn’t know about “date rape”, nobody did. I thought that all rape was done by strangers who hijacked you in the park. The after affects were devastating to my development in relationships. I was pretty sure that you had to have sex with someone so they would love you. I never clued in to why guys had no problem fucking me didn’t want to have a real relationship with me – because who would want to establish something real with the girl who’ll give it up on the first date?

I also allowed myself to be pushed around by the guys I was dating. Never to the point of physical abuse, thank God… but I put up with a lot of verbal abuse – and feeling like I was worthless, but sticking it out to be a good girlfriend.

It wasn’t until I started dating B-rad, now my husband, that I realized that I had worth as a person, not just as a sexual plaything. He made me wait. And wait we did. At first I thought he didn’t want me, that I wasn’t good enough, and it was very confusing. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to have sex with me. But he assured me that it would be worth it. We waited until we both knew we were in love. He was the first person who ever ‘made love’ to me. And when you’ve finally been made to feel special and worth something after so many years of feeling like you were insignificant and disposable, it was overwhelming. I almost didn’t know how to handle it. Me being the more ‘experienced’ one, I’d never had experience being in love before. Real love. Not the ‘love’ I was used to getting in exchange for sex.

Being with B-rad saved me from God Knows what kind of future. It was only after dating him that I became comfortable enough to start opening up about my ‘sordid past’. I was so afraid that he’d think I was worthless or that I was dirty in some way. But he was so amazing. You can’t even put into words the relief I found in telling him. Giving my ordeal a name after so many years of nothing helped me to begin to heal.

After the first time telling someone, it got easier and easier. Like the more I spoke, the less power it had over my life. Even as I’m typing this, I can feel a little bit more of it slipping away and being filled up with something more, something better. Hope and Trust.
I doubt that B-rad really knows how he practically saved my life. And someday I’ll tell him. But for now, I’ll just tell you.

Looking back now, I am comforted at how far I’ve come as a woman and how I’ve been able to rebuild the trust in the human race that I thought was utterly destroyed. But I can still remember the release of watching the pages burn. Reading past entries in my own journals has been very rewarding and sometimes a little embarrassing… but growth is a beautiful thing.