Tuesday, October 11, 2005

No Means No

No means no... right? No matter the situation, no matter if you are married, no means no. A marriage license is not a sex license. A marriage license is not a hit until I scream license.

Amazingly enough, I did not know this. Not all of it anyway.

I knew it was wrong when my ex husband broke my jaw, when he broke my elbow, when he ruptured my ear drum, when he threatened me with a gun, when he would take my keys and wallet so I was stranded. I knew it was wrong... yet I did nothing about it. I just stayed and took it.

Today I realized that when he forced himself on me after I said no he was actually raping me. He was doing to me what had been done to me in my childhood and later on as an adult. I don't know why I didn't realize he was raping me. I thought it was his right, he was my husband after all. We were married and married people have sex.

Consensual sex.

I guess in order to move forward I need to realize that those things happened in my past and that I cannot let them control my future. But they do. They control every aspect of my life. I do not trust people. I do not trust myself. I have a very limited emotional intelligence, I have difficulty expressing even the most basic of emotions. I keep everyone at a safe distance, I don't let them in. I isolate myself. I actually hate myself sometimes.

I blame myself for everything that has happened. I'm told that it's not my fault, that there is nothing I could have ever done to deserve this. I can't quite help thinking that it is my fault. Perhaps being molested as a little girl was not my fault, however being raped by a boyfriend, being raped and physically abused by my ex husband - that is my fault. I was an adult when this happened, an adult capable of taking care of myself.

I failed.

2 comments:

Ayne said...

You didn't fail, you did not. Sometimes, a person doesn't have enough strength to solve things, stop them from happening. You're only human. You can't blame yourselves. We all get weak. I'm sorry for what happened, I wish it would've been just a bad dream but it's not...it's a reality, a test from God. Hang in there.

Anonymous said...

I was very confused for a long time because I have faced similar situations. I believed they were my fault. I think there is a part of me that still believes that, but I know intellectually it is not true. One friend of mine gave me good advice on this - my friend said, "what if this same thing had happened to your own daughter - would you tell your daughter that it was your fault?" Of course you wouldn't, so why should the standard for you be any different than it would be for your daughter? Sometimes we put standards on ourselves that we don't put on other people, but we are entitled to that same standard.