HAS IT REALLY BEEN A YEAR?

Time flies.  And it seems to fly faster the older we get.  Remember being a kid and the days just dragging by?  Unless, of course, you were waiting for the bell to ring at 3p on the last day of school before summer vacation started!  And the truth is, time flies, whether or not you are having fun.  Well, according to the calendar, it has been a year since my boyfriend of almost 2 years broke up with me and, more or less, broke my heart.  As my heart, and all the rest of me, was still recovering from my encounter with cockroach boy, it was particularly difficult to deal with.  What was very clear to me, almost immediately, was that he had, in fact, done the right thing.  Oh, it’s not that I wanted to be alone.  Actually, I hated it, and, truth be told, still do.  What was right about it was I would have eventually broken up with him.  It probably would have taken me years to realize this because we really did have a great relationship in a lot of ways.  Was it perfect?  No, but it certainly was perfect for me, and I suspect, for him, right up until it wasn’t anymore.  Because of all the intense therapy I had done, and all of the crap from my past that had been dealt with during that therapy, I had grown.  A lot!  So much, in fact, that I had outgrown him.  I truly was no longer the person I had been when we first met.  Is this a bad thing?  No, it’s not.  Do I wish this ‘change’ had never occurred?  A part of me does.  A larger part knows, though, that it was necessary for me to experience and go through what I did to move me along my path.

We were only six months into the relationship when my sexual assault happened.  At the time, I asked him, “Does this mean you aren’t going to like me anymore?”  He told me, “No.  You are precious to me.”  And I believed him, and that belief allowed me to focus on myself and my healing.  No one, least of all me, knew exactly how long that would take.  I probably thought it would take a few weeks or, maybe, a couple of months.  It never occurred to me that it would take as long as it did.  I went to therapy, every Monday, week after week after week, for 13  months, and I hated every minute of it, though I loved my therapist.   It was incredibly hard and physically painful for lot of it.  Through it all, though, I had this amazing, loving, supportive, incredibly encouraging boyfriend.  I cannot imagine how much more difficult it would have been had I not been in this relationship.

When I inquired it he thought the breakup was a delayed reaction to my attack, he said, “No.  Yes.  I don’t know.  All I do know is I’m exhausted from having to deal with it.”  Okay. Well, so was I.  Still am.  Because I am still dealing with it.  Certainly not in the same ways, but the effects are ever-present.  There are certain books I cannot read and movies I cannot see.  Although I am not afraid of it, I do not really walk in the dark anymore.  When a stranger approaches me, especially at night, I wonder if he is going to attack me.  When I get sick, yet again, I curse cockroach boy for the trauma my body has suffered and continues to suffer.  I live with the thought, in the back of my mind, that one day in the not-too-distant-future, he will get out of prison, and though I do not believe he will come after me, who knows what he’ll do?  I certainly never expected to be attacked in the first place. One of the things I do tell myself, and something that allows me to carry on from day-to-day, is because it happened once, there is just no way it could happen again.  Don’t know if this is actually true, but I HAVE to tell myself this or I’m not sure I could go on.  It feels like all of these things are a part of my being now.  Will they fade in time?  Will they go completely away?  I have no idea.  I hope so.

What I was then, and will continue to be is grateful to my ex for sticking around  the way he did.  I know it made all the difference in the world to have him stand beside me, to not walk away.  It wasn’t easy for him, and even though I knew it, at least to a degree, I wish I had been more aware of how it was effecting him.  Would that have made a difference in the end?  No way to know.   All I am really certain of is he was/is a good man, and I miss him.  Still.

 

TOO MUCH EMPATHY?

Back in October when I went to see “Captain Phillips,” I wrote about the reaction I had of being (somewhat) traumatized by the events in the movie, even though I was never kidnapped.  What I am discovering now is certain books and movies are incredibly upsetting in ways I have never experienced before.  While I was in Atlanta for Christmas, I went to see “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”  I, of course, knew about apartheid while I was growing up, and you’d think I’d remember how bad it really was in South Africa during that time.  I guess, though, that being so far away and so removed from it, it simply did not have any effect on my life.  When I lived in Europe in the late ’80s, a time when Americans were still not allowed to go to South Africa, there was an agency in Cape Town that wanted me to come to work.  Since I was in Spain, I could get around the fact that I was technically not permitted to go there.  In the end, though, when they found out that I was 29, it was decided that I was ‘too old’ and they withdrew their offer for me to go.  Anyway, I was plenty old enough to know what was going on.  What I did not know was the extent of just how bad it truly was.

The movie made that very clear.  I left feeling extremely sad, but not necessarily for the reasons one might expect.  Of course, what they, both the blacks and the whites, endured over the many years that apartheid was the law of the land was beyond horrendous.  In the past I would have felt sympathetic, and that would have been the end of it.  I would have felt bad, but, really what did it have to do with me?  Now, however, what happens, what I feel, on top of the sympathy and empathy is a sense of knowing exactly what the people who lived through that kind of trauma are going to go through emotionally, for possibly the rest of their lives.  And I also know that most, if not all, will not get the kind of therapy that is needed to heal from such trauma.  That breaks my heart.  Even writing about it is hard for me.  I have no way of knowing if this is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life or if it will fade over time.  I am hopeful it fades in time because it is a hard way to live.

The acute feelings that seeing (even in a movie) or reading about traumatic, tragic events brings up in me makes me think that my brain still has some healing to go through.  I do think it is mostly healed because I am able to focus and work, things I was unable to do while I was in the process of getting through it.  I am able to do most everything I did pre-attack.  And while there are worse things than being highly empathic, I always feel like I am on the verge of tears.  After the movie, on the way home, I tried to explain to my parents how I was feeling, without sobbing.  I guess what I am trying to say here is the kind of knowledge I now possess because of being sexually assaulted isn’t necessarily a good thing.  As hard as I work at being happy and putting it all behind me, I think there is an underlying sadness that hasn’t yet gone away.  These days it does not take much to push me over the edge.  So, I will continue to avoid certain books, or at least skip the parts I cannot bear to read, and I will not see some of the movies I might otherwise enjoy.

ONGOING ISSUES

In November, there was an article in MORE Magazine called, “A Hidden Cause of Chronic Illness,” written by Alexia Jetter.  It was about the long-term effects of domestic abuse.  I was not, nor have I ever been physically abused by a partner, BUT the information was enlightening to me.  Ever since my attack I have had one physical thing after another come up.  At first it made sense, sort of, that this was happening.  While I was in therapy and was in quite a lot of physical pain, not to mention the psychological and emotional turmoil I was experiencing, it was at least understandable that I would have stuff come up.  And, really, for the most part, my body did remarkably well, considering all I was dealing with.  The truth is, until cockroach boy was sentenced to prison, I did not get sick.  Not even when my boyfriend did get sick (now I know it was my attack that caused this) and stayed that way for close to 2 months, and even with all the time I was spending with him then, I never got sick.  So when I did get sick after the court date (just a cold, but annoying nonetheless, especially because it was summer,) it made perfect sense that the entire 9 months before, my body was, essentially, keeping me where I needed to be to get myself healed.  And if you’ll remember, 5 days after my therapy was finished, my back went out and I spent 96 hours not being able to move at all.  Again, I realized that my body had been holding onto the physical trauma until I was through the emotional work and could then deal with another aspect of the entire process.  I got through that, and then about 2 months later, my boyfriend broke up with me, which resulted in more trauma, both emotional and physical.  In this case, my emotional sadness and heartache manifested itself into my foot, resulting in a neuroma in my right foot.

So I have spent the last 10 or so months having acupuncture to heal my foot.  Some people choose to have surgery to deal with this type of injury, but I opted for the alternative route.  Besides not wanting to pay for surgery, and already knowing how my body responds to surgery, there was no way I was putting myself through another traumatic experience when there was another option.  Being injured proved very challenging for me.  After my attack and the sharp decrease of my physical activity, I had had to learn how to, basically, walk again.  As I mentioned in the story of the day of my actual attack, I went from walking 60-90 miles a week to zero.  That was a huge loss.  My walking was not only my physical exercise, but it was also my praying/meditating/me time. Even after I was able to walk again on a somewhat regular basis, it was just not the same.  And then my injury occurred and I was once again sidelined.  I was still doing yoga, at least to the best of my ability, modified to allow me to practice in spite of my hurt foot.  But, at least for me, yoga will never be enough exercise for my body.  I started getting depressed again with the lack of ‘moving.’  Luckily, I realized what was going on and looked for other ways to move my body without walking.  I rode my bike to the store or uptown to the book store or library, activities I normally walked to do.  I joined the gym again, and rode my bike there, as well.  I sometimes just rode my (beach) bike around the island, though that was a more leisurely activity than anything else.  And I kept going to acupuncture each week.

After my attack, with the loss of my ability to exercise in the way I was used to, I gained ten pounds.  I was pretty much able to limit my weight gain (in that year and a half) by walking, in time, as much as was possible.  Then when Bill broke up with me almost a year ago, I gained ten more.  You have to understand that when I was attacked, I weighed 135 pounds, and at 5’10” that was thin.  So I eventually ended up at 155 (maybe even a little more, but as I do not have a scale, I am not exactly sure) which really isn’t too much for my height, but it is too much for me.  My clothes did not fit and I was not comfortable in my own body.  For me, exercise and moving my body is as necessary as food and water.  Without that outlet, I am not happy.  Something had to change.  I was still self-soothing and it was definitely taking a toll on me.  In the summer and fall it wasn’t so bad when my clothes did not fit; but once it got colder and I needed to be wearing something besides loose dresses or yoga pants, I had to make a choice to stop what was clearly not working and do something different.

What I did was a whole food cleanse with Elizabeth Hirsh and Charlette Preslar.  It was 14 days and it changed my attitude about food and my body.  I cannot say that I am exactly where I’d like to be, but I am more accepting of where I am.  Although the cleanse was not a weight loss program per se, I did lose some weight.  And I am happy to say that my jeans fit me again.  I learned a new way to eat, and though I am not 100% good, I definitely have incorporated the recipes we used on the cleanse.

Back to the article about the hidden and long-term  effects of domestic abuse…although I do not know of any studies that have been done about the hidden effects of sexual assault on our bodies, I KNOW this is the case.  Since my attack I have had more things happen and I been sick more than I have in the last 20 years.  I have no way of knowing if and when this will stop.  I am ever hopeful that, in time, these things will at least lessen.  It is very frustrating not knowing what else may come up.  All I can do is continue to put one foot in front of the other, literally and figuratively,  and believe that it is possible to completely heal.  Clearly, I am not there yet.

On 3 January this is what I wrote in my journal:  “Not sure why I am surprised that I am still healing from my attack.  Matt (this is my acupuncturist) pointed this out to me this morning. I guess I think I should be all better by now.  The mistake I seem to have made was in thinking I would be finished when my therapy was done.  Ha!  Joke’s on me, except it isn’t so funny.  I suppose the best thing I can do for myself and my state of mind/sanity is to just let go of all and any preconceived notions I’ve had or continue to have around how long or exactly the path my healing will take/is taking.  I keep thinking I’m done/it’s done and clearly this is not the case.  So, I’ll say again, I am not sure why any of this comes as a surprise.  It will take as long as it takes and no amount of wishing it were different seems to be working.  Well, rats!”

A NEW YEAR

One of my resolutions for this New Year is to be better about posting on this site.  Once I finished with my story, with what I had written while going through the healing process, I was at a bit of a loss as to how I should proceed, and, clearly, since I have not posted since the middle of October, I am still having trouble with which direction to take.  Because of that, and because there is much more to share about the ongoing issues I am experiencing as a result of my attack, and there is a lot more to my larger story that I haven’t even touched on yet, it is my intention to post at least every other week.  And I’ve decided I need a specific day, and since it is Wednesday today, this first day of 2014, that will be my posting day.   I would love to say I’ll post every week, but I realize I need to get in the habit of actually writing (instead of just thinking about writing, which is what I’ve mostly been doing) before there is even a chance that I can do it more often.

Last year at this time I did a post about choosing a word for the next year.  Well, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and because I did not want to pick TRUST again, though it would be appropriate, I went through my angel cards and 5, yes 5, cards more or less ‘spoke’ to me.  They are, in no particular order:                                                         

FAITH

                                                                   PATIENCE

GRATITUDE

FORGIVENESS

PEACE

      I guess this means that I have my work cut out for me this year.  And, really, that’s okay. because it means I am still here, still plugging away, doing my best to not let what happened to me determine the rest of my life.

       I wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year!!!

AN UNEXPECTED TRIGGER

Recently, a friend of mine asked, on a scale of one to ten, ten being completely okay, where would I put my healing?  I said a ten.  Because, honestly, I do feel like I am all better.  But, really?  Can I, will I, ever be all better?  I have to believe this is the case, and I would say that it IS true for me now.

I went to see “Captain Phillips” on Sunday.  I even skipped my beloved beach yoga to go to the 10a showing.  By the way, it is a great movie and Tom Hanks did a wonderful job.  Imagine my surprise when the movie triggered in me flashbacks, of a sort.  Obviously, I was not kidnapped by pirates, but something in me definitely resonated with the story.  I can only guess it was the trauma they suffered from the ordeal.  When they were in the life saving craft and one of the pirates looked out the window and saw three American Naval War Ships, all I could think was, Wow, you should never piss off the Americans because they WILL hunt you down and do whatever is necessary to defend their citizens and property.  I also thought, why would they not just give up?  Could they not see there was no way they were going to get away, either with Captain Phillips or with what they had already done?  Why wouldn’t they just surrender?

This is what happened when my guardian angel was on his way to save me from cockroach boy.   Clearly, someone was coming, and even more clearly, there was no way he was going to be able to follow through with his intention to rape me.  Yet, he did not stop.  He did not even get off of me, he just continued with his ‘plan’.  It was not until my angel was leaning over and yelling in his face to get off of me that he finally, I’m sure reluctantly, got off and ran up the sidewalk to the street.  I know now that he was in some kind of zone, as were the pirates.  Watching it on the big screen, but seeing myself in a similar situation was rather upsetting.

The other part of the movie that really hit home for me was after he had been rescued and was on the American ship.  He was so obviously in shock, and I do understand that they were all just following protocol, but the way he was treated reminded me of how the EMTs treated me.  I never mentioned this before because I never wrote about it at the time.  It has never left me, though.  You have to remember I was in a lot of physical pain after my attack, as I had been slammed to the cement and then fought with my attacker for however long.  My back hurt, I had many abrasions and cuts, and I was in shock.  Just as in the movie, they wanted me to sit down.  I didn’t want to because my back hurt and it was more painful to sit down.  Basically, they ‘forced’ me to.  I was told they wanted to take my blood pressure and other vital signs.  I told them that whether I was sitting or standing, whatever reading they got was going to be off the charts and not what my normal blood pressure would be.  I felt like no one was listening to me and it did not feel good.  In the movie, the ship’s doctor said, “I need you to sit down.”  It was just the way she said it that brought back my memory of the paramedics and how they responded to me.

It seems ironic to me that the most innocent of things can now trigger in me the very thing I worked so hard to get through.  I can understand how seeing a movie about rape or some other kind of physical assault would be hard, if not impossible, to watch.  (Actually, I do not think I could even see that type of movie now.)  I guess that there are some things that will be with me always.  I do hope in time this type of thing happens less and less.  The truth is the me that was attacked that day no longer exists.   You know the adage, ‘what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.’   Well, cockroach boy did not kill me and I AM much stronger.

HARD TO BELIEVE IT HAS BEEN TWO YEARS

Yes, I have been neglecting this site.  Not for any really good reason.  I guess because I pretty much finished my story, I kind of stalled on how to proceed.  The truth is my story is nowhere near finished, not really.

Today marks the second anniversary (there must be another word that I could use that isn’t so ‘positive’) of my sexual assault and the first anniversary of this website.  I was curious to see what I had written last year in my journal about the launch of this site, and because I was doing my best to clear the clutter out of my house, that particular journal got put in a box in my garage, which meant I had to go and find it.  Imagine my surprise when I saw what I had written!  Nothing.  Nada, zip, zilch.  Really?  How can that be?  Well, last year at this time, though I was close, oh so close, to being finished with my therapy and dealing with my attack, I was still very much in it.  The closest date to today that I wrote was on 28 September 2012 and all I wrote was:  “Mostly, I feel like a big, fat fraud, pretending to be happy.”  Clearly, I was still struggling.

And if I am truly honest with you, and with myself, I still am, to a degree.  Oh, it is nowhere like before, and I definitely have more good days than not, BUT I am still dealing with the aftermath.  I am working on forgiving my attacker, and believe it or not, forgiving myself.  I have been told my numerous people that I am too hard on myself, and this is one example of that.  On the one hand, I KNOW I did nothing wrong; on the other, though, I think I somehow blame myself for what happened.  Still.  And this drives me crazy.  It seems so illogical.  Yet it is still there.  Not always, but enough to make me aware of it.

I have been feeling ‘off’ the last week or so, and waking up this morning there was no question of what day it is.  I wonder how long this will plague me.  Will I always remember this day?  Or will it fade in significance over time?

This is what I wrote in my journal this morning:  As I was drawing my angel card this morning, I ask that the perfect card be given to me, and my reaction to drawing ‘COURAGE’ was, Oh My Gosh!  This is the one word that has been used over and over to describe me and my reaction and/or handling of my attack.  And the one word that I have trouble seeing myself as being.  It feels surreal, like it didn’t even happen and at the same time, it is ever-present in my life.  It’s not that I necessarily or particularly dwell on it, but it is definitely there.  I think physically I feel it the most.  I still have a lot of neck pain, and though it is not debilitating, I am still very much aware of it.  I realized this morning, too, that I haven’t completely forgiven myself for ‘allowing’ it to happen.  That’s what I tapped on this morning – forgiving myself, Bill, the police, the EMTs, the D.A., his attorney and my attacker. I must forgive, not because any of it was right, but for myself, for my peace of mind, for my emotional health and well-being.  I DESERVE to be pain-free, emotionally, physically and in every other way.  Two years of my life have been dominated by an event which, in all likelihood, was just a few minutes long.  How is this possible?  How can 2 or 3 or 5 minutes out of a lifetime be that important?  525,600 minutes in a year and I continue to let those few minutes determine how I feel?

All I can say is I am doing my best to continue to heal what is still left to heal.  It is an ongoing process.  I am hopeful, however, that in time it will be less and less so ‘present’ in my life.  It is just one event in a lifetime of events, it is in the past and I choose to live in the present.  I choose, as Milton said, heaven.  I choose to release the regret, the blame and the guilt.  Through love I am made whole again.  I choose love.

DREAM BOARD

Last year at this time, I created this dream board.

DSCN2011

It was about 3 weeks past the sentencing of cockroach boy, and I had been biding my time since January, when I had first gotten the idea for At Long Last Heard, to launch this site.  I was still deep in the recovery process and, although I was then ‘free’ to talk about what had happened, I was still hesitant and, most likely, afraid to put it out there for anyone to see.  I was still suffering from PTSD at that point.  When the opportunity presented itself for making a dream/vision board, I jumped at the chance.  I saw it as a way for me to have a tangible representation of all the healing quotes and phrases that were constantly running through my head.  And instead of having just a board full of quotes, which I could have done, I chose to have flowers, as well.

I have it beside my bed and still look at it each day for inspiration.

THANK YOU LETTER TO MY GUARDIAN ANGEL

 

19 October 2012

Dear ************

This thank you letter is long overdue.

You, literally, saved me from being raped, and quite possibly, saved my life, as well.  I am certain that when you left your room that morning to go for a run, that you never suspected what was about to happen.  I know I didn’t.  I cannot tell you how incredibly grateful I am that you saved me from my attacker.  As I was fighting with him, I KNEW that he was going to rape me and I just as strongly knew that I could not let that happen.  Without your intervention, though, that’s exactly what would have occurred.  Even now, after all the therapy and dealing with it, that thought still makes me feel like crying.  I know it could have been far worse than it was and YOU are the reason it wasn’t.

Thank you so much for being in the right place at the right time and for being willing to come to my aid.  You made a huge difference in my life by preventing an even worse tragedy from happening.

I had, and still have, a very loving boyfriend, a great therapist, and friends and family members who helped me through the last 13 months.  In all my trying to make sense of what happened and trying to figure out the why, I decided that I need to talk about it on a much larger scale than just friends and family.  To that end, I created a new web site called At Long Last Heard.  My intention is to give women who have been victims of a sexual assault, whether it’s incest, attempted rape or rape, a place to tell their story and be heard.  I just launched it on the one year anniversary of my attack.  I am still figuring it out as I go.  I am telling my story and the incredible journey it has been for me this last year.  It has not been easy and I have made it through and out the other side.

You are in my thoughts and prayers and I trust all is well for you.

Again, thank you for saving my life.

Most Sincerely…

 

And in response, I received this letter from him:

 

Tamerie-

Thank you for your kind letter.   I am so glad to hear that you are recovering and are using your experiences to help other women.  I pray that others will be helped to recover emotionally through your efforts.

I know what it is to sustain significant trauma.  My wife was stalked for several years by a ‘friend’ of mine (a long story.)  I learned of it and had to deal with the situation about 6 months before my trip to San Diego.  Our whole situation was pretty traumatic and I can imagine what you’ve gone through.  Ironically, I’ve got a counselor/therapist, too; she helped me a great deal.  I’m so glad you were willing to get help.  I am grateful that you want to help others through this experience.

You are welcome to put me in your story but leave my name out–I don’t really deserve any praise.  I really didn’t do much of anything–I was too confused and bewildered by the whole scenario that I didn’t have the capacity to think much about it.  Afterwards, I was really mad that I didn’t go after him and I was afraid that he would get away.  I was really relieved to find out that the police picked him up later.  My counselor told me later that it was probably for the best–I have so much pent up anger at ‘bad guys’ that if I had run after him and caught him, I might have beaten him to death!  Then I’d be the one in jail!

Thanks again for your letter.  May God bless you throughout your life and in your ministry to others.

 

Sincerely-

***********

 

 

THERE WAS STILL A LOT MORE HEALING TO COME

The following are entries from my journal:

12 July 2012

“‘Trying times are not indications that we have been forgotten or have lost our connection with the Divine.  Rather, they are times of growth and healing and we need to turn away from doubt and fear in order to realize the good that is unfolding for us.’   (Not sure where I got this quote, nor who said it.  I neglected to give credit to the author in my journal.)

 

13 July 2012

I do not believe I am about to write what I’m about to write.  I do not even know what to feel.  That fucking cockroach boy has, apparently, filed an appeal.  As I have not yet talked to anyone who might actually know how this will impact my project, I don’t actually know if I have to wait some more.  I am pissed — that much I do know.  Un-fucking-believable.

10:35p  I finally was able to talk with Kim and she gave me the perspective I was missing: everyone appeals.  Still, I need to find out exactly what this means for me.  Beyond that, I am choosing not to give a flip.

 

17 July 2012

I heard back from the D.A. and, basically, she told me not to worry about the appeal, to go ahead and do whatever it is I need to do to heal from the attack.  That makes me feel better.

 

18 August 2012

‘In life, you always get what you ask for AND it rarely comes in the package you think it’s supposed to come in.’  ~Kurek Ashley

Talk about a package I wasn’t expecting!  We always tend to think of the “good” things coming in packages we weren’t expecting (several unexpected people come to mind here) and forget that everything shows up that way: the good and the not-so-good.  For a very long time, several years, I had been asking for something, really anything, different in my life.  I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted.  I just felt I needed a change.  Well, my change arrived in the form of a sexual assault in a package I never dreamed or expected could ever happen to me.  I recognized it from the very beginning as a blessing in disguise, though there was much therapy to go through before I would be able to truly appreciate it.  And the truth is I’m still in therapy and dealing with it, though each day I’m a little closer to being able and ready to forgive my attacker.  (Note-This was written almost 10 months ago, and as far as being able to forgive cockroach boy, well, I am still working on it.  I know I will eventually get there.)

 

21 August 2012

Had a bit of what I consider a set-back in therapy.  Susie would disagree with my assessment.  And, really, it’s not exactly a set-back.  I just thought I was closer to being finished than I apparently am.  It’s more disappointing than anything else.  It has to do with me going back to the “scene of the actual crime.”  I’ve been thinking about it and brought it up yesterday.  Turns out I’m not nearly as ready as I thought I was.  Since the thought of it literally makes me want to throw-up and makes me cry, I’ve obviously still got some more clearing to do.  Slowly, but slowly…

 

28 August 2012

Obviously, haven’t much like writing.  One day soon I hope that all I’ve been neglecting will fall back into place and I’ll once again be productive.

It’s amazing to me that I can be going along, day after day, feeling pretty dang good considering, and then one day (like today) I wake up and feel like I am in a hole, that all the work I’ve done has been for nothing and that if only the zillion pound elephant sitting on me would get off of me, I’d be fine.  I must feel even worse than I realize because this morning, for the first time EVER, I couldn’t do my walk even after I got up, got dressed and actually walked out the door.  I basically walked around the block, came home, got in my car and drove up town to get a breakfast sandwich.  Wow!  I’m worse than I thought.  And now, in hopes it’ll help, I’m ditching making pillows and am going to a movie.”

 

A friend asked me the other day, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being completely healed, where would I put myself?  I answered a ’10.’  Because the truth is I am completely healed.  That doesn’t mean that I am happy about what happened or that, as I already mentioned, I have even forgiven cockroach boy yet.  What it does mean is I am not suffering in the ways I was for so long.  My brain is functioning normally, or at least as normally as it ever has for me.  None of the triggers I had before are still present.  I see it almost as something that happened to someone else.   And although I mostly choose not to, I am even able to walk in the dark.  Granted, I am not going far and I am going to meet someone to actually do my walk with.  And these times of walking in the dark have all been in the morning, which means the sun will be rising soon.   The other night, though, I did feel like walking around the block, in the dark, way past sunset, and I did it!  I was never scared, nor was I constantly looking over my shoulder.  I’d say that is real progress and just reaffirms that I am healed.  Who knows if I’ll ever go back to the way I used to walk, very early in the morning and in total darkness?  I may not, but I like knowing that the option is there for me, even if I never use it.

AFTER THE SENTENCING

As I mentioned before, I did not write in my journal about what happened after Laura, Bill and I walked out of the courtroom.  I just checked to see if I mentioned anything at a later date.  I never specifically addressed it, and all I wrote the following day, 26 June 2012 was:

“Yesterday, to me, still feels surreal.  I don’t have a strong feeling either way.  All I am certain of is he deserves to be in prison.”

When court was adjourned, cockroach boy’s sister and father, who had been seated right in front of us, practically ran out of the room.  I remember thinking, ‘good, I don’t want to see them anyway.’    We couldn’t leave right away because the D.A. needed to give me a copy of the restraining order that the court had gotten on my behalf, so we kind of hung around inside the courtroom.  When it became clear that it would take a bit longer than anticipated, we left to wait outside.  As soon as we walked through the outer door, the sister and father descended upon us.  The sister, whose name I never did get, said to me, “I just want to apologize for what my brother did to you.”  And the father piped up, “Yeah, we didn’t raise him that way.”  To say that I was in shock that they were even speaking to me would be an understatement.  I did my best to be polite without really saying much.  What did they expect I would say?  ‘Oh, it’s okay, don’t worry about it.’  Hardly.  It was not okay and I wasn’t going to say otherwise.  When the father spoke to me, I thought, ‘no way does he live in Coronado.  He had exactly 3 teeth in his mouth, and I am pretty sure there must be a city ordinance that says you must have teeth to live there.’  Seriously, no way could he look like that and live there.

I really didn’t respond to her apology.  I thought they would then walk away.  But, no, she wasn’t finished with me yet.  So then she said something like, ‘my brother is mentally ill and needs help, he doesn’t need to be in prison.’  I said, “Oh, I understand mental illness.  I have a brother who is bipolar and he doesn’t take his medication either, but he doesn’t attack women.”  I was feeling very uncomfortable and wanted her to leave me alone.  No such luck.  Then she said to me, “Did you see him?  He’s going to be attacked in prison.”  And all I could think was, ‘Oh well.  He should have thought about that before attacking me.’  What I said to her was, “If you had ever been attacked, you would understand.”  And she said, “Oh, I have been.  He attacked/raped (not quite sure which word she said here, but the meaning of what she was saying was very clear) me.  Twice!”  What I wanted to say to her, but didn’t, was, ‘You stupid bitch!  This is your fault for not reporting him to the authorities.  We wouldn’t be here right now if you had reported him.’  What could I actually say to that?  Nothing.  By this time, Bill was in between the sister and me and Laura was trying to pull her away.  I was extremely upset, but saying nothing to her.  As Laura pulled her away, she turned and said to me, “I hope you learn something from this.  And I hope you have a nice life.”  Those statements made me want to attack her.  Really?  Of course, she would have no way of knowing just how much I struggled with what should be done with him and whether he would be better served out of prison than in.  And of all the people to say ‘I hope you learn something from this’ to, I just wasn’t it.  I was learning from it the minute it happened.  Stupid bitch.

I was in absolute shock.  I could not believe what I had just heard.  I couldn’t believe that she verbally attacked me, especially since the judge had just said that there was to be no contact with me, and even though I know cockroach boy did not tell her to say these things to me, it didn’t matter.  In my mind she was disobeying the judge’s direct order.  The D.A. chose this moment to walk up with my order of protection.  (And why I would need a restraining order against someone who is in prison and an order that would expire before his prison sentence is even up always baffled me.)  I/we told the D.A. what the sister had just said.  She thought it interesting, but it’s not like she could do anything about it and it’s not like the sister was suddenly going to report the crimes he committed against her.  And at that point, fat lot of good it would have done anyway.  I just wanted out of the court-house, so the D.A. took us the back way down so I would not have to walk by the father and sister and be attacked, yet again.

Even as I am writing this today, I still feel the anger from that day.   After sitting through cockroach boy’s stupid attorney’s words and then having the sister come after me because I had the nerve to make sure her criminal brother was sent to prison, I was completely spent.  I was so glad this part of the process was behind me now, but there was still a lot healing to be done.  I somehow knew this to be true.

Again, it is amazing to me, looking back, how my mind and body protected me.  How I was able to do what needed to be done in order to come out the other side.  Interestingly, as stressed as my body and mind were during this period, I never got sick.  That is, until after the sentencing.  I normally do not get sick anyway, and I really never get sick in the summer.  About a week later, though, I did get sick.  I got a cold and a hacking cough that kept me from sleeping.  Still, my body waited until after he was sentenced and in prison to allow the overwhelming stress I was going through to manifest into sickness.  Amazing!