The Second Rape
It was an evening like any other at the end of April 2015. My daughter and I were watching TV, joking around, and eating dinner. Then like any other night we both got ready for bed. My daughter’s bed was broken so I insisted that she sleep in my bed. Her bed was a futon that sits up like a couch. The part that lays down was broken so I would sit it up like a couch and sleep on it in the living room. My daughter went to bed in my room which I could see from where I was sleeping in the living room; it was less than 50 feet from my new old broken bed. I wasn’t quite tired yet, so I watched TV for a while. I eventually turned the TV off and went to sleep.
Later in the dark of night a burning sensation in my arm tried to wake me. I felt very strange like I was struggling to wake up out of a fog and couldn’t. I tried to move but I couldn’t get up and my head was spinning. I tried to get my hands under me but there was a sharp pain in my left arm and something pulling on me. I suddenly felt hands holding my arm in place. Hands holding my shoulders and something big was sitting between my legs. Then quite whispers of voices but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. My head was spinning and I could not get up. I kept feeling hands but could not get away. My arm was burning and I could not move and the fog kept taking me back in to the darkness. One of the times I was trying to wake, I had the scary feeling that my daughter and I were not alone in the house. I immediately started to try to get my eyes open and struggle to get up. Something came close to my ear and told me to calm down and relax. The voice was calm with an anger I have felt before he told me I needed to stay still and relax. He pressed on the left and right of my chest with such pressure it hurt my lungs. My only thought was my daughter. Is she hurt do they know about her? My head is still spinning and my arm is burning so bad. The next thing I knew everything went black and my last thought was my daughter. I remember coming out of the fog a few times and feeling such pain. My concern was my daughter and is she hurt or worse. I knew there was a reason I was chosen but did it involve my daughter too. I also knew there was nothing they could do to me that I couldn’t heal from or survive. I just wished it was over and my daughter was untouched.
Image waking in the morning on a weekend feeling good. I reach up to open the medicine cabinet and the pain in my arm makes me look and notice a mark on the crease of the inside part of my elbow that indicates a needle was present. Suddenly I am sick to my stomach and feel like my head is pounding. I get sick a few times and then dry heave. I stand in front of the sink and look up in the mirror. I rise my mouth and see a hand like bruise on my arm. I try to remember what happened and the only thing that comes up first is the pain in my arm. The pain is still there it is what drew me to the mark on my arm in the first place. I call the only person that I really trust my daughter. I show her and she is surprised and scared at the same time. Then she asked the question, what did you feel? She knows what needles do to me. I am not like most people, the pain evolved in getting blood work is unlike any I have ever felt. I am allergic to the metal in needles. To get blood work is like having my arm being stuck in fire and it heats up the longer the needle is my arm and the more pain I am in. Then she notices a bruise on my chest and wants to know what happened. The only memory I have at the moment is the pain in my stomach and the pounding in my head.
The next few days even weeks are gone over in my head and dreams. The night takes me back to what happened but not acknowledging what happened the nothing is what kills the most. Not knowing what exactly happened is what drives the insanity.
One morning, I knew something was different, a trip to the local store. Then, I knew what happened, the baby says it all, the test that says I’m pregnant and suddenly tells a dark view of that night. The baby growing inside me says that I was raped. My thoughts are not just scrabbled but confused. I didn’t expect a baby but what’s worse I can’t have this baby, there is no sense of parental need or love. I thought that shocks me the most, my love for my child is nonexistent. Am I really that cold, that unloving, do I deserve what happened if I could hate the part of me that is growing inside me? All I feel is hate toward the thing that is growing in me. All I have ever wanted is more children but this one feels like poison in my body.
The next couple of months are honestly a blur. I wake, I go to work, I come home and drink way to much, get drunk and go to bed not remembering what or who I really am. Then what I really wanted has happened, it is 4am and there is a pain so great in my stomach that feels like a truck ran through it. I know what is coming, and I can’t help but be relieved. It’s finally gone, the only thing that constantly reminds me that someone was in my home. Then the guilt of what I have done. No matter what happened it was a life; one not asked to be present but was and left knowing I did not love it. What kind of person does that make me? What kind of mother am I to kill her own child because of one night? Did I kill it, was it me, or was it the dark and that voice that said “relax”? That thought drives me to what I am not certain but what I do know is that I am now alone.
I can’t report what happened to the police they won’t help people like me. The silence is what kills the most, it weighs on me like a death that needs to happen. The worst is the weight that I can’t remove from my daughter. Her guilt is like a weight attached to my heart that only she can remove.
I have done the most irresponsible thing by not reporting it. Kept the rape in silence and she has too. How is that helping? I looked for support groups for us to attend together and separately but find nothing like that exists in our area. Now all that exists is the thought that it happened and my suspicion of who did it. However the why will probably never be answered. The pain the heartbreak and the trail it leaves is in blood is mine, my daughters, and the unborn child that was the victim of mine.
How does one overcome such heartbreak? How does one heal so many lives that were touched? How is the child ever loved or mourned? How am I ever to made feel like I was heard and this chapter ever closed? How is my daughter freed of the guilt that she carries? How do people live like this? How do the police officers in our area allow us to feel like they can be trusted? So many questions and no real answers.
I live with that voice and that night in my head every day. I live with that life I took and the life of my daughter living with that pain every day. Maybe that is my punishment in this all. I just wish I knew why I had to learn this kind of a lesson at all.
