How I Remembered Being R*ped as a Child
At 28, I found out I’d been r*ped
This post contains highly triggering topics and is for 18+.
Some background
I was in pain most of my life and never fully knew why. Throughout my years I attributed it to different things: bad friends, not enough friends, lack of love from my parents, emotional and somewhat physical neglect, my mother being critical of me, or me just having issues. I was desperate for an answer, and many of these attributions were true, but they weren’t the whole truth.
In high school I went numb, focusing on schoolwork and nothing else. Note-taking in class was what I gripped onto, holding on like a life raft while I waited out the 4 years. Any relationships I had were hollow at best because didn’t know how to be a full person. I watched as my classmates grew up and advanced while I regressed further and further. At least the pain was somewhat fuzzed out due to me being numb.
After high school, I attempted to go to college. That’s what everyone did and I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t go. Psychology was my major of course. Because I knew I had to emerge from auto-pilot to be in the real world. And to do that I needed to heal. But how could I put my life and pain into words? And how could I trust a therapist when all people seemed untrustworthy?
So like most damaged souls, I went for psychology to try to heal myself. Well, if I had been paying attention to my complete and utter exhaustion I wouldn’t have bothered. It took a semester for me to realize there was no way I was pulling through this for another few years. Besides, I wasn’t getting much on how to heal myself from the classes.
Therapy
Already at the end of my rope, I decided to finally try therapy. The first two therapists weren’t a fit. The third was great. I loved her and she was smart and she cared and I should have been healed after 2 years. Or more healed than I was. Why wasn’t this working? Therapy was supposed to be the answer. What else was I supposed to do?
Medication
Medication, of course. I tried Prozac and Wellbutrin and Xanax and lots of others. I’m sure if someone measured my brain before I took these pills and while I was on them they’d see a difference, but it was weird. It felt like I had all this pain, depression, guilt, and anxiety going on in me but it was trapped under a lid and I couldn’t access it. It felt like part of my brain was trying to shove everything under the rug and pretend it didn’t exist, only it didn’t help me pretend well enough so it was more frustrating than facing it.
I remember after having my baby, telling my husband (somehow I managed to get married and have a baby, but both were far from easy!) that I just needed a substance. Something! I was at the end end end of my rope, feeling trapped yet again in my mind. I couldn’t commit suicide, I had a family I loved (in the past I had other reasons that held me back like religion). But my pain was unbearable, a giant bolder pressing on my brain.
Manifestation
Manifesting was my only weapon. I took to manifesting an answer, a path I could take towards a once and for all cure. I had to believe with all my might that there was something, anything out there that could help me. And that’s when I was led to plant medicine, through someone on an online mental health forum (thank you kind stranger!)
Plant Medicine
My first round of plant medicine was extremely powerful. I wasn’t sure what it all meant though. I saw so much guilt and shame. Next, I saw emotional memories from when I was a baby and couldn’t connect to my mother and was completely alone. It was horrible. The third time I was brought to memories of being a young kid. I still felt completely alone but the it was more of a numb pain. As I saw these moments play out I told myself not to worry, that Sasha, the nanny at the time, would be there soon.
Sasha then came into my visions. There was a split second of warmth but something was off. When she opened her mouth her tongue was made of 3 snakes.
Then, I was brought to a moment in time, in the kitchen of the apartment we lived in when I was 5. Sasha stood there excitedly saying to my mother, “Let me take Aliyah to Coney Island!” At the moment I hadn’t been too excited but didn’t think much of it. But now a voice (my psychedelic enlightened voice) repeatedly told me we went somewhere, but never to Coney Island.
All of a sudden I was brought to a bedroom, a bedroom I remembered as hers. I always knew we had gone to her apartment, and that I had been in the bedroom withy her and a random man, but I didn’t have too many memories of what took place there. It always felt significant to me though.
Now I was back in that room. There was an old dirty baby doll lying on the bed and Sasha and her boyfriend were standing there m*lesting it. It took a second for me to realize that old doll was me! I didn’t want to believe it.
I kept saying aloud, “it’s not true!” How could I believe such a bad thing about Sasha, the nanny who I always thought loved me? My main concern was her, that I shouldn’t think something so horrible about her. What was wrong with me that I was accusing her of this in my visions?
But it was unbearable.
I saw visions of her stomping a high heeled foot into the ground and I was there on the floor (this part was probably figurative). She pushed her heel deeper and deeper into me, twisting her foot. I was completely powerless.
Then I saw visions of being thrown into the garbage again and again and again. I was crying inside that they were taking this from me, just using me like a tissue. Though I had felt awful and alone before this happened, I still had myself. Now I didn’t even have that.
At some point it got worse.
Sasha’s boyfriend started r*ping me. I couldn’t see much of that, because by then I had left my body but I could feel the movement and the physical pain. It felt like my thighs were being ripped off again and again. Mentally, it was as if my head was cut off from my body, thrashing around in outer space, asking, “what did I do?”
Frantic, I had to find some sort of answer. My crazed mind decided, “I am bad. I am not a person, I am a creature who does not deserve respect or safety. I am vile at my core. Whatever I do is wrong. They must know how they’re hurting me and they must be doing it for a reason: that I am awful.”
But the pain was so unbearable that that answer could not fully satisfy me. I had to keep asking and answering myself this answer (the only one I could think of that would attempt to justify this pain) again and again for I don’t know how long. Now, as awful as it was, the clarity that this happened to me was so sweet. I finally had the answers as to what was wrong with me!
You might be wondering how I could believe these visions were true. Well, after I woke up from this trip I didn’t want to believe it. But this rape was a theme throughout my ceremonies and over time more memories came back to me.
Memories
I remembered how I was so scared to sit next to Sasha on the subway ride back, but I didn’t know why. How when she told me about all the fun we had at Coney Island as we sat next to each other on the train, I told myself, “whatever you do, don’t believe her. That’s not where we went!”
The relief I felt when we made it home, finally dry land. How I kept saying “I don’t remember, I don’t remember,” when my mother asked me how the trip was. “You don’t remember the rides?” My mother asked me a few times. Eventually I said that I remembered but of course I never did.
Then before bed, my father came in and asked for more details about the trip. I kept saying, “rides, rides…” because I didn’t know what to say. I felt pressured. I didn’t remember much of what happened, just that we didn’t go to Coney Island and it was an awful experience.
I had always known I had been in that bedroom and that her boyfriend was there too. A flash of his knees always stood out to me. Now I knew why. Once the r*pe was over and I was suddenly standing on two feet again, the memory started to slip from me. At the last second I told myself to remember he had been there and took a glance at his feet to save in my memory.
Then there were other memories I held onto for the longest time. I had a feeling they were important. One was the bath I had with Sasha. She was lying down in the bath and I was sitting on her stomach. Then there were these terrifying violent dreams that were also s*xual (I had no idea what the feeling was and why it seemed like I liked the violence). Then, the fact that I was very itchy down there and had to go to the doctor to check me. I’m not sure what the outcome was, but I think the doctor asked my mother if anything happened. She said no of course, because she had no clue.
Of course, answers aren’t enough.
Healing has to happen. Knowledge and awareness of what the issues are is a huge step towards healing, but when it’s something so big, there’s still so much more to heal after that first step. It’s a deep deep pit, so much deeper than I realized. I’m now blindly taking the next step, through therapy for this specific trauma, other psychedelics, and anything else I can find.
This is not me telling you my story after I’ve healed. I don’t know when the pain, triggers, OCD, utter fear and seizures will end. I’m in middle of my journey, and hope that sharing it will comfort both me and others that can relate.
Read more of my story here:
