Brokenness - My personal story of sexual assault

As my daughter begins her journey of dating and relationships, I’ve found myself revisiting my past to help her navigate her present. Gentlemen. Predators. All the shades inbetween. Like most women, I have multiple chapters where I was forced into something sexual I didn’t want, followed by a period of pain and shame-filled actions as a result. Perhaps by writing my experience here, I can help other daughters navigate their present, too. Perhaps I can help you?

WARNING: This post is graphic and painful. Yes, there are triggers - for victims, those who love victims and people who love me. Proceed with caution and guard your heart.

How I Was Groomed To Be A Victim

I was 17. I’d been going to my new high school for less than a year, and been posturing the whole time. I stepped from a small town world where everyone knew I was a “good girl” brainy person, into a faster-paced world of popularity, partying and impurity. My desperation to fit in kept me in a state of constant deceptive performance. I poured beer into bushes at parties so people would think I drank it. I held a burning cigarette, but didn’t inhale. And I could talk the talk, but I’d never walked the walk of sexual experimentation.

And then I met a boy who paid attention to me, who professed his love for me on the first date. My even greater desperation to have someone love me was huge, and I drank his “love” up like a person dying of thirst would drink water. He was tall and accepted, if not the most handsome of boys who were vying for my attention at that time. He was just goofy enough to make me feel like he was safe; like he was the exception to those surrounding us. His father was an attorney in town and they were active members of the Baptist church, so why shouldn’t I expect to be treated the way boys treated me back home? By home, I meant the town I grew up in. Where I lived now in Texas, felt nothing like home.

Then he began taking me to his house for the last hour or two of our dates, where we walked straight into his darkened room and he shut the door. I followed like a lost lamb. His parents would greet us as we walked through. I knew they heard his door lock. I was overwhelmingly uncomfortable with the whole situation, particularly when he showed me the collection of Playboys his father supplied him with, stacked neatly in the closet.

As uncomfortable as I was, my senior boyfriend never forced himself on me. He never pushed me physically, that I remember. He just began a methodical emotional push toward sex, until I at least considered it. I went so far as to go get a prescription for birth control pills, which promptly made me vomit. Daily. My plan was to stop taking them, but I didn’t know how to tell my boyfriend, so in my typical weak fashion I kept taking them. And I kept vomiting.

I was taking them when I left for my spring break trip to El Paso, to stay with a youth pastor’s family I met while at a leadership camp for my church. I was so happy to be wanted somewhere, and usually summers and school breaks meant watching others go and have fun while I stayed at home with a nearly agoraphobic mother, so I knew this was going to be great. And I got away from the pressuring boyfriend, too.

Looking back, my growing acceptance of my boyfriends’ treatment had groomed me not to speak up for myself. Coupled with my mother’s severe insistence I never rock the boat, bother anyone or really be something anyone could ever remotely be upset with, I was destined for abuse. I only needed someone who was ready to take advantage of me, and I was headed straight to that person without any ability to defend myself or anyone ready to defend me.

My first hint of what was to come was when I walked into the house where it would happen. I was entering a home of a family with parents, siblings and my friend, someplace I never dreamed would be unsafe. I’d let this young man chastely kiss me one time the summer before on a bridge at camp, but in my naivete I had thought informing him I had a boyfriend when he invited me to visit for a week “and go to church events” meant that he would consider me off limits, and we’d just be friends. I was excited to see him, to meet his family, to see our mutual friends who lived in the beautiful city of El Paso. I wasn’t attracted to him, but we’d been friendly without a mention of anything else for nearly a year. All of a sudden, my nightmare began.

“Where should I put my bags?”
He walked me to his room. He motioned to his bed.
”Where will you sleep?” I asked.
”With you, of course. You don’t mind, do you?”

Of course, I minded! But I had zero idea what to do. His room was right off the living room. His mother watched us walk in and I felt pretty sure she’d overheard what he said. I immediately began to justify this somehow in my head. I was probably being prudish. They had a small house & maybe this is just what’s comfortable for them? I’d slept in a bed with my best friend, Brian before. We had no trouble treating each other like brother & sister, so maybe this guy had the same thing in mind? Surely, he did! I mean, his mother watched us walk in the room! If he meant something different, that would make her complicit. And in my mind, there was no way a mother would be complicit about something like this.

But then I thought of my boyfriend’s mother watching me walk through and hearing the click of the door. I thought of his stack of Playboys above the basket of clean laundry she’d placed in there, proving she was complicit in all ways. Yes, mothers could be complicit.

I wanted to throw up. This time it wasn’t the birth control pills.

How It Happened

That afternoon, we walked over the border to Mexico with a large group of friends - his friends, not our church friends. I had fallen in love with Mexico as a child, and felt no fear of visiting the country. Many members of my family were/are from Mexico and everything about the culture feels safe and happy to me. Everyone with me was Mexican & they all pledged to watch out for the lily-white girl in their midst. I began to relax and feel safe. I started to have fun.

We went to a club with loud music in english - I recognized all the music and sang along. The club was clean and full of all colors of people, and I so loved to dance. I was having the best time! “Look at me!” I thought. “I DO get to go places.” I would have something to talk about when we all got back after spring break and returned to school. “See, people! I am NOT a loser!”

My friend asked if I wanted something to drink. By the way he said it, I knew he meant an alcoholic drink. I’d learned how to be a partying participant without risking my well-being, or so I thought. I told him I would drink ONE drink, but it needed to be girly. Something frothy or frozen, or fruity. I knew those were expensive & he’d only want to buy one, plus the alcohol would be minimal.

No one had told me - ever - that girls can get drugged in these situations. And because no one had described it to me before, when the haze washed over me and I needed help standing up, I thought this must be what people meant by a strong drink. Nothing had prepared me for this moment.

They were working as a group to help me back across the border. Later, my memories came back to me in fragments, with gaps inbetween. I remember their frantic talk before we talked to the border crossing guards. Would they stop me? Would something happen to them because of me? In my stupor, I think I tried to convince them it would be fine & it didn’t matter I was caucasian. I didn’t understand what they meant.

I kept looking down, trying to focus on the lines in the pavement. Burned American flags littered the space outside the entrance to the US from Mexico. “Should this make me concerned?” I wondered. I was too out of it to care.

And suddenly, I was in his house; his room; his bed. And he was on top of me. I don’t know how I got there, or if I even helped. Did they carry me? I wasn’t very big. My first fully formed memory of the night after I took the drink, was pain. So Much Pain. His penis was pressing against my pubic area, but he hadn’t tried to enter me. Perhaps he’d already realized I was a virgin and it would be difficult? I honestly didn’t know what had happened in the moments leading up to this painful, methodic thrusting going on over me, in my friends bed. Not all my clothes were off. This confused me. “Didn’t people take all their clothes off to have sex? Why didn’t my friend have all his clothes off?” my brain was in a state of wondering confusion about this person, my friend. I wondered what my friend was doing, as I emerged from the haze.

At that moment is when I finally realized, he was not my friend. He had never been my friend. And my ever-increasing pain told me I was in trouble. Also, my assumption was that crying out wouldn’t help, because in that moment of barely emergent fuzzy non-clarity, I believed his family had clearly gotten together and put me in his bed. My messed up mind believed she was in on the whole plan. I was still out of it - only my pain was garnering my attention, and the pain was forcing me to ever increasing levels of coherence. I could feel my pubic hair being ripped out from his dry thrusting against me. I felt what would later turn out to be blood, dripping down and inbetween my legs. The introduction of fluid as lubrication - my blood - increased his excitement and he pushed more and harder. The pain was intense. And all the time, he was begging me to let him in. I could make the pain stop, if I just let him into my vagina. I honestly don’t remember telling him he could. Maybe I did? I don’t know. But I do remember the relief of no longer having skin and hair ripped out in chunks. And I’m pretty sure at that moment, I again passed out. I know my memory stopped from either drugs or trauma, though I’m not sure which.

How It Never Happened

The next morning, his mother made tortillas. I don’t remember if I ate any.

We went to church. I don’t remember the service.

I stayed for many more days. I took my pills. I let him do what he wanted to me, when he wanted to do it. I was no longer drugged so as to allow it, but I might as well have been. In that moment where I was aware of the assault, I ceased to care what happened to me. The shame consumed me, instead. As the days wore on, I believed I must have created the problem. It was my fault. I mean, I was there and letting it continue? Wasn’t I just as complicit as his mother, as his friends, as him - the person I thought was my friend?

Right before we parted at the airport, he gave me a piece of jewelry as a gift. It felt like a burning coal in my hand. I thanked him, and walked away. I threw it away when I got to my home airport. I would never see or speak to him again.

While on my flight home, I planned how to tell my mother. The depth of my pain, fear and even my physical healing made me nervous. I was in over my head, and I knew it. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted a doctor to tell me I was okay, that I could have kids. The violence of the sex I’d experienced left me scared I was truly destroyed from the inside out.

As soon as we were alone - my mother and I, I approached her with my birth control pills in my hand. In my mind, they were the beginning of the problem. If I’d never considered having sex, this wouldn’t have happened to me. Right? It was ME. I was the problem. I needed to start with that - with my own culpability. I need to confess it all. To purge. To feel some relief. She stared with hard, steel eyes at the pills I held out. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

When she did speak, it was with fury. How could I make up such a horrific lie? How dare I do this to her? Was I really that cruel?

I’m not cruel. I’m kind. I’m a lot of things, but cruel has never been one of them. I was confused by my mother’s words; by her accusations. How could my own mother not believe me?

After many tears and pleas for help, something I said must have penetrated, because my mother said she didn’t care if it was the truth, she didn’t want to hear about it. I’d brought it upon myself by wanting to go visit & pressuring her into letting me. And I absolutely, positively must never tell anyone - and especially my father. If I did, he would hate me & leave, then where would we be? She couldn’t support us on her own. I’d need to shut up and leave her alone, already. I was required to shut up & never speak of it again.

So, I did. I shut up. Instead, I acted out my shame. From March of my senior year, until I met my future husband on Valentine’s Day of my freshmen year in college, I walked in worthlessness. 11 months of regrets would follow, one by one by one.

How I Failed To Cope

I didn’t pour the drinks out anymore. I drank as much as I could. What did it matter? I was worthless.

I let my boyfriend have sex with me. What did I care? I was worthless.

And when some of his best friends picked up on my newfound hypersexuality, they took me out behind his back. I didn’t have sex with them, but I came close. I’d become a giant tease, convincing myself my sexuality was a tool I now had control of. But really, what did it matter…….

You know, hypersexual girls who act out as a result of abuse look like they get it but they don’t. I began to dress more revealing, flirt in a new way, tease and play with boys. But it wasn’t until years later when I saw other women and girls walking in the same kind of pain, that I saw what it looked like from the outside. What appears to others as a power play is actually the saddest, most desparate cry for help, masked as something different. And I was wailing the loudest cry of anyone around me, but no one cared.

I partied with a fraternity, as their “little sister” my first semester of college. Thursday night parties were what I looked forward to all week. By then, I’d had a few sexual partners, was well over my high school boyfriend and was in a completely numb state, or so I thought.

Then, the partying caught up to me & one of my fraternity “brothers” violently raped me while I was drunk. That part wasn’t what broke me, though. It was when he told the nice boy on campus, someone I had just gone on a normal date with, that I’d thrown myself at him and we’d had sex. It wasn’t sex. He raped me, but I knew I had no voice and no one would believe me.

Something about that combination of events broke me apart. Perhaps it was that it was the 2nd time I’d been raped? Perhaps it was because I had finally started to imagine I could be with a nice boy, again? I’ll never know for sure, but it felt like something inside of me physically broke in two.

Shortly afterwards, I withdrew and went home for the remaining part of the semester. The rapes weren’t the only horribleness going on in my life that led to this decision, but that’s a story for another time. When I went back to live with my parents, I rapidly descended into a full fledged depression and began to plan my suicide. I lost two months of memory, but I’ve been told it was spent mostly on the couch or my bed. I checked out and tuned out. I have scars from self-injury, but again this was before anyone talked about it, which made it easy to hide.

(I Don’t Know) How I Chose Survival

Then, as if by some miracle, I began to emerge from the fog. Something strong in me, something that I didn’t know I had, led me back to school and a vision for a tiny bit of a life. I changed colleges and for the first time since I’d moved from my little town of friends to this nightmare of a place, I went back to being a debater. I returned to public speaking. I began to shed my horrible habits of self-destruction, one decision at a time. I wasn’t good at it yet, because I was still looking for “love” in all the wrong places, but I was finally trying.

By the time I met my husband, David on Valentine’s Day of what was still my freshman year of college, I had begun to return to my former self. I was in a pattern of romantic relationship after romantic relationship, but my fragile sense of worth was at least being considered as I chose who to spend time with.

How God Chose Me

God sent David to save me from myself. It felt like he was the first person to see me. Ever. His gaze penetrated right through me as he drove me home from where we met., and it felt magnetic to be with him. I was so attracted to him, I had to think about my breathing. I loved how he made me laugh, how we both laughed, how I just knew he’d be the next boy smitten with me. That was, until he exclaimed “You’re a Christian. Why are you cursing? Christians shouldn’t curse.”

And that was the moment I noticed more than the way David fit so very well in his jeans. David spoke truth to me - and he spoke it to me like I actually could and should be held to a standard. You know, like someone who is worthwhile, instead of someone who is worthless. Like he could SEE me and like I counted! He looked at me and saw I could be better than the person in front of him, and I so much needed someone to see that.

After being friends for a bit, then dating for a bit, David accompanied me to my grandmother’s funeral, back home where I grew up. This was an especially bitter loss, as my Grandma was the most gentle and loving soul of all my relatives, and I never doubted she loved me for me. She was the only one who made me feel that way. While we were waiting for family to arrive for the lunch after the service, David & I got into a theological discussion and he discovered something about the way I saw myself. He realized by questioning me that while I had accepted Christ as my savior, I felt confident I had only gotten in because of God’s steadfastness and faithfulness. I was saved by default, you see. I didn’t see myself as chosen, wanted and certainly not as the daughter of the King. Then, David said it.

“If you had been the only person on earth, Jesus would have died on the cross JUST FOR YOU. He loves YOU. He wants YOU. He chose YOU.”

And in that moment, I was no longer choosing healing for myself. I was allowing myself to be healed; to be walked through the process by the maker of Heaven and Earth. And in Him, there was no shame. There is no shame. There was no fear. There is no fear. There is only acceptance through Christ. It’s not my fault, and it’s not any other victims’ fault. It’s never the fault of anyone but the criminal and those who help, hide or ignore. Because of David, I knew that. And I know that. I’ve never stopped knowing that.

Hope

Do you know that? Did you know Christ loves YOU so much, he would have died JUST for YOU? It’s absolutely true. He cares about all the things about you & He would never want anyone to hurt you.

You are precious.
You are amazing.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
You are loved.

If you’re reading this and you have a story, know you’re not alone. Victims. Survivors. Overcomers. We’re everywhere. It’s hard to talk about, but the more you do the less the shame can creep in. Speak once and it pierces the balloon of shame. Keep speaking and you can drain it completely. Find Christ and you can live abundantly and walk in joy.

I believe in you. You can do it! And if you’re not sure, ask me how.