Victim, I Was One

Today I watched the movie Lovelace; it's based on a true story of a woman who was coerced into pornography by her abusive husband and who became a pioneer of pornography.  The story of this woman, Linda Lovelace, was difficult to watch, yet very eye opening.  It shows the struggle that some people who are victims of domestic violence go through in their relationships; why she stayed, how he got away with it, the cycle of abuse.  And just like that, it hit me: I was a victim of sexual assault.

People (and up until tonight that included me) associate rape, and only rape, with sexual assault, but The United States' Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women defines sexual assault as "any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."  Well, what happened to me is listed in that definition, so that makes me a victim of sexual assault.

It's been around seven years since I was in a relationship with the young man who was my assailant, yet it's taken me all these years to realize what was really going on.  While in the relationship, I thought that since he said he loved me that he did, in fact love me.  Our friends (who might be reading this and if you are please do not reveal his identity) thought we were a cute couple and I just felt lucky to finally be the girl who got the guy.  When he broke up with me I soon realized how unhealthy our relationship was: we spent more time on our physical relationship than we did on our emotional/social relationship.  I also realized that he never really expressed/showed any interest in who I was; he never seemed interested in what I was thinking or what I was feeling.  And I never felt comfortable sharing my thoughts and emotions with him; if I tried to engage in 'deep' discussion with him, I would get shutdown with misogynistic comments about how silly my female brain was and how I was just nice to look at, but apparently not great to talk to.  

He didn't wait until we were settled in our relationship for the assault to happen; in the beginning he would try forcing me to kiss him knowing that I hadn't kissed anyone before and wanted to do so when I felt safe and ready (which I didn't).  One night, I was leaving for the weekend, and us having only ever kissed on the lips before, he forced his tongue in my mouth and later when I tried to talk to him about it, he lied and said that I had done the forcing, I doubted myself 'was he right, did I do the forcing?'.  Once we had progressed to making out horizontally the fondling began.  I can't tell you how many times I moved hands from squeezing my body.  But I thought that since he loved me and I kinda loved him, that I owed him more and more of my body.  You show love with your body; if that's what he wants, then I should show him I love him by giving myself to him.  I remember one night we were making-out on my bed, I was under him and he (without my consent) pinned me down.  I tried unpinning myself, but my strength against this 6'1" man was no match.  I felt confused and unsafe.  Something was unfamiliar and a little scary in his eyes.  This seemed like something he had seen in the porn he lied about watching.  Our relationship became more about just making out and me letting him touch me than anything else.  We barely talked, but the expectation was there that I would lay down and he would almost choke me with his nasty tongue and feel me up.  No one else knew; from the outside we seemed like a good little Christian interracial couple.  I mean, we even went to church together.  The last straw of our relationship was an epiphany for him (he realized that I wasn't going to give him sex) and for me (I realized that this relationship had gotten out of hand, but I didn't know why).  One night we were making-out and the normal heavy petting of me was going on when his strong hands went for my crotch.  I tried multiple times to move his hands, but he pushed back all while looking me dead in the eye: This is going to happen. I should just let him, it doesn't feel that terrible.  I wanted to say stop, and I tried (like I had all throughout the relationship) many times, but it never came out.  I was scared, I had had no voice in this relationship, why would it come now?  After he left I felt guilty and violated and ashamed and physically sore.  I called my best friend at the time and she offered some unhelpful, unhealthy advice.  A week or so after he broke up with me because I want something different from a relationship and I've changed so much.  I was able to breathe a sigh of relief, even though I felt hurt that I would let him use and abuse me and then he would dump me.

Several years later I have a name for what happened, sexual assault.  I now see the pattern my emotions take when I love people: in an effort to love them unconditionally, I doormat my emotions.  I repress them, I hide them, I lock them up, I mask them.  I let myself get hurt continually by people, familiar and strange, and I never tell them because I want them to feel good about themselves and don't want them to feel bad for having hurt me.  This self-door-matting is something I do e.v.e.r.y. single day and is something that's hard to stop because essentially no one feels like a safe person.  If you're reading this and know me as blunt and are trying to understand how this is possible, know that I will share my thoughts on something, but not my emotions/feelings on something.  My thoughts and feelings aren't as connected as others' are.

I've learned a lot today and I am still processing how I feel about this newly realized part of my life, but I will tell you how I don't feel.  I am not angry, I am not ashamed, I feel no less valuable, I am not dirty, I am not guilty.  Something Linda Lovelace said at the end of the movie was that she wants people to know that they can walk out of these (abusive, hurtful) situations a whole person.  And I feel whole.