Day 7 of realizing it had been sexual assault all along
Exactly a week ago, I finally woke up and realized why I had been a different person since the night of October 18, 2014. I always knew that night had changed me somehow. I had lost my peace and my mind has since been in complete agony and distraught. Since that night, I was relentlessly in need for closure and answers for him. Soon, I would embark on a tireless journey of trying to make sense of things and I'd always thought he had the answers. That journey resulted into further humiliation, loss of self-respect and destructive behavior. Nothing good had come out of it and I was left with more questions than answers.
About 3 years after that 'fateful' night, I looked inward and realized I always had the answer myself. He had sexually assaulted me that night. That experience was rife with humiliation and degradation. He had reduced my worth to nothing.
We had known each other for a while. We had been intimate before once. And this time he wanted things to escalate, except I wasn't ready. I verbally had made it clear to him where I drew my boundaries, but he wouldn't listen. I'd told him explicitly why I didn't want sex that night but he kept getting aggressive. Meanwhile, just to add more to the humiliation, his roommates in the living room were rooting for him and one even yelled to take my virginity (I wasn't one). He even poked me through my underwear and I had to push away, reminding him of my boundaries. Luckily, I had been able to resist him the whole time and didn't give in. Don't remember how long I had been in his room, but I had managed to get out of there, successfully evading any penetration. Except, while walking out of there, my mind had already been in a state of shock...
Now that I have clarity on why I had been traumautized, shouldn't I gradually be getting better? Except I've been on edge & somewhat nauseous and, for the first time ever, I was close to puking last night. I keep having thoughts in my head whether I am over-reacting and why I can't just get over it. I wasn't raped technically but I can't figure out if I was close to being raped.
In fact, I have experienced varying degrees of sexual harrassment including groping by strange men; but none of those experiences haunt me like this one. Why can't I just move on?
@utk123 HI utk, sorry your post has not yet received a response. Thank you for making your post and for sharing all that you did. Im sorry you went through the experiences you did. Trauma can affect and change someones life and it sounds from your post, that for you, the experience you went through had a profound effect on you? It sounded from what you wrote that you wanted to make sense of the experience you went through and searched for answers. it can be very difficult when you dont get those answers and sometimes its a matter of coming to some kind of resolution about that for yourself. And as your post went on to say so clearly, the answers are indeed within you and sometimes no matter how we try and look at a situation, how we try and make justifications for others actions, sometimes the painful reality, is you were hurt, you were sexually assaulted and that should never of happened. What happened to you should never have happened.
Things will improve for you but you may need some time to work through what you went through and sometimes people can suffer with body memories or flashbacks of the traumatic event. I wonder if this is what may be happening for you when you describe being sick and nauseaus? It matters not if it was rape or not, it was still unwanted attention sexually from those who had no right to subject you to what they did. They committed a crime. They did not respect you as a person and did not care for your feelings and they had no right to hurt you as you have been. It takes time to heal from experiences such as this to be able to move on but perhaps with support from others, you can begin to heal 