miscarriage from SA
trigger warnings: rape/SA (COCSA specifically), teenish pregnancy, miscarriage, grief
hi, this is my first time posting here. i apologize in advance if i do or say anything wrong. just a disclaimer, this is really long, and i'm sorry about that. i just have no one to talk to about this and i have so much to say. but tldr: i was pregnant from being raped, i miscarried years ago, and i miss the baby, but it feels so wrong and i don't know how to grieve or cope.
almost 3 years ago, i got raped at school by a classmate. i was 11, and it was so incredibly traumatizing. i've been diagnosed with ptsd 3 times since then. it took me months to fully piece together what had been done to me, because i blocked it out so hard. its actually taken me years. i knew i was raped after a few months, because i was finally able to remember exactly what happened.
last year, i didn't necessarily remember something new, i just finally made myself come to terms with it after refusing to think about it. two months after being raped, i miscarried alone in my bathroom. i was so young, and i didn't even know i was pregnant in the first place. i remember how painful it was, and how alone i was, and how it felt like the world was ending in that moment. i've had so many feelings since then.
i've never wanted kids in my life. not before i was raped, and not since. i've just never really liked kids all that much. but now that i know that for 2 months, i was a mother, its changed things. i didn't like kids before, but now seeing babies makes me feel so sick. hearing about pregnancy makes me sick. i just can't handle anything relating to it anymore. i was just so young, and so confused and so scared. i felt so violated. like he would forever be a part of me or own a part of me because now his child was inside of me.
and honestly, i'm so glad i miscarried, because i know i never would've been able to handle being an 11 year old mother. but now there's so much grief. there was something living and growing inside of me, and it could've had a future, and a life. i know deep down that if that baby went to term, i would've hated it so much. i would've only seen my ***, their father, in the baby, and it would've driven me insane. but i also could've loved that baby like nothing before. i could've watched that baby grow and become someone as kind as i wish i could be. i could've been a great parent if i really wanted to be.
i feel so lost. no one my age has ever been a parent. no one in my life has gotten pregnant under the circumstances that i did. all i want is someone who understands, who knows how to cope with this sort of thing. i feel like i'll never cope with this. i'm struggling to grieve because it was years ago, and i don't feel like i have the right to miss something that was never truly alive in the first place. but i miss that baby, and i love it despite how wrong that feels.
i've thought forward to the future, in terms of ways that maybe i could honor the baby. it's due date would've been some time in september. i looked up the birth flowers for that month, and they're asters and morning glories. i feel like asters being the birth flower for my baby is so appropriate. asters are named after the greek word for star, and ever since i went through that all those years ago, i've been writing poetry. so many of my poems are about stars, the universe, the galaxy. i have a published poem about stars. it feels sort of fitting, that even if i couldn't come to terms with the fact that i almost had a baby, i've been writing about them ever since. i've been honoring them subconsciously in almost everything i write. i'm thinking about maybe getting a tattoo of a bouquet of flowers, maybe my month's birth flowers and my baby's combined. just so my baby knows that i love them now, even if i hated them back then.
i'm only 14, these are such hard concepts for me to think about, let alone live with. i'm struggling with humanizing the baby. i keep using 'it' and that feels so disrespectful, but i just can't let myself think of it as a human, or else it makes me so scared. i'm so sorry this is so long. if anyone else has gone through something similar, or knows what i could possibly do to make this grieving easier, please let me know. thank you for reading this.
@wordsonwings
hey, hey, I am SO sorry to hear the pain that you have gone through in your life. I can understand that you feel a mix a thing towards the pregnancy and the miscarriage. It is okay to both miss the baby but also be glad that you did not have the baby and get to live your life as a teenager without disruption of motherhood at such a young age. I can understand that you are grieving, missing what you never got to see.
I can understand how scary it is to humanize the baby. It sounds like using the word "IT" is your brain's way of protecting you from further harm. Your ideas to honor the baby, who was innocent of the inflicted trauma on you, sound lovely. You were (and still are) just a child, having a child, so it makes sense that at the time of the event, you were hating what was happening to you. This baby inside you was further proof of the trauma. I am glad to see that you have been using writing as a way to help you navigate this. Writing is such a healthy coping strategy, and I hope you continue to use that and any other healthy coping skill that you wish you use.
I can get how it is hard to find many people who relate to you since your situation was pretty specific to you. I get how right now it may feel like you will never get pass these feelings. I want you to know that grief does not have any time limits, you are allowed to grieve for as long as you want and need. Also, while the baby might have never gotten the opportunity to exist outside of you, that baby was a part of you. You are allowed to grieve and miss the baby. You are allowed to grieve about the events that never got to happen, you are allowed to be sad about the moments you never got to experience or see.
What I want to know is -- did you ever get any type of professional support after this trauma, like therapy or a rape advocate?
@Remina thank you so so much for the kind words. it really helps so much. i'm so grateful you took the time to respond to me, it makes me feel so heard.
to answer your question, i am in therapy for what happened. i've been able to heal a little bit, but i hit a roadblock when that event brought up repressed memories about more sexual trauma i had when i was really little. i have a really hard time verbally speaking about it, and that makes it hard to process in therapy. we did report the assault to the school board, since it happened in school, and they did the most half-hearted investigation i've ever heard of. they concluded that because he said he didn't do it, i was lying. what the school board didn't look into was the fact that he had actively been planning to rape someone, maybe not me specifically, but someone, for a month before he actually did it. he'd been going around telling people he was going to do it.
we've gone to the police as well, and they haven't done anything. i don't really blame them because we're both still minors, and i've gotten rid of the physical evidence i had because it was too triggering for me to keep. i wish i could press charges, because what he did has taken over my entire life and made it so hard for me to function in a school setting or anywhere really. i don't think he ever knew he got me pregnant, and i'm glad. he would've made my life so much worse than it already was if he found out.
@wordsonwings
You're welcome. I am glad that my words helped and that you felt heard.
I am glad to hear that you are currently in therapy. Therapy is an important tool for processing trauma like this. I can understand how you have had a hard time verbally speaking about these repressed memories and how not being able to talk about it makes it hard to process in therapy. With therapy, sometimes if it is easier, you can write down what you want to say and have the therapist read the note.
I am sorry to hear about the poor investigation that the school did. I can imagine you felt unsafe and invalidated by the school's lack of action. It is horrible that the school just stopped with his lack of admission. I am sorry to hear that the police have not done anything yet. I know it can be hard with both of you being minors and there not being physical evidence anymore. I can understand wishing that you could press charges on the boy. I am sorry to see how this attack on you has completely ruined how you are able to function in school and anywhere. He took your sense of safety away. I am glad that he never knew about the baby, you're right, he might have used that to make your life worse.
Are you still in the same school with this boy or did your parents move you to a different school?
@wordsonwings
Ive had something similar happen to me before(not trying tk one up you bc im not and i dodnt go through the wxact same things as you ive had sa hapoen to me for over a year b4 i got out of the relationship). Im sorry you feel like you're alone in this. Youre not. Im here for you. Im sending love and hugs if that's OK.