A dear friend of mine has come back into my life. And, in doing so has reminded me that sometimes writing out the memory is better than writing the emotions that the memory has caused. So... here goes...
It was about 12 or 13 years ago that I went to Cali. I had been talking to a guy online for over a year and while his drug issues bothered me, his alternative view of religion and spirituality called to my soul in a way that I hadn't ever found. I was living with my aunt who told me that I was going to "hell" for listening to Enya... so when it felt like the right time, I let him buy my one way ticket to Los Angeles. I packed what I could and just left that afternoon completely excited that I was traveling to a new place to a guy that I thought for sure was going to be my soul mate. After all, we had talked for hours and hours and hours online and on the phone.
When I arrived in Cali, I was met by a very short & overweight man in his bare feet. Not at all what I had pictured because he had said that he had done some modeling. But, despite my misgivings I went with him because really what else was I supposed to do? I think he drove over 100 mph to his home that he still lives in with his mom. 8 lane highway at over 100 was a little much for me but whatever... We didn't really talk much because I was only about 19 and very shy. And, I knew I was out of my element.
I spent a week there before my best friend's sister could send me money for a plane ticket back home. We had sex a few times because I felt like I had to. Jed was stoned all the time and drunk the rest. He kept telling me to get a job... and I was so overwhelmed. One afternoon, after drinking I woke up on my stomach with my hands handcuffed behind my back and him on my back raping me anally. I screamed and cried and when he was finished he unlocked the handcuffs, laughed and said that I wanted it so I might as well shut up. When I kept crying, he told me he couldn't deal with the drama and get the hell out. After begging him to use the phone and sneaking around during the day to call my family, I was finally able to get home a few days later.
He didn't take me to the airport. Actually for the whole week, we never went anywhere except the liquor store. I couldn't leave the house... Anyway, once I got home I moved back in with my mom. I was broken. I couldn't leave the house because I was afraid he would find me. I didn't shower or do my hair or really anything except lay on the floor behind the couch as far below the windows as I could.
After a couple of weeks like this, I finally got the nerve up to leave the house. I'm not sure of the time frame, but I eventually moved in with my friend Tara and Chris. Tara is a lesbian who was an alcoholic because her family is so religious and her father is a pastor that she was sure she was going to hell for being a lesbian. But, that doesn't really matter... Anyway, we were driving one day in her jeep when I just started getting flashes of memory and started sobbing. I remembered my aunt and uncle's wedding reception at their house. I was four and my sister had just been born. My mom was running the reception so she couldn't really deal with me during that time. I wet my pants and so my dad drove me home and was going to get me a change of clothes. I remember being so scared because my mom never really let my dad be alone with me. He was very physically abusive and had tried to drown me when I was two for trying to get a drink out of the back yard hose.
I knew he was furious with me for having an accident. When we got home, he put me on my sister's changing table and proceeded to fondle me and stick his fingers in me for some time. It hurt like hell and I knew on some level that it wasn't right. I cried and cried. I looked at the pretty yellow fabrics around the room that was for my sister. He told me that I deserved what I got, that I wanted it or I wouldn't have wet my pants. When he was finished, he put a diaper on me with some powder... I remember the smell of the baby powder.
On the ride back, he was still yelling at me for embarrassing him in front of my mom's family by "pissing myself," for making him touch me, and that I better never say anything or the next time would be worse. The locks of the huge old impala in the back seat were very long next to the window and I remember touching them... knowing that I wouldn't ever get out. We got back to the party and I had to act like nothing happened. I remember our old neighbor was playing his guitar on a bar stool...
Throughout the next few years, I've had other memories of my dad watching me while I showered in our basement. He had made a shower stall out of red thick plastic in our unfinished basement. My family denies this, though... not the shower stall just that he would watch. He was always throwing me or beating me or punching me... up until he and my stepmom kicked me out at 16 because she couldn't forgive me for something or other.
I've been raped one other time but other than getting drunk and waking up over 24 hours in someone else's house naked... I have no recollection of that. I'm assuming I was drugged but I can't prove it and really... I was at a bar underage and entirely too trusting. I should have expected it.
I've never written any of this out all the way. Just the emotions behind it... I've been able to retell it with clinical accuracy by putting myself in that place in my mind where I learned a long time ago that nothing could attack me...
Thank you for seeing me and for knowing me... even when I don't.
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