TW: rape and sexual assault

quick disclaimer: I'm not looking for sympathy nor am I soliciting advice. Please take a few minutes to read the entire thread before commenting.

I've avoided any details or names out of respect for my own mental and emotional health.

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Lately, I've seen a nasty trend on social media of survivors forcing their lived experience on others, claiming that anyone who's been through assault or rape always feel, respond, or survive a certain way, or otherwise insisting that one's experience differing from their own

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somehow de-legitimatizes that person's experience.

As one of millions of survivors, I want to talk about how hurtful and potentially dangerous this behavior can be.

I was sexually assaulted by 2 people in my life. Once as a child, and once as an adult. Both experiences were

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traumatic. One escalated to rape(s), and one did not. That's not to say that one was worse than the other (that's another thread for another time).

For now, I want to focus on the childhood experiences because that's really all I'm able to take on right now.

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I was continuously sexually assaulted and raped by a sibling as a child. It started as a typical(?) "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" curiosity, and, once that happened, the sibling (older) used the shame of that (I didn't think I'd done anything wrong at the time

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but that's what predators do) to convince me to allow other things by saying "if you don't I'll tell mom and dad on "the nasty".

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Yep. It even had a name. It was a cruel game to my abuser.
This went on for 2-3 years. Why the uncertainty of the timeline? That, dear reader, is what I want to speak about.

I know the 2 homes I lived in, the rooms it happened in, some of the conversations that took place,

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and some of the actual events. What I DON'T remember is the exact when, what grades I was in, or most of the specific details. How could I forget something so obviously traumatic you ask? It's simple. Traumatic experiences are just that. Trauma is "a deeply distressing or

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disturbing experience". Read that again. "Deeply". We aren't wired to process or even accept that certain things have happened to us, I have PTSD as a result of my inability to deal with what happened to me, not because of what happened to me. How did I survive you ask?

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My mind, knowing that I wasn't able to do the ol' fight-or-flight thing, fractured, and created a deep chasm where every memory of what happened to me disappeared. Not longer after the abuse ended, I moved from one parent and state to the other, and literally started over.

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That's maybe the only thing that saved me, aside from my brain doing the only thing it know how to do - disassociate. It simply didn't happen, and a chunk of my childhood vanished with those memories.

Fast forward to my mid-20s. I was sexually confused, angry

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most of the time, and so unable to maintain a relationship that I was already married and divorced. Nothing made sense. Hadn't I had a "normal" life? Didn't I have most things that a person could want? Great job, decent parents, good friends, health, etc.? Still I had this

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void in me. I couldn't for the life of me reconcile my life with how much I hated my life.

My parents (mom/step-dad) confronted me one day and begged me to go to therapy, something I dreaded as a result of REALLY bad experiences as a military brat child. Nevertheless, I

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gave in and went to someone my mom knew and trusted. Bear in mind that my folks had no idea what had happened to me - because it hadn't as far as they or I knew.

Months went by before my therapist suggested a then newer form of therapy called EMDR. After several sessions,

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we began some regression techniques, and over time, she was able to gently coax out of me the sexual abuse and rape. It was like waking up while driving and realizing that I'm in the wrong lane and a truck is bearing down on me.

To her credit, she didn't let that happen.

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She guided me through the long and usually grueling process of denial, anger, acceptance, loss...grief. Suddenly a lot of how I was in life made SOME sense to me. The most difficult part was and still is avoiding blaming myself. That guilt and shame still lingers 40ish years

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later. "How was that my fault" is still a recurring theme for me when I find myself in an abusive relationship. It's toxic. It's deadly (tried and failed at that, thank goodness).

It's now 2020, I'm 47, and to this day I can't remember most of the details of what happened.

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To relive and recount every detail would do far more harm than good. I simply can't change what happened. I've been in and out of therapy for 20 years and not once has a therapist tried to dredge those waters for the minutiae. We discuss to the point of acknowledgement.

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So...when I see others screaming down from their apparent "righteous survivor" pedestal that ALL survivors of sexual assault, abuse, rape, etc ALWAYS remember every detail, I immediately think "I'm doing it wrong so my lived experience lacks validity and I'm just some idiot

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blaming my past for my failures as a human". That's my first response. Or worse: Maybe I'm too easily "triggered" and I should just avoid contact with other people so that I'm not affected by the "real" world. Maybe I AM better off alone. Maybe I AM better off dead...

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Maybe that's just me, and if I'm alone in this, please disregard as the rantings of a mad man. I'm ok with that.

We - survivors - all have a story. We're all just trying to live our best life in the shadow of what we endured. Some maybe get over it to a point. Many never do

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and either withdraw or worse, check out.

When you demand that someone meet your criteria in order to validate their lived experience, you do all survivors a disservice. It's not a competition. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. It's a matter of survival. Literally.

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All I ask of anyone is to respect that journey. I love reading the survival stories of others. I love understanding how our stories and journeys are uniquely different yet somehow bear resemblance. I read anything about PTSD that I can handle. I go to therapy to better

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understand how my perspectives and ability to process have changed as I've grown older and, hopefully, a little wiser.

I'll never not, in some way, blame myself for what happened to me. I know I'm not alone in that.

Please remember that when you shout down at folks.

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If you're in a better place, celebrate that. Just remember that we're not all there, and we desperately want to be.

I just want to live and not feel guilty for being alive. That's it. That's all.

I'm just another Human. Being.

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