Dinkaltranen

Tonight, someone at group shared their story. They claimed that hearing me speak about my experiences at the hands of a female rapist had given them confidence to do so. I have most certainly avoided explicitly stating that at group because I always felt that it did more harm than good to share that my rapist was a woman. Every time someone says that they don’t feel like they have the right to bring up their experience because it isn’t as bad as someone else’s, Koker, the other group coordinator, gives his speech using the two sinking ships analogy which I always hate.

If you haven’t heard, it talks of two ships, one of which is struck by a torpedo, another which has holes poked in it. They both end up at the bottom of the ocean, or in other words, the same place. It is meant to indicate that all trauma is equal, which is a concept I understand is helpful for getting people to open up and feel accepted, even if it isn’t something I believe. The ocean, for example, has varying depths. What is ‘the bottom’ for many people is very different. You might get stuck on a sandbank. You might sink in a place so deep that you are crushed into a ball from pressure. Good luck surviving that.

The other one he used, for the first time tonight, is “Does it hurt more if you get shot by a man or a woman?”

Well? Do we all have a unique story with different struggles? Or are all getting shot? If it’s the latter, then why bother sharing? After all, we’re all ‘in the same place’.

Go on and try saying the same things about recovering from trauma.

I was curious about Elita, the guy sharing his story, as he seemed from the outside to be doing quite well. He had a wife, job, and house. I asked how long they had been together before telling her about his rape, and he said he waited a a year, but he wished he’d told her sooner. He also told of a fling where he disclosed what happened and was questioned on it.

Something happened in my life recently that reminded me that I should never share the dark parts of myself with people I know, even if I really, really want to. Well intentioned or not, I have repeatedly hurt people with my honesty and my need to tell the truth. I was furious in this moment, at myself, for realising what I’d done after seeing my own behaviour reflected back on me.

I don’t think I will ever share these parts of myself with anyone ever again. No one needs to see that. I can suffer in silence. I’ve seen enough of what the alternative holds.

And this whole thing reminds me of a discarded draft that never made it here. See below:

I am lying in bed next to a woman, who, I guess now, is my girlfriend. She stares at me, and I try to meet her gaze and not dissociate and accidentally end up staring at her breasts, though I don’t think she minds even if it was intentional. She’s kind, introspective, idea driven. She wants to be a teacher. She’s a few years younger than me. I have no idea why she wants to be anywhere near me.

“Are you sure?” She asks.

Before we had sex, she asked me if there was anything I was into. I didn’t tell her that what happened to me made me have rape fantasies for the rest of my life. Instead, I told her something confusedly about Freud, and how sexual fantasies were a way to revisit our trauma in a way we had control. She’s smart, so I’m pretty sure from that she picked up that something terrible did happen to me long before any of this. If it wasn’t that, it was the ‘panic’ attacks (flashbacks) when she touched me, the trembling, and the inability to come. At least a couple of those are pretty normal for sexually inexperienced young men, even if I wasn’t either of those things.

But I assume most women talk about it, and know about it, just like men talk about women faking orgasms. Virgin or inexperienced men can’t get it up, and it’s not because of porn, it’s performance anxiety, or rather the fact that something society and culture has built up as the best most fun/terrifying/exciting/important thing you can do is about to happen, like jumping out of an airplane. A lot of people struggle to jump out of that open door, and it’s not a mental problem, it’s a physiological one, you are overwhelmed and pumping with every hormone that exists. Porn definitely doesn’t help, but I’ve written enough condemnation of pornography, and I’ve had enough conversations with other men that I have come to a consensus on it for now. Back to the pillow talk.

“There’s nothing I’d want you to do with me. I think it would be bad to engage with the ideas.”

“But there are ideas.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about them.”

I breathe in, and the air catches in my throat. She reaches an arm towards me, and I flinch at the touch. I don’t want to tell her. I’m not going to tell her. Because nobody wants to hear that, nobody wants to know that, and I said I wasn’t going to lie anymore, and whenever I talk about what happened to me I feel like a liar, because everyone ever told me that I was lying about it and my sister told me men can’t get raped when I was growing up, let alone get raped repeatedly over years, or whatever the male version of marital rape is, except we weren’t married we were boyfriend and girlfriend except she was over a decade older than me and my teacher and she sometimes drugged me and sometimes force fed me alcohol I think, that very last one I’m not certain about. And in that moment I want nothing more than her to climb on top of me and push me down, which is impossible given she is 20 kilos lighter than me and a woman and I am now a fully grown man, and tell me to just let go, let go, let go.

But I don’t. I don’t tell that to people I care about anymore. I guess I just do that on the internet. But no. I start breathing again. I recite my prayer in my head and come back to the present. She is staring into my eyes. I reach out and put her hand on me where she touched me before. She smiles.

“I have rape fantasies.” I finally speak.

She raises an eyebrow at me, and shifts a little towards me. She means it invitingly, playfully, though the action could be interpreted as mocking.

“Kinky. Handcuffs, rope? I can come up with a safe word.”

I shook my head. “Not you. Me.”

Her eyes widen with genuine surprise.

It sets off something in me, and I start doing what I always do when I’m upset, which is start fucking talking like an idiot.

“You know the very stereotypical female rape fantasy, it’s just like that. Just like that but I’m the one it’s being done too.”

She’s silent, but she’s searching my face. She can tell I’m upset. She’s just trying to figure out if it’s genuine, because a lot of the time when I start talking like this it’s bullshit, or a joke, or antagonistic.

She seems to have decided. Her expression softens, and her touch on my arm becomes comforting. I think she understands. She’s put the pieces together, or at least something close to the idea that I’m sexually traumatised. Now she’s going to say something like “I’m sorry” now, and I’m going to feel horrible, and remember that I should never have done this. I should have just done what I always do and dissociate while I pound her into the mattress, drown myself in trying to make her feel good because I am unable to feel anything myself, trying to pretend I can’t feel someone’s breath on my neck. Great, I destroyed another relationship. I destroyed the last good thing that’s ever going to happen to me.

But no. She doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything. She just waits. This woman. In this moment, I am certain that she would do so if I asked her. She would take me, or rather, let me take her into my fantasy where she takes me. Sincerely. She would do anything I asked of her.

“Please hold me.” I ask, as I roll over onto my other side. I hate the term little spoon.

She embraces me. Her body is warm. I always forget how warm women are. How soft their skin is. I was very rarely held. And even then, it wasn’t for very long. I am waiting for her to let go.

She doesn’t.

I feel breath on my neck.

I’m glad she can’t see my face. I don’t cry but tears well up in my eyes. I must have been trembling, because she runs her fingers through my hair.

I feel breath on my neck.

She doesn’t let go.

I smile as the tears start streaming down my face.

She. Doesn't. Let. Go.

THE END (of this section)

Now to analyse my own work like a narcissist. I don’t think it’s actually healthy to recreate, or rather engage with rape fantasies. The true fantasy of this piece of wish fulfilment is acceptance. I am in a committed relationship, I try to trust them and overcome part of my trauma, dispelling my doubts. I have the option to give in to my fantasy, and ask her to participate in it with me, hurting us both for my own satisfaction. But instead I opt for comfort and healing, and this too is accepted. Finally, this acceptance allows me to find relief, relief! Allowing me to expunge the negative associations and replace them with positive ones. They are tears of grief and joy as I know I made the right decision with the right person, and my honesty was not overwhelming.

I have overwhelmed many people with my honesty before. I have told fresh friends that I was raped for years, out of desperation that someone would believe me, accept me, someone would hear me. Acceptance is core for many of my fantasies, but I was unfair to people in my desperate search for that acceptance. I am still grappling with the idea that we (in this case the mentally ill or traumatised) might need someone to see the worst parts of us accepted for us to feel worthy of love. So far that kind of honesty seems to have lead me and everyone else who does it into as much strife as my worst lies. My current conclusion is that you need to do it at the right time and right place, and I’ve never done it. Catch 22. Can’t trust them until I’m convinced they accept the worst parts of me, which involves exposing, or confessing those parts to them. Can’t trust people or feel safe long enough to tell them the proper way. Telling people the desperate way I do blows up the relationship, and reinforces my belief that I can’t trust anyone. Rinse and repeat.

What the guy at group did was right, even if what he went through, and I say this with all due respect, was not the same as what I went through, and maybe that’s why he was able to still trust people so easily after what happened. But he did, and along with recent events in my life, remind me that I’m going about this the wrong way. The trust, respect, and acceptance comes first, after a long, provable, stable time frame.

But this fantasy skips all of that. Obviously I’m not going to write an autobiography that delves into an alternate timeline where I meet this woman and form a relationship with her and document every waking moment of my life up into and after that. But even this fantasy shows my desperation to get that relief immediately, and the piece ends almost immediately after that, fading away like the last ebb of an orgasm.

Elita from group who shared his story, I am both proud of you and also heinously envious of you. You did everything right and it worked out.

Right now, my faith is broken. I feel like I did a lot of things right, I feel like I did my best when many others would have faltered, handled with empathy an unfair situation I didn’t choose, and it still blew up and hurt me and everyone else badly.

Anyway. Before group, someone showed me their stomach length zipper-scar from when they had emergency surgery caused by complications of binge drinking, in an attempt to warn me away from my path. In return I flashed them 15 years worth of self harm scars on my chest. That’s another one of my fantasies, or nightmares, that someone I trust or love sees them and accepts them or doesn’t. My scars are basically tattoos. They are there to permanently commemorate something, pain. They are proof of my pain. I am deeply ashamed of them, and never show them to anyone. They are for me, to remind me that what I went through was real, that it was enough to drive me to do that to myself.

Either way, in the last 3 years I’ve always started cutting when I stopped drinking. Sometimes I did both at the same time when things were particularly bad. I was going to make a pact with someone, that I would stop drinking if they did something else that I thought would help them. It was a terrible idea, and I realise now I should take my own advice, and not shackle my recovery to someone else’s behaviour. Only I can save myself.

So hopefully no more drinking or cutting. Back to hurting myself the old fashioned way: exercise.

...I joke. I’m trying to live, I’m not trying to hurt myself. I’m going to keep trying. Just because I feel like I did everything right and still had the worst outcome doesn’t mean it’s going to always be this way.

I have to at least pretend to have optimism. I have to accept and be willing to die in a horrible, lonely, miserable way knowing that I did the right thing, I did my best.