The Lump in my Gut
I write this with shaking hands, a lump in my gut and a racing heartbeat. I know...doesn't sound like regular PMR, amirite? Even if I'm angry, I'm not normally this nervous and upset about writing a post. Except that I accidentally just triggered myself, and I feel if I don't write this one, I'm going to go crazy thinking about the parallels and I don't want to fill the rest of my night with this one, and I'm here with the kids, so I definitely don't want this one swirling round.
From here on out, big arse TRIGGER WARNING.
I just realised that I have way more parallels with Sookie than I ever thought. And the thought just makes me feel all kinds of squirmy and yuck. I'm hoping writing this out will purge it - and hopefully by the time that I've backspaced over all the shaky little spelling errors I've made, I can be calm again. I'm going to be blunt, and I'm going to be as honest as I want to be.
I've covered this subject before - Sookie's rape by Bill in the trunk of the car. What I haven't actually disclosed is that I was raped at sixteen. By my first serious boyfriend. Except unlike Sookie, I was a virgin at the time. Many of my close friends in the fandom know that, but this is the first time I've said it publicly. I don't like to talk about this, for various reasons.
I rarely, if ever, speak of the actual details. But when I was reading something today - not a rape fic or anything - about the car trunk, I actually had a triggering moment because I realised that just like Sookie, I was in the back of a car. Slightly different, because it was a sedan with the seats knocked down, but still what we would refer to here as the boot of the car. I was in an enclosed space, and even if I had the strength to push him off - and I tried - he only had an inch or two leeway. That meant he was going nowhere. And my rapist didn't actually want to go anywhere.
Of course, I have other parallels with Sookie that I've known for a while. That I knew him, and found it difficult to call it rape for a good ten years, that I haven't had therapy - ever or at all - that I continued to be friendly with him for a long while after that. Soon after my rape, he called me up to have a threesome with him and a friend. That I never spoke about it at all with any subsequent boyfriend barring my husband, and I've never turned to Mr. Minty with all the details - he knows I was raped, but he doesn't know any details at all. I don't want him to know, and I don't want to bring that into our relationship. I want to him and that separate. He knows enough to know I don't like to be held down, but that's it.
Like Sookie, I don't want to go over that in excruciating detail - else, I get a reaction like this thinking about the actual details. My hands shake, I involuntarily shake my head (in a nopenopenope way), my hypervigilance returns with a vengeance, my heartbeat races, I blush and I'm shaky on my feet. Adrenaline is racing around my body, and if I actually get around to posting this, it'll be because it still is. Adrenaline always makes me more daring - otherwise this will stick as a post I wrote and erased because I chickened out on posting it.
Also like Sookie, I don't hate my rapist. I don't want him to die. I've actually protected his identity when various men over time have wanted to know who he is, so they can dish out an arsewhooping. Except that it doesn't matter if they make him a smear of blood and a couple of bones - that won't make me not a rape victim. I'll never go back to what I was. Ever. They'll go to jail, and I won't have anything change. They'll feel better and I won't be better. It'll be for them, and not for me.
On top of that, I had a family member come onto me when I was a kid, and like Sookie, my parents didn't believe me. I never had a Gran, although I was lucky enough that this was the one and only true fuckup that my parents made. Yes, a truly epic one, and one I wish they hadn't done, but still one that shaped my adolescence. I knew before I told anyone about my rape that maybe I wouldn't be believed (and hey - I wasn't).
Furthermore, I got past it in the same sort of way that Sookie did - throwing myself at other men, having all kinds of relationships with the same detachment as she did herself. I had way more than she did - in terms of sexual purity, I'd be about the rate of Ginger. I'd certainly be kicked around as a worthless whore in Fangtasia by all kinds of writers. I hated the idea that my rape would shape my first whole sexual experience, and I made sure to have sex of my own volition with someone I didn't love soon afterwards so that I wouldn't have to think about that being my first time. You can tell by how much I hate the whole 'pure virgin blood tastes best' shit. Because what that says to me is not only am I one of those dirty rape victims who didn't do it right, but I've been sullied as whole - because I had no choice to wait and have sex when I wanted to.
To really move past it though, I got angry, like Sookie did. Angry that he was living fine and I was not. The idea that I'd let him dictate the rest of my life - give that arsehole more power over me than he ever had before by living my life defined by what he did. I stopped believing that I had to go over and over of it until I got fixed and made sense. Like Sookie, I faked it to make it. I've never regretted that decision or that epiphany - and I resent the implication that I should chat it out or I'm not really fixed. That I must cry or I'll never have anything.
Every time I see Sookie insulted for how she dealt with it, I can't help but think all the women in this fandom would have torn strips off 16 year old me. A portion would have told me that I'm buying into rape culture; a portion would have had no sympathy for me that I didn't stand up and tell a man who wouldn't listen to me and raped me, where to get off; a portion would think it was hot because my rapist had blond hair and blue eyes; a portion would hate on me for not hating him enough; and a portion would want me to apologise to him for having made a mistake he didn't think was rape.
Of course, I'm no stranger to that feeling. I told my best friend a couple of days afterwards, and she called the rapist to see if what I was saying was true. He didn't tell the truth - and in truth he probably didn't see it as rape even though I said no and tried to push him off - and she brought that right back for me to answer. Told me I must be mistaken. I didn't tell anyone much after that - unless they confessed to me first that they had themselves been raped. 'Luckily' she rang my parents and told them. She taught me well to keep my fucking mouth shut about my rape - that it will only open you up to nasty behaviour.
But truly, I still get to witness nasty behaviour anyway. Every time someone says something about other victims and how they "should", I know that they wouldn't approve of me. I suppose I could engage in some sort of deal where I don't take it just that little bit personally - but I don't. I suppose it's really pride that keeps me quiet - that I don't want the same people who rag on Sookie to rag on me for something intensely personal, and after over 20 years - still something that makes me feel ashamed.
Even though I wasn't at fault, my overwhelming feeling when I read all about how so many people think Sookie is doing it wrong, I still feel anger and shame that I'm a real person, a real woman, a real rape victim - I have so many parallels with her - and they think I'm doing it wrong. That I don't hate him, that I didn't cry enough, that I got naked again in his presence even though we didn't have sex, that I didn't have therapy, that I didn't get justice - all of that is very wrong of me, apparently.
I know it's not going to stop of course - which is why if I post this one, it stays here and hopefully I can bury this soon with something else. Wordpress is too good with google, so I'll keep it here. I won't tweet it either. That way it limits the amount of people who can tear strips off 16 year old and 38 year old me. The ones who think that sort of shit is okay to say about a fictional character because no real person would ever be like that. The ones who will act as if I'm not a real person with real feelings. I've seen them around, all the fucking time.
One of the other reasons I've kept quiet in this fandom, is because I've always hated the idea of using my rape to trump arguments about Bill and his worthiness, though - because being raped shouldn't be used to win arguments. Just rest assured that as a rape victim, I don't hate him. I don't hate my own rapist either. This was of course, why I defend Sookie - I know what it feels like from the inside - I lived this. CH got it right as far as I'm concerned. And it's why I focused on learning so much about rape in criminology too - it isn't strictly my field and what my research is - it's personal interest. I have hygiene rituals too, dear reader.
I do feel a bit shaky coming out about it though too - because it wouldn't be the first time someone would write off my opinions as that of a rape victim, and therefore irrelevant. I never object to respectful questions, but I hate the whole "Oh, she's overly emotional about the issue". Huh. No I'm fucking not. I'm perfectly logical about it after more than twenty years - I just happen to know exactly what I'm talking about from the outside with research, and from the inside with personal experience. I can look at Sookie and how she deals with it, look at me and how I dealt with it and feel some empathy for the both of us - and still not lose my ability to be rational about it.
That's part of my reason for publishing this - that I know I shouldn't have to feel ashamed or disregarded, and part of me is angry that I should be the one to keep silent, but the arseholes who know diddly about it feel free to keep telling each other all about how they know, through their psychic divining powers or their "I reckon" skills. I hate that that happens, so fucking much. That for fear of what they'd say about me and how I "should" feel about it, I'd keep quiet about it all. That their theory borne of no experience or research has more weight than my actual lived experience. That Sookie having a lived experience similar to mine makes CH a bad person trying to excuse or encourage rape for writing it - and therefore me a bad person for actually enduring it. When I think of it like that, it makes me fucking furious.
Finally, I hate the implication that I must be a sensitive little flower because of it - crying and being disturbed and showing everyone my damage. You'd never fucking guess it when you met me, and I highly doubt anyone but other rape victims would guess it from reading either my journal or my fanfic. Even though I get PTSD symptoms at times such as those above, I still read about rape victims in criminology. For the record - rape-as-romance mostly makes me angry - I just happen to know what it means to be triggered for all the other rape victims (and there are at least three people in this fandom who've spoken privately with me about being triggered by fanfic). I look at crime scene pictures, and horrifying things all the time without running away and crying and needing therapy. I've endured about a billion rape jokes because I'd rather sit there and not react than come out to someone laughing about people like me. I've endured all manner of shit-talk about rape from people who think they know how to do it "right" and how to be the "right" kind of victim - and I'll keep silent about that rather than come out and tell you you're not just talking about Sookie, you're also talking about me. When I say you probably know a rape victim - well, if you know me, you definitely do.