Apparently, my emotional reaction from the night I was roofied is on a ten-year delay

[ras_elased]

So I've never been shy about discussing the night in college that I was roofied, and I'm sure I've at least mentioned it in passing on my journal and possibly in other journals on my flist, but as far as I can recall I've never sat down and made a post describing what happened (and what didn't happen, thank God) that night, and how the experience

Comments

[shinetheway]

You keep saying that you weren't traumatized, that nothing actually happened. That isn't true. Just because you weren't screaming or bleeding at the end of it doesn't mean a trauma didn't happen. Don't feel like you need to diminish your own experience to make clear that you respect the experience that other people have had. Your trauma does not take away the meaning and importance and significance of someone else's assault story, just as theirs doesn't take anything away from you. We all experience trauma in our own way.

Following from that, we all cope with things in our own way too. After years of dealing with depression, illness, stress, friends experiencing everything from pregnancy scares to rehab to DUIs to rape, and my own small quiet experience with sexual assault, I've come to the following conclusion: if a coping mechanism works, it's a good coping mechanism. It may not be a CONSTRUCTIVE coping mechanism, and may actually be DESTRUCTIVE, which is why I would encourage people to stop, say, freeballing heroin and take up gardening. But to me, someone who's been suicidal most of my adult life, the name of the game is to stay alive and whatever coping mechanism gets you through the day is valid and deserves respect.

A while ago a friend of mine, who'd been raped, told me that he couldn't deal with it. He was humiliated and angry at that, and he told me he knew he was supposed to, but he just couldn't. It was the year anniversary of the attack when we were speaking, and it was all so raw, it hurt too much. And I told him, apparently alone out of everyone we knew, that there was nothing wrong with denial. Denial's your brain's way of postponing the reckoning until you're ready for it, I said. It's how your brain is going to get you from point A (a scary now) to point B (a safe time in the future) when you can really deal with it. Just don't worry about it, and ignore it and let the denial do its thing. It's destructive, you can't keep it up forever, and if you try to keep it up past the shelf life you'll hurt yourself, but don't be embarrassed if you just want to put it away in a drawer for now. And he did, and about three years after that we ended up spending about six months dealing with it (he was my roommate) and he finally was able to face what had happened and how it changed him and do some internal exploration of it, and it was better.

It sounds to me like your head decided that what with everything else that was happening in your life, the last thing you needed was to deal with the aftermath of an attempted-possibly-successful sexual assault. You stuck it in a drawer, you grew up and got friends and experiences and an LJ, and read books and talked to people and made your observations, and now finally your head has decided that it's safe. It's time. And so now you'll finally deal with it. And that's okay. You're okay.

All the hugs in the world, bb. I value you, and your words, and if there's anything that any of us can do for you all you have to do is ask.