I am very very tired of making journals like this without having anything to show for it, but I feel this will be a good step in my healing process and I really just feel like I need to come out and say what's been on my mind. It makes me feel better knowing people are listening, and I want to be honest about my actions so that I may grow as a person. This is purely my side of the responsibility and I will not be discussing actions that aren't my own aside from one exception. I feel I need to tell my story.
MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING FOR SELF HARM, SEXUAL ASSAULT
One year ago on August 19th, 3 days before my boyfriend and I were to reunite and move across the country after a year of long distance and saving money, I attended a going away party thrown for me by a friend/coworker at his home. A month or so prior, I had been at his home for a different party to celebrate our boss (my best friend at the time) moving on from the company. In hindsight, there were red flags that my friend was dangerous, I walked in on him trying to make a move on my boss while they were both very drunk, and in my extremely drunken stupor, I offered up my body so that she might have a chance of getting away to her car so that she could sober up and go home. What ended up happening was brief foreplay between the 3 of us, I defended her when he tried to initiate more and she ended up leaving, which left me alone with him. I sucked his dick briefly before making up some kind of excuse as to why I didn't wanna do it anymore, I slept on his couch and went home the next morning, thinking nothing of it, like "oh it was just some drunken behavior between 3 friends, it'll blow over".
Then comes my going away party, my boss doesn't show up, so it's just me, my friend, and about 4 of his friends/housemates playing drinking games for a few hours until I was so drunk that I was about a drink or two away from blacking out. This is the part where it gets graphic. Out of seemingly nowhere, my friend comes up behind me and grabs my breasts and rips my bra off. I have no idea what's going on, it's like my brain didn't register anything. I faintly remember some aspects after being able to reflect on it, but others I do not. I remember him saying something like "you should know better coming to my house dressed like a whore" and threatening to take pictures and sending them to people of what he was about to do to me. He pulled down his pants, grabbed my head and made me suck his dick. I remember feeling dizzy and lightheaded, feeling like I was going to throw up. I kept trying to pull away but he kept forcing it despite my gagging. Then there was the sound of the front door opening, to which he pulled his pants back up quickly. He said, and I'll NEVER forget this, he said "I guess I have to go back to being a good boy now." He fucking knew what he was doing. He waited for everyone else to be taken home so that there was no one to defend me, I don't know it for sure but I'd be willing to bet he planned the party just for this alone, because he knew my boyfriend was coming back in 3 days. His housemate that had come in (also his ex girlfriend), sat down at the table with us while I sort of just disassociated. Somehow I ended up in the upstairs bathroom naked on the floor and crying, I think I needed to feel the cold numbness of the tile floor so I could feel something, anything. My now rapist found me, put my clothes back on, and put me to bed on his couch. I called my boyfriend, who was extremely mad at first, but helped me get out of the house and into my car to safety.
I didn't do a rapekit. I didn't call the police. I felt that since I was leaving in 3 days, that I didn't want to drag a legal proceeding with me 2500 miles away and have to deal with all this shit. I opted to tell the current boss of our store, my best friend, and months later, his ex girlfriend. I regret not pursuing him legally. It's not fair that I have had to deal with all of the horrible things that rape brings about for a year while he has gotten to walk free. He'll do this again if he isn't scared, but I just try to tell myself that I can't control someone else's actions. For awhile, I wanted to legitimately murder him. I wished death on him. I wanted to torture him. But I know I couldn't, nor should I.
The rape affected almost every aspect of my life. The beautiful new life I wanted to start with my partner and his family here, I felt that I didn't deserve. I already had self worth problems prior to the rape spanning back to my teenage years, but they were amplified by quite a lot. Sleeping for the first few months was hard. I had reoccuring nightmares, PTSD episodes where I feared there was something lurking in the dark corners of the room, I had what are referred to as Psychogenic Non Epileptic Seizures (PNES) when I got too stressed out. I worked for the same company, obviously a different store, but being there every day took a toll on me. I began self harming again. I cut my arm open in the work bathroom with scissors multiple times, I choked myself out with cords and cut off circulation in my wrists with them when I would feel hopeless and ashamed, or when I felt like I needed to feel like I was alive. At one point, I was having a conversation online where I mispoke and came off as sexist, and I compulsively grabbed a plastic watering can and hit myself over the head with it over a dozen times, giving myself a concussion and a horrible mark on my forehead. I lived life like I felt I needed to be punished prior to the rape due to past rape, parental emotional abuse and grooming, but the rape made it so much worse. It was like things I had compartmentalized or done my best to stifle all had their lids ripped open all at once.
I was an intensely sexual child, to the point where I got in trouble for things concerning sexual exploration as young as 4. These experiences where I was beaten or overheard other kids be beaten because of things that I had done, scarred me. At one point I was so anxious in 4th and 5th grade that I began throwing up at meals regularly, and my abusive mother chalked it up to a gastrointestinal problem. I endured a ton of abuse growing up that I won't get into, but I will say that when I turned 12 and was given unrestricted internet access and my own laptop without parental supervision, I fell into the arms of several types of people online. Some good, some god awful. I was groomed, I would seek out men that were 2 to 3 times my age because I felt like I needed a parental figure, only for them to coerce me into doing things I didn't want to and brainwashing me into telling me it was okay. By the time I was 18 and legal, I was meeting men in their 30s, some of which were married, in person at furry conventions or at their homes and doing sex acts with them, usually getting to these places via my mother driving me. I lost my virginity to someone I didn't even like in a hotel room at 4am, I was touched inappropriately without consent a lot but didn't think much of it. I started doing porn at 18, I had my own Xtube account, videos and pictures were taken of me by others sometimes, but it was mostly me repeating things I had learned from prior experiences. I started drinking, I developed diagnosed alcoholism at 19, I would get blackout fucking drunk and fall asleep on stairs or driveways at parties. I estimate I have taken approximately 4000-5000 nudes and pornographic videos of myself over the course of my life, and when I closed my Xtube account a few years ago, it had about 75,000 views and had been made into a torrent file, meaning all of the shit I made is still being circulated to this day. There are probably still dudes walking around with nude photos of me from when I was underage. It makes me sick to my stomach. No one ever taught me anything about internet safety, about sex, anything. I was left to my own devices to figure shit out on my own, and it resulted in all of this plus getting raped at 19 by a stranger in my hometown park, right there in the middle of the fucking tennis court despite making it clear I didn't want sex from the getgo. He slid his hand up my shirt and forced himself on me, and I got put over the net and used, and then I never saw the guy again. I was so fucking scared. I had met him through grindr, I was vulnerable as fuck at the time because my mother was having an affair with the man that ruined our lives, and this random stranger took advantage of that. It took me 5 fucking years to get over what he did to me and I still think about it sometimes.
The reason I'm making this journal, is because I have been told by a psychiatrist while I was in a behavioral health unit recently that I have a compulsive sexual addiction. All of the above I mentioned, plus more, has led me to agree with this observation. I have been thinking about the reason why I draw porn, why my dream is to be an eromanga author and why I haven't committed as hard to it in the past 3 years. Part of it is definitely just life shit happening, but I think a broader reason is guilt. Shame. I have carried an absurd amount of guilt and shame since I was 12, and it kept snowballing, more guilty and shameful events occured, and I just couldn't seem to escape this loop. I had 0 self respect, I was always more than ready to give myself up to others because I felt I deserved it. I felt I deserved to be a whore, to drown myself in worthlessness, to not only have these feelings validated, but made to reject any kind of absolution from inside or from others. It was a very selfish way to live, I would often self sabotage myself just to lose friendships, I would compulsively hang around people that would bully me and treat me like shit, and wanted to use me to feel better about themselves. From the outside looking in, one would possibly perceive me as a chronic life ruiner, an interpersonal masochist, and someone who entirely lacked self value. What a lot of people don't understand about me, is that I'm a strong empath. Being this way is a double-edged sword; on one side, I care very deeply about others, but on the other side, I could care less about what happens to me. This puts great strain on my partner, who also has his own issues, but our issues fed into each other, and right now we are separated indefinitely.
This is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever done to someone. A month ago, I went on vacation with some friends. While I was there, I seduced two of them and had oral sex with them. I started to feel guilty about it when I landed back home, I didn't know how to communicate it to my boyfriend, and it ended up coming out as my sex persona that I use to pretend I don't care about anything. I was so embarrassed about it, and about a lot of my feelings associated with the rape, that I just couldn't manage to effectively communicate. I fucking cheated on my partner of 4 years, the man I want to marry, have a child with, have a quaint farm in the woods with, because I have no self respect. I had no self worth. I hurt him, I watched his heart break and his eyes die right in front of me. We have had problems before, and I'm going to refrain from speaking about his own faults because this is about me, but I feel that we have both abused each other in different ways. Neither of us loved ourselves. It's fucking tragic. I genuinely believe none of this wouldn't have happened if I was not raped, but I am still 100% holding my part of the responsibility for this. I cheated, sucking someone else's dick without asking if it's fine is cheating. And you know what? I wasn't even attracted to the two people I sucked off. I did it because I felt like I owed them for various reasons, I did it because I strangely felt like I might've needed control over sex in the same type of environment I was raped in. There's some statistic where rape victims do things like this around the 1 year anniversary of their assault, and I am unfortunately part of that statistic. I lost one of them as a friend, and the other guy is like a big brother to me, and I dragged him into my bullshit. I fucking hurt people, man. I let the compulsiveness and the bad thoughts win. I am beyond remorseful and sorry.
I voluntarily checked myself into a behavioral health unit at a hospital nearby. I decided enough was enough. The people I met there, were exceptional. The patients, the nurses, the nondenominational chaplain who helped me greatly, everything was just so incredibly special. I learned a lot about myself, and was able use what I had learned and pass it on to other patients. I gave people hope, and they reciprocated. The most important person I met, was the chaplain. At first, being non-religious aside from animism, I was skeptical of speaking with him, but I found out that he doesn't force religion or anything and that he's really just there to listen to your story and help you see perspectives on how to feel about it. I was able to finally tell a man, a man who fit the archtype that I would've had sex with as an 18 year old, about my whole story. All of it, abuse from my mother, the promiscuity, the rapes, the cheating, I didn't hold anything back. He in turn taught me something that I will never forget. There is something of a cycle that exists, that begins with a traumatic event. You feel emotions about it, time passes, and then something triggers you to remember the event. If you don't do anything at the point of rememberance, the cycle starts over, or can begin new cycles that intertwine with one another. He was illustrating this on the table in front of me, and then he paused, and wrote the words "forgiveness" and "release" after "rememberance". "If you choose to release lingering emotions, if you choose to forgive yourself for what you have done, you can begin to heal and move on." I looked at the paper, and then at him in the eyes, and then back at the paper, and I just... started sobbing heavily. I couldn't believe it, that I had been living my life in circles like that for 15 fucking years. He told me that I had immeasurable value. That behind all of my walls I put up, that there's a unique light representing me and my soul in there, my mistakes don't define me, that I don't have to live in guilt and shame and viewing life as a punishment. I could let go. I could let go of my hatred from my mother, my hatred of myself, that the people aside from myself that I wanted to forgive didn't even need to be there for me to forgive them. That I could simply live life as my authentic self.
I was able to look in a mirror for the first time in my life and say "finally, I can feel free". I'm crying so hard as I type this, because it was like I woke up. Something changed. I was no longer human trash in my eyes. It was such a bizarre, overwhelming feeling, and it still is. I weep so heavily for my child self, for the people I hurt, and my boyfriend. Normally, I would wallow in the guilt and shame of my actions, but I don't have to do that anymore, I can use those emotions as a catalyst to become a better person. I can use those emotions to just be me. I don't have to be a whore, I don't have to be worthless, I can be the nerdy, dorky, hyperactive, empathetic and emotional girl I always was on the inside. I am of the belief now, that the walls we put up inside ourselves, are not made of bricks, wood, or stone. They're made of glass. They're made of glass because anyone that cares about you can see the light behind the panes. My boyfriend saw it, my friends see it, the chaplain and the other patients all saw the real me somewhere deep in there, but I was just too stuck in my ways to shatter the glass. I love myself, for the first time ever, I fucking love myself.
This revelation and feeling of renewal leaves me at an impass about a lot of things, but in terms of art, I feel that I need to reevaluate why I draw what I do, why I had so much of an interest in it to begin with. Right now, my belief is I don't need to let my sexual interests define me, that it's possible to pursue my dream without making it my whole personality, I just need to be able to find that balance so that I'm not compulsive and making bad decisions. The essence of what I intended to do with Mylen and her world (details characters and lore that are mostly in my mind or in notepads), is actually planned out quite far. Effectively, I want to weave a story that mimics the same struggles and conclusions I've made for myself, so that others may feel more genuine within their own lives. I want to allow people to feel the same way I felt. That's my ultimate goal. As far as everything else, well... I think it's something I'll have to discuss with my therapist. There's a lot of things I want to do, so only time will tell. I think I prevented myself from drawing for so long as a form of self-harm, because I felt like I didn't deserve that satisfaction and happiness, but I don't have to do that anymore.
This time in my life now signifies a journey of self discovery and putting myself first. I have resources, support and mental health care, wonderful friends, and my boyfriend's sweet stepmom. I have all that I need within me to be loved, and I don't need to be afraid of the future. I'm enough. I have hope in my heart that one day my boyfriend and I will reconcile and possibly become stronger together because of all of this, but we both need to put in the work for ourselves as individuals, and that's what I fully intend to do. Step 1: I'm gonna report the rape.
Thank you all for reading if you made it this far, and I sincerely wish all of you good, full lives.
Thank you for telling your story. It might be odd to just share these details with strangers on the internet; but, in a way when you feel like you want to say something into an ether of nobodies it can be empowering. Hopefully this sort of "confession," which is another stepping stone on the path to healing from traumas and traumatic cycles, further bandages the wounds.
Guilt is such a powerful thing and often we are not taught or we fail to learn when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate; especially when it is not appropriate for others to instill guilt within us. Be very mindful of guilt. There are times where you should feel it, primarily when you do harm to others. But you certainly should not feel it when mixed in a cocktail of shame or regret or demeaning.
Wishing you well on your next step in your journey.
Thank you for telling your story. It might be odd to just share these details with strangers on the
Words can be empty coming from the other side of a screen, but I just wanted to say that I'm happy you're healing. Your upbringing and other issues sounded downright horrible and it's so tough to even get through all of those! It's a great thing that you finally feel worthy and loved and deserving of being loved, and I only wish more healing and improvement going on. Stay safe!
Words can be empty coming from the other side of a screen, but I just wanted to say that I'm happy y
I'm glad you were able to have the strength to telly our story, and more importantly heal from your traumatic past.
I honestly hope things continue to get better form you, and that the support system you have found continues to help you heal and nurture you into your best self!
I'm glad you were able to have the strength to telly our story, and more importantly heal from your
Honestly didn't know about any of this stuff before (save for maybe the drinking), but i guess it adds some context to the things that i remember but didn't make sense to me at the time xwx
I hope things go better for ya starting from now and into the future...
Honestly didn't know about any of this stuff before (save for maybe the drinking), but i guess it ad
