Reluctant Homework

In the book, Resurrection After Rape, (you can download a free pdf of this book by clicking the link) the author, assigns the following homework:

1) If rape is a form of theft, what did it steal?
2) If rape steals something from you, what parts of you are NOT gone?

So I decided, reluctantly, to write it down.

If rape is a form of theft, what did it steal?

It stole my sense of self
It stole my future, what I could have been
It stole my ability to have relationships
it stole my sexuality
it stole my trust
it stole my place in this world
it stole my sense of security
it stole my freedom
it stole my belief in authentic love
it stole my vulnerability
it stole my innocence
it stole my family and any sense of what "family" is
it stole my ability to feel emotions or share them appropriately
it stole my ability to just be myself
it stole my purity
it stole my tears
it stole my voice
it stole my childhood
it stole my happy memories, all my birthdays and Christmases.
It stole my virginity.
It stole my beauty and any sense of self-worth.
It stole my ability to look at myself in the mirror, to dress myself or to fit in anywhere.
It stole my privacy.


If rape steals something from you, what parts of you are NOT gone?

My incest and rapes did not take away my inner strength or determination.
It all strengthened my intuition.
My tenderness
My compassion.
My awareness and alertness.
Willingness to learn and to change.
Willingness to make the world better, somehow.
I am a good mother.
I have patience.
I love deeply and authentically, when I love.
My loyalty and my thoughts and ideas.
I still write, because nothing can take that away from me.
I am acutely empathic.
I am a good teacher and speaker.


So, with all that said, I know there's more. But it's a tender place to touch.

Today, as I was driving home from running errands, I got enraged. Just out of the blue, rageful - it was all aimed at Gary. Started shaking, almost pulled over to take a klonopin. But then I just started crying and the question that kept running through my mind, really applies to both Gary and my father: "Why?" and from there it went directly to my father. "Why did you do that to me? Why did you do this to me?"

The answer comes back to me in my mind, in Gary's voice: "I didn't do anything to you."

Everything is so mixed up... Everything and I just hurt. So confused. So hurt.

I feel alone because of him. I feel alone because, once again, someone couldn't love me. It's not fair to say nobody loves me because there are people who proclaim they do but when he said he didn't love me anymore, the alone-ness hit me like a brick to my stomach. It was like being raped again. Being told to trust, encouraged to heal, open up, do what you have to do...only to be abandoned when it gets ugly. To be judged for the ugly. Ridiculed publicly. Publicly humiliated. My privacy spread out like a billboard. My shame exposed to the entire world.

So my rage - this god awful rage - is aimed at him and those who believe him, when it should be aimed at the man who caused all of this to happen to me: my father. Daddy. And the many other men who used my body and beat me and threw me away.

I understand. I get it. But how do I do it? I feel so alone.