It’s an amazing thing to be able to put a burden down. When you carry something for so many years, it’s like white noise in the background. You don’t even realize it affects you, or that you’re carrying it around. Then all of a sudden, the noise stops…you hear the refrigerator NOT running. You hear empty space.

I have a thing I’ve been carrying around for over 30 years. I’ve been in therapy about it (and several other things. Have you met me?) for more than a dozen. It’s the rape.

Rape has this weird set of consequences to it. First, there’s the event itself, which has various forms of trauma attached that are varied and unique. Was it violent? Was it a stranger? Was it a family member? A boyfriend? Did you love them? Hate them? Did anyone see? What did you do? What if there was, Gods forbid, a pleasurable moment? (it happens. an orgasm is like a sneeze…if you apply the proper stimuli, it’s pretty hard to stifle, even if you hate, even if you are frightened, even if you are nauseous.) How did you handle it in that moment? Did you scream, fight, cry? Did you pretend if was enjoyable to make it over faster? What part of your psyche did you chop off so the rest of you could survive the event? Each of those things has different consequences, different levels of betrayal; betrayal by someone you trusted or didn’t know, betrayal by your own body, betrayal by society, betrayal by what you were always told growing up, that surely, you are a good and kind person and this does not happen to good and kind people, that your goodness should be a shield against the world because SOMEONE will protect you.

Each of those things does damage. It’s like fractures in a hundred, a THOUSAND, places.

Then there’s what comes after. Did you speak? Did you ask for help? Did you press charges? Did you tell anyone? Anyone at all? Did you break up with them? How did it affect you socially? Did the perpetrator tell anyone you know? Did it have social repercussions?

…Other than the fear, of course. The fear of walking down the street, or being alone, or that someone else you love will betray you, or that you no longer see the true face of anyone you know because you’ve seen someone transform into something terrible that hurt you. The fear of your own judgment, that you trust other people who do not deserve to be trusted…

Forgetting all the fear, there’s still actions being taken. You’re absorbing what has happened to you. You’re watching the reflection of it in the face of other people as you tell them. Some of them are sympathetic. Some of them blame you. Some of them want you to just be quiet so they don’t have to confront the perpetrator. Some of them feel they weren’t there, so they don’t want to get involved. And in all of this are ripples of damage, more betrayals, things that generate more fear of who you can trust and who you cannot.

There’s also sex, of course, depending on where you were before the event. Were you a casual sex kind of person? A one-person deep-commitment kind of person? What choices did you make afterward? Some of us rush into sex, figuring if we could have it, then we could rush healing in some way. Some of us avoid it because it causes flashbacks. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone patient in their lives to work through it. Some of us are UNlucky enough to have someone who tries but can’t understand, can’t understand how they can cause fear when they have never done anything, how they can suddenly NOT be a source of comfort, or worse, unable to understand how their desires need to be put on hold until this damage is dealt with, which can lead to more pressure, more rape, or abandonment.

There’s physical reminders too, sometimes, bruises and scars. Or emotional scars…there’s many of those. Each shower is spent trying to parse it all out, trying to wash away physically what has happened to you mentally. The immediate trauma is over, but it’s not over. In your mind it’s still happening. It’s always happening. Sometimes for years.

It has been many years.

It’s white noise in my life. I feel like it affects me rarely nowadays, but that’s not true. It demonstrates itself every time I set a boundary and someone crosses it, like I become a vicious animal defending my territory. I’ve told myself it’s because it’s my right to protect myself, because I was clear and they deserve what they get. To a certain degree that’s true. But the level of anger is huge, the fury is…..it swallows me. I can destroy friendships, destroy PEOPLE, in the blink of an eye.

So years later, it still affects you. It affects how you choose where you’re going when. How you react to being pressured to do anything. How you evaluate other people. Who you choose to call friend.

Imagine that, imagine all of that. And then imagine that you could put that down. That it was done. That suddenly, there was no white noise, and there was silence.

Right now, I’m just waiting in silence. I’m waiting to be sure that it’s really done, really and truly. I don’t know how long I will take to be sure there isn’t another shoe to drop. I don’t think it will be much longer. A couple of months maybe. Then done, for realz.

I have so much dancing to do in this silence. So much to do. I’m just waiting to be sure.

But I’m waiting in silence now. And that’s so much different than before.