My Split Personality Life

I really hate having to stay anonymous for this blog. After all, what did I do wrong. I don't have anything to be ashamed of, right? Sounds good in theory, but reality doesn't work that way. In reality, when I have tried to express what happened to me and my frustrations about it, I have been hit with, at a minimum, an undertone of "you asked for it" attitude. It's so ridiculous. Saying that I asked to be raped is like saying somebody asked to get in a car accident or asked to be mugged. Nobody asks for it, and if somebody is in a car accident or gets mugged, the first priority is never blaming the person with an "I told you so" attitude. The first priority is to make sure the car accident victim or mugging victim is okay, and then focus on future prevention.

The problem with Rape Trauma Syndrome and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is that the car accident is on the inside and nobody can see it. On the outside, I look fine. I look okay. I don't have any physical broken bones. My body is not splattered all over the pavement from getting hit by a bus or a train. However, what happens on the inside, that's another story. My soul is shattered, my psyche is shattered, everything internal is a giant broken mess, and the damage doesn't go away. It's not like I can just take a nap or a vacation and come back repaired. RTS and PTSD do not work that way. They are like unwelcome roommates that just show up in your soul and move in and stay there. And, they just take over everything and kick you to the curb. As a result, I experience intense fear when I don't want to or need to. I experience nightmares, flashbacks, difficulty concentrating, and it never ends. The only reason that I can even start this blog is because I have had this condition for over 20 years and maturity, time, psychiatric drugs, therapy, and attention to diet, sleep and exercise, and the power of prayer and belief in God to give me strength I didn't even know I had, all of that, has made it possible for me to even talk about it.

I couldn't even talk about what happened to me without experiencing extreme blinding emotions that made it impossible for me to function. The solution for me was to just avoid whatever was causing the trigger/flashback: in my case, drop out of college.

For a long time, I felt like I was a wimp. I mean, so something happened to me. Why can't I just forget about it and move on. Why can't I just put it in the past and leave it there? That's how it should be, but that's not how it works. I wish it did. I wish I could forget everything and just start over somewhere else. PTSD and RTS, the unwanted roommates, won't let that happen.

So, at this point, I started this blog mainly because I discovered recently that when I committed my thoughts to paper without any fear or repercussions of what somebody would say or do with my words, it helped me to feel better. It helped me to recall some memories as just memories without the blinding emotional pain.

That made me realize that I could just start an anonymous blog for my streams of consciousness, and who knows, maybe other women who have been through what I have been through can get some sort of validation or catharsis from what I'm saying, since I suspect every women who has been through this is keeping quiet and trying to pretend nothing happened just like me.

So, I will write about what happened and my thoughts about it, but in reality, I still continue to slap a smile on my face and act like my world is perfect and nothing happened. I have yet to understand why this society is so terrified of a discussion about rape but so indifferent to the victims of it. It baffles me to this day.