My sexual assault, how it affected my life and why I got help for my PTSD

This is a topic I couldn’t talk about for YEARS, and still very rarely do. At 14 years old my first time having sex wasn’t my choice, I was raped and for 12 years it haunted me. I lived every day feeling like it had just happened, the pain and emotional trauma became a part of my every day life. My dreams were nothing but nightmares, I’d wake up crying weekly and I had no idea why I couldn’t move on from it. It had happened so long ago but it affected a lot in my life.

After it happened, where I was so young and naive I remember thinking, if I could sleep with someone else I could tell myself that could be my first time, we would fall in love and be together and it would cancel out the awful experience of my real first time. The second time I had sex was a 30 year old man in I met in a pub when I was 15. We had sex and I never heard from him again, this turned into a heart breaking pattern of sleeping with strangers hoping one of them would love me. I know how sad this sounds and it’s so hard for me to talk about so please no nasty comments.

I thought so little of my myself and my body, sex became nothing to me. Kissing felt more personnel than sex itself and I’d sleep with pretty much anyone. Sexual experiences ended in tears and I rarely could kiss who ever I was with.

When I met the man I’m with now I’d never had sex sober, even with long term boyfriends I just couldn’t do it. I was with someone a lot older when I was 16-18 but that didn’t work out or fill the void inside me. At the age of 19 and nearly 90 men (and one woman) later I was empty and broken. I’d never orgasmed with another person and didn’t understand the concept of making love. Sex to me was just like going through the motions, like brushing your teeth. I was drinking all the time and was a mess. We didn’t know I was bipolar then either so you can imagine the state I was in. 

It’s crazy to me im even writing about this, no one in my life really knows this whole story as I’ve never really wanted to go in depth about it all. As an adult my heart breaks for my younger self and I just want to take her pain away and help her see that sleeping round isn’t the answer and that she’s worth something. 

All I wanted was to be loved and to try and erase the memories of the past, but all I was doing was adding more and more pain, sadness and awful experiences to the mix. Letting men pass me around like a piece of meat because that’s all I felt I was worth. 

It became a running joke with my friends “so how many did you sleep with this weekend?!” They’d laugh and tease me, not knowing the whole truth about why. I became know as easy and slutty but at the time I didn’t even care. Every night out I had I’d beg my friends “no matter how drunk I get don’t let me go home with anyone” but every time I’d get wasted and sneak off before they could stop me. I just wanted to try and feel close to someone but it never helped. I’d wake up not knowing where I was and sob with disgust in myself. I’ll still make a joke of how many people I’ve slept with from time to time even now, but at the time it was horrific. I couldn’t stop drinking or acting the way I was. 

I had no interest in the nice guys that wanted to help me, I knew I’d walk all over them and that they deserved more than me. I was awful to so many good men, I was on self destruct and couldn’t control anything I was doing. I still feel guilty to this day for the people I hurt and treated like shit. They didn’t deserve any of it. 

I then met the man I’m with now and we had our daughter. I was 19 when I fell pregnant and our relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend was shockingly awful. Far too much to go into now. 10 years later, for the most part were good now, we both got the help we needed in one way or another. But the sex from my past was a perminant issue. I still felt like I had just been raped and I found intamacy difficult. I was either throwing myself at him or couldn’t be touched without shaking and crying.

A close friend begged me to get help which I put off for years as I thought I was past the point I could be helped, I didn’t understand I had Post Traumatic Stress. The last straw was during a particularly bad nightmare, my boyfriend in bed next to me rolled over to give me a cuddle and I punched him Square in the face where I was so petrified. Every morning when I woke up I had to read the last text I sent on my phone to bring me back to the right time zone. 

I’d had enough of living like that and putting everyone around me through it. So I went and got help. I’ll be writing more about the help I received in another post as I think it might help people out there who are going through the same thing. 

After years of struggling and 16 years after I was sexually assaulted I have put my demons to rest and can truly say I’ve moved on. 

I hope if your going through something hard in your life, know that you are never past the point of help.

The Secret Blog of a 30 Year Old

X X X X X