Sponsor me in the 2005 MS Walk! Why? Read here.
Putting up new entries from home is always a crapshoot. For some reason AOL won't display the actual entry portion of my page, so I can't look at what actually appears once I hit that "done!" button at the bottom of the add an entry page.
Leap of faith, Jennifer.
I was so tired when I got up this morning that I was certain I'd be in bed by now. I figured I'd get home around 10:15, wash my face, check the mail, peruse through a couple diaries and go to bed.
Not so. My head is way too full.
Tonight at BARCC, we heard from two PE volunteers who are also rape survivors. They go out on speaking engagements and tell the stories of their attacks and their attackers and themselves.
I sat and listened to them talk, full of admiration and astonishment at their abilities to sit in front of a room full of virtual strangers and talk about something so personal.
In the back of my head, I thought, "Could I do that? Could I tell that story to a group? Could I talk that openly about what happened to me?" Truth is, I'm not sure.
Yes, I know I put it in here for anyone to read. But that's different. I don't have to see your face as you read it. I don't have to worry about my voice shaking or my heart pounding or my hands trembling while you bring up my pages. I don't have to know you know my story.
I don't think it will happen any time soon. I haven't yet even mentioned to the group that I have a survivor story of my own. Hasn't been the time or the place yet.
The stories we heard were very different from each other, and it would break confidentiality for me to repeat them here, but I will say that while one was a story that very much fit the mental picture we all have of a "typical" rape situation, the other was much murkier and involved two people who had known each other for a long time.
I ended up very angry with myself while listening to the latter of those stories. My first thought, my gut reaction, was "she could have done something more to prevent what happened to her." My second was "I'm not even sure she was actually raped." My third was that I was very ashamed to have let the first two through.
I remember Lorne. I remember some things I didn't include in that first telling of the story. I remember that when I first got to Gordon, I slept in his baja shirt, wouldn't wash it. I remember that the first person I told what had happened was my friend Tamara, a girl I had known for years but whom I would never describe as one of my closest friends. I remember that what I told her was that, while I hadn't really consented to what happened, I hadn't tried to stop him, so it wasn't really rape. I remember that there have been days in between then and now that I have still questioned myself. I remember thinking that I could have stopped him if I had tried hard enough. I have reminded myself a thousand times that it was not up to me to stop him. It was up to him to not attack me. He holds the blame for what happened that night, not me or my other friends at camp or the people in charge. Lorne holds that entirely on himself.
I remember Nelissa. I remember thinking "WHY did she get in the car with that man?!" I remember questioning what kind of mother would let her daughter get into a car with a stranger instead of going to get her herself. I have reminded myself a thousand times that the only person to blame for Melissa's death, the only person responsible for her being tied to a tree and raped and stabbed in the neck and discarded like trash is the man who tied her to the tree, who raped her, who stabbed her and then buried her. He is accountable for that. Not Melissa, not her mother, not me, not AAA (no matter what her parents may want to believe). Michael Gentile holds that responsibility himself.
Even knowing these things, though, through and through, in every place in my heart and my head, my first thought in hearing the story tonight was what could she have done better that would have made her rape not happen?
If this is my first thought, how can I question why it's someone else's?
This, my friends, is why they call what I'm doing right now TRAINING.
Hopefully, I'll find a place by the end of these short weeks where I don't have that question any more.
How could I have thought this was a lot of time. I don't think it's nearly enough for me to learn everything I'll need to know.
Sleep tight, Diaryland.
---------------------------------------------
Something to say about this entry?
Add your comments here (0 people have spoken already)
< on my soapbox and in the jury box | Frustration and Genghis Jon! >
