I know it's late, but anyone there to console me? I am feeling sick to the stomach that I probably won't get justice :( (Trigger warning)

[keepingmum121]

Anyone there? I need to splurge.

I just typed out a long message and my iPod lost it :(
Just testing now to see if this sends...

Ranting is good and will enable you to begin letting go of irrational thoughts such as thinking that you are in any way responsible for, or destined to continue, falling victim to predatory males.

However, posting "I can't deal with this. I have thoughts of drowning myself in the Uni lake. I would fill my rucksack with bottles of alcohol, drink it at the edge and then jump in" on a public forum creates a situation whereby responses will inevitably be centred on urging you not to carry out such a drastic act which will not only leave your dc motherless, but also leave your assailant free to claim that mental health issues caused you to make a false allegation against him.

While sympathy from strangers on the internet can help alleviate dark thoughts in the middle of the night, you are best advised to focus on real-life strategies which will enable you to move forward in the clear light of day.

If you have availed yourself of the free counselling sessions that are usually made available to victims of sexual assault, I urge you to ask Topaz to recommend an experienced specialist counsellor who can help you gain sufficient insight and perspective to prevent you tormenting yourself with further self-recrimination in the event that your case does not go to trial.

I appreciate that your church is like a family to you, but families are not always best placed to provide the type of therapeutic input which can be required to facilitate recovery from traumatic events.

Ok, I'll try to remember what I had said.

You are right that past trauma has wreaked havoc with my thought processes. In every other area of life I am reasonably functional when I'm being the 'core me' (if that makes any sense). However, when it comes to men, I am floundering!

I'm always one extreme or the other. Either terrified of men who have done nothing to warrant it, or getting sucked in by abusers. My radar is all wrong!

This all stems from an attack in 1997, and I was definitely inadequately supported at the time (and in a foreign country).

I get suicidal thoughts when I am in a particular mode. I feel so hopeless. If after 18 years, good friends, counselling etc. I am still so damaged and at risk from predators, there is no real hope for me.

I wonder if I have some kind of dissociative disorder. I leave my body and enter alternative realities/modes of functioning (or not functioning) quite readily. I actually don't know which mode is the real me. I have no grasp of what 'normal' is for me because I was ruined so young.

Sometimes I feel strongly that I am not a real person.

Thank you. The topaz worker is arranging counselling. I am waiting to hear back (though the thought of yet more counselling makes me just want to curl up and hibernate).

I am too literal, I know. Those thoughts come and I verbalise them without being able to think straight. I won't let myself leave my girls motherless.

Oh, and that man already has claimed that I only accused him because I am mentally unstable. That is why the police have delved into my medical records and told me that the past incidents are going to have to be relevant to the case.

It could possibly help me as well as hinder my case, however. That is my positive thinking speaking. I'm sure I'll get in a panic about it in due course :(

How are things going keeping

Just dropping in to see how you are doing. Any updates wrt the charges?

Hello friendofbill. Thank you for asking. I am okay right now.

Still waiting to hear something from DI, but not really expecting it to be too soon. I have learnt that each stage takes frustratingly ages!

OP. I was a victim of rape and attempted murder aged 14. My attacker was never caught and I regret that I didn't Co - operate very well with the Police but I was young, scared of getting in trouble (I was somewhere I shouldn't have been) and I couldn't, just could not deal with the horror of it at that age.

He tried to kill me and I knew, just knew that I was dying and I welcomed it at that time. I didn't want to live with what he did, didn't want to live with the memory of it.

And in a way I did die that day. The person I was and could have been died. I'll never be that person again. Will never know who I might have grown up to be.

Years of being troubled, drugs etc followed. I disassociated a lot of the time. I think I did that a lot at first as I only remember 2 or 3 events in that first year. I look at photos from that time and don't remember anything about the event.

I ended up falling into work as a care assistant in MH. Which led to me gaining nursing and psychology degrees. Bizarrely, my career led me into working in prisons with abusers for a time so Ive seen all sides of sexual violence.

Enough about my story - I'm telling you my story because you are not broken. You are not damaged beyond repair. I thought I was for a long time and God knows I still have my demons and nightmares.

But I lead a successful and happy life. I am loved and I love. I can't really do romantic relationships very well and I'm single but I don't think that's attributable to my trauma to be honest.

My experiences have made me a brilliant MH practitioner without anyone I work with (colleagues or service users) ever suspecting what I have been through.

I'm not scared of men and I don't think they're all abusers. The one's that are, I have pity for. They are absolutely responsible for their abhorrent acts but they are pitiful human beings. Happy, healthy personalities do not abuse others. They are to me like holograms - they look real but when you look closely they aren't a full person. Something about their fundamental humanity is missing. It means they're dangerous but it also means I pity them.

We are whole people who have experienced horror. But we're still whole people who FEEL. We feel pain, remorse, regret, shame (inappropriately) they don't feel like we do and that makes them much less human than us.

I hope you have the justice you want but you might not. Don't let that consume you. And if you don't get it it is not because of what you did or didn't do. We don't always get the justice we want or what is right. That's probably easier for me to accept as I've had 23 years to come to that acceptance!.

You CAN keep going and you can live a happy life. It's not easy but the way I've dealt with it is to say that my 'justice' is the person I am today. I wasn't broken and I'm a pretty awesome human being!. I'm so much better than him or any of them.

You are too.

always, thank you for sharing all of that. I do hope that one day I will see things the way you do. Right now, I can't imagine feeling normal or not feeling gutted that the person I should have been died. It is a hard pill to swallow. This is referring to the event in 1997.

Someone asked me yesterday if I only reported this recent attack as a way of getting revenge (or closure, or something) for the evil I suffered previously. I honestly don't think I have wrong motive for reporting him.
If I don't get justice, I will find it extremely hard. But I suppose I'll have to live with it. It'll break me more though.

You seem like a really strong person. I am not. Reading your message, even though you come across as resigned to the 'new you', I can't help but feel desperately sad and sorry for you as well as myself.

Wow, keeping, people around you are saying some crazy stuff.
Victim blaming & accusing you of revenge reporting?

Im no expert but it sounds like you haven't had the right support and possibly not getting the right support?

Keep posting, use your thread to vent and process.
We are listening, we care & we believe you.
I hope you are getting through the day ok. X

Inspiring post always lovely to hear you.

Hello again. I have heard today that the DI will be reviewing this week. I'm feeling so nervous but also relieved that soon I will know one way or the other. Oh, I hope they get a charge!
I am constantly reliving what he did to me and it makes me sick that he lied about it and might get away with his lies :(

Big week this week then...like you say, one way or another you are going to be able to tackle it with a definite reference point.

You are sounding a lot stronger OP.
That's great.

Good luck keeping - I will have my fingers crossed for you.

Thinking of you, Keeping

Have you looked into the Freedom Programme? It is supposed to help you reset your boundaries, tweaks your radar etc.

I will look into the freedom programme. It didn't exist (or I hadn't heard of it) when I escaped my h in 2003. Then I suppose I just assumed it was really for women who had very recently come out of abusive relationships. I really need my boundaries sorting though.

Just recently I have been repeatedly chatted up by a guy in my local supermarket. I am getting kind of terrified of him and feel like I can't protect myself if he turns out to be stalkerish or something.

No-one can 'chat you up' if you don't return their conversational gambits.

He may or may not be a nice guy, but at the present time you're best advised to keep eye contact to a minimum and simply smile and nod by way of common courtesy as you walk past him.

Wearing a wedding ring when you're out and about may help to make you feel safer/repel unwanted attention from randoms.

I'm very sorry this is happening to you but this current incident is all so recent and so raw. It is true that having been abused does make you more vulnerable to abuse but this isn't your fault and you can, with the right support, overcome it. It is completely understandable that you are both feeling overwhelmed by the supermarket guy's unwanted advances but really actually if you think about it it IS stalkerish. Don't let your fear of that kind of horrible behaviour cause you to doubt whether it is horrible and/or unacceptable. Perhaps the level of fear it provokes you is more than others (though this is very understandable in the circs and a completely normal reaction) but it is an appropriate feeling to have about that kind of sex pestering. You don't need to tolerate it because of fear you may be being unfair to the perpetrator of the behaviour.

I agree you could speak to victim support and to women's aid. I think you really need to begin creating safe spaces inside your head and outside in the real world but please chant 'it's not my fault, I am not marked' repeatedly until you have cause to really believe it.

I actually think by all means unleash the feelings you have about this pestering even if they feel out of proportion. It's not really your job to guard yourself against unwanted advances it is the guy who is repeatedly making them's job to cease and desist.

If you get into a mindset of wearing a wedding ring and never having a conversation with men then you run the risk of seeing the whole world as a threat rather than seeing the behaviour of some people in it as unacceptable.

Well, the first time I politely answered him. Then he just started making a beeline for me every time (well, this has happened twice since the first encounter so I'm exaggerating a bit but it feels a lot to me) and virtually begging me to go in his car with him (abroad) in July. I keep saying 'no thank you'. I haven't got it in me to be rude.

This is what I mean. He acts all friendly while freaking me out and I can't get myself out of it. I just have to keep making excuses.

Tbh, I only mentioned him as an example of how crap I am at protecting myself.

you could try being rude. It might be a bit much right now though. There can be a lot to be said for allowing yourself to recognise your limitations and actually just shopping somewhere else for now tbh (if that is possible). Probably all the complicated emotions it is provoking in you are a bit too much to actually handle and unpick right now. Sometimes it is ok to retreat in order to regroup when you've been going through trauma. You don't need to face up to absolutely everything all at once. The most important thing is really keeping on telling yourself that none of this is your fault. Sex crimes are committed against any kind of person imaginable, there really isn't any trick to guarantee you will never be a victim. I think it isn't your fault, there isn't anything inherently bad in you that means you deserve this or will need to expect it as your future. The issue is simply that trauma makes you vulnerable and some bad-minded people recognise that vulnerability and exploit it. Good news is you can get stronger and less vulnerable and you can go on to be happy.

I could shop elsewhere, but really that would be a total pain because the other main supermarket is way more expensive. I only really go there for what I can't get in the greengrocers or lidl anyway.
Maybe I could go with a friend next time who could observe from a small distance and then when I get away she could have a word and ask him to back off.
Thank you for your replies. I'm feeling quite shaky this evening.

It's so hard. I really feel for you. Supermarket guy's behaviour is out of order but really try to be kind to yourself and do thinks that are for you not out of consideration for him or worry about your reaction being 'wrong'.

He does sound like his own boundaries need resetting! A curt nod if he says anything to you, and swift move on or return to your interest in the shelves/veg may well be as much action as you need to take, though you have to do that a few times to get him to give up. "I am not interested" would also work.

I can't believe he's inviting you on holiday with him! Why on earth would someone do that? What I would do, and I'm not saying you should, would be a laughing "In your dreams, sonny!" with a wink and a grin, and straight back to the shopping. (I'm too old and ugly these days to get chatted up anywhere, oh woe is me , but it did used to happen a lot and that really is basically what I did. It kept things friendly somehow without any commitment on either side.)