Bad Times

I have been having a very difficult time this last week. It is the time of year where I face bouts of anger and depression. I see signs of the coming fall and it upsets me. I have trouble sleeping and when I finally get to sleep, I have trouble waking. I'm bouncing back and forth between not being hungry (or can't be bothered to eat) and craving only comfort foods. I can't stand screaming and noise from the kids. Little things make me overly angry. I have no desire to do anything outside of sleeping or reading my books. I have no pride in my appearance or house or accomplishments. It's been eleven years this time and yet, every year, I am caught off-guard as to the strength of my emotions. I wonder why I am feeling this way and shocked by the intensity of my anger compared to the indifference of my other feelings. And then it hits me... This is when I was repeatedly raped by A. over a period of three to four weeks. This time, back eleven years ago, my life turned to hell for two weeks with a brief beginning period that for years I was unsure if I could consider one of the rapes. Unfortunately, that very first one is the rape that I remember the best. The one that haunts me the most. The one that turns my stomach and makes me want to throw up. And it was the one in which I had the least control over. If one could say that I had control over any of the other ones either. Strangely, I only recall certain pictures: the dark brown wood paneling in the half light of my room, the complete silence but for the blood pounding in my head, the door cracked open, my intense fear that J. should hear what was happening to me, the sound of J. leaving tearing my insides apart, the cold tears on my face when he finally left me alone, the curve of my body turning in on itself and hardness of my knees at my chest. Could he see that I was crying? Could he hear my silent sobs? Did he sense how sick I felt? Did it give him pleasure to see me cut down so low? Did it make him feel like a man to force me and degrade me? Did it ease his conscience to make sure I orgasmed? To this day, to be woken from a sound sleep by oral sex is to be thrown into sick confusion and to relive a nightmare. Then, after J. left me to my fate, again when I went "home" having nowhere else to go. Then he used guilt to manipulate me into "playing a game" with him. "I'm the master and you are my slave. You must obey me..." Forcing me to perform. And when it was over, I cried my heart out. He flew into a rage and grabbed me by the throat. He slammed my body against the wall, choking me. He told me that it I really wanted to die that I would allow myself to strangle to death by hanging. Self preservation kicked in (your body will not allow you to destroy it without a fight) and I stood up. I wanted to die. Really I did. I just wanted the pain to be over. His face mutated into a twisted monster's and he smashed his fist into the wall beside my head and dropped me to the floor. He began grabbing everything that was mine and throwing into my room. He finally snatched up Sylvia and I thought he was going to smash her glass aquarium to the floor and kill her. I panicked. I started screaming at him and cursing him. I swore that I'd kill him if he hurt her. I think he picked up the phone and called J. in the other province he'd been banished to. He told him that he hated me and never wanted to see me again. He called me all kinds of names and told J to come and get me. I don't remember anything after that. Then a few nights later, I awoke to A. stroking my hair and crying and talking "to himself". I was consumed with guilt and regret and pain. I opened the covers to him, intending just to comfort him. His face twisted evilly again and he said, "Don't cry this time. I don't want to remember you like that." I remember nothing but controlling my sickness and sadness and pain until he left. The I put my pillow over my head and ripped my heart out.

Four years later, I remembered what happened those last few weeks. I spiralled into depression. I locked myself in my house with my 2 and 3 yr old boys. I turned into a basketcase for nearly six months before I got medication from a doctor for depression. When my parents found out, my dad said it was my problem and I had to deal with it. My mom said that it couldn't be as bad as all that, after all, it was my husband. She said that sometimes people under stress do things that they wouldn't normally do. She said that I only see the bad things in life. She said that other people go through what I went through and they're fine. She said that, under the circumstances, I couldn't expect anything better than what I deserved. I was devestated but not surprised. I hated her. I didn't want to admit it then but I did. I don't hate her now but I don't exactly like her much either. Her emotional abuse is what helped me be with a man who abused me and raped me because I didn't feel that I deserved any better and I didn't have enough self esteem to believe that I was a person in my own right who could live and be happy on her own.

J. returned to pick me up and take me back to my "home"town (where my family lives) on September 15th, 1995. I finished my last day on the job at 11PM, went back to my house to gather what I could fit in a backpack. At 11.30PM, I said goodbye to my life, my husband, my cats rabbits chinchillas tarantula mice, my car, my motocycle, and walked out into the darkness and away. It was a clear, starless night. The tip of fall. The night was still warm but the decay of leaves was in the air. The echo of my footsteps made me nervous. I was afraid he might follow me and hurt me again. I ducked into an alley and took an awkward path to my rendevous of escape just to be sure.

So, every year, about this time, when the leaves start turning yellow and the wind starts blowing from the north, I become angry and depressed. I don't mean to. I don't conciously think, hey, wouldn't it be fun to have no joy in life? Wouldn't it be fun to cut myself off from everyone and everything for a few weeks and be miserable? Wouldn't it be fun to yell at my kids and lose myself continually in a fantasy world of books? Wouldn't it be fun to be frustrated by the simplest of things? Most times, it creeps up and partway into the first or second week I think, what's wrong with me? Why am I acting so strangely? And then it all comes back and I realize that somewhere inside me are the memories that still haunt me. My body still remembers, even if my mind can't. So I wait for Sept. 15th and the relief from the bodily memories it contains. Two weeks to go. And since the babies are in bed for a nap, off I go to find the same free dreamlessness that they have...