Some of you have read about this already.  I recently wrote a blog about the source of my ptsd.  I was rereading this today:

I was thirteen, and I had just been raped, and beaten for eight hours.  The guy stabbed, me, and I was bleeding really badly.  I managed to leave the building, and stumble a block and a half to a friend’s (I was too hysterical to ask just anyone for help).  The doctors couldn’t figure out how I’d managed to walk at all, given the nature and severity of my injuries.  But, walking, battered, bleeding, and broken, was the only way out.  It was the only way through.  It was that…  or giving up.  I could’ve laid down, and died.  And, with every step, I felt my weight pulling me to the ground.  Weak as a baby, and heavy as lead…  I wasn’t going to be defeated by that bastard.  I wasn’t going to let him think that he got me to give in.  I never cried or screamed, through the whole ordeal for the same reason.  I knew he wanted me to.  He wanted to break me.  I knew he might kill me, but I wasn’t going to give him anymore satisfaction than that.  He wasn’t going to hear me cry, or beg, or scream. 

I don’t know how I held it in.  A lot of it blurs together in my head, now.  I remember grabbing a chair, from behind my head on the floor, and hitting him with it.  I didn’t think I’d get away, but I wanted to hurt him, anyway I could.  I bit him.  I hit him.  But, I never cried.  I just swore and spit, and eventually, got quiet.  When he left me alone in the room, I wondered if he thought I was dead, or if he was just taunting me – letting me think I could get out, when he really planned to stop me.  And, when I dragged myself to the door, I felt him behind me.  I felt his breath on the back of my neck as he got closer.  I froze, and he told me I could leave.  He said, he was letting me go, and that he wanted me to survive, and to try to forget about him.  And, that when I had moved on, and forgotten, he’d be there to remind me…  and, he’d cut my f@$%ing head off.  I left.  I did recover.  And, he never did, of course, come back to cut my head off.  He got his.  No retribution on my part – what went around, just kind of came around, I guess.  But, of course, you never get over something like that.  I’m always gonna be defensive.  I’m always gonna be overly-sensitive – it’s kind of sadly funny, but my ability to control my emotions eroded after that day (after having had such discipline – not weeping, or crying out, at all during the attack).  I’ve been extremely sensitive and mercurial ever since. 

I wrote that, not too long ago.  I’m 28, now, and it’s still so hard for me express.  It still follows me, all the time, attacking my mind, without warning.  I actually twitch when my mind coughs up some painful image, or thought about it.  It’s been happening more lately.  Charlie ignores it when I twitch, and that makes me feel worse – like, there’s something so wrong, he’d rather pretend it’s not there.  It makes me feel like he thinks I’m totally nuts, or an embarrassment, b/c I know he sees it.