Many Americans, and humans in general, Suffer from being abused of any type, and I fully believe that whatever abuse you suffer you can not truly begin to heal unless you come to terms with what the abuse took from you. Here's my story and how I began the everlasting process of healing.
I was abused at the age of 18 for a period of 5 months, It was the moment the forever defined for me who i was. It was traumatic and i was abused in every way imaginable. Once the rape and abuse was over and I was away from my attacker, I kept in silence for over a year, I wasn't going to allow his last and final threat to come true, that if i told anyone he would make me watch my family die.
So I suffered in silence to save my family, I put on a smile and acted as if everything was normal for their sake. This silence and bottling everything in was for me almost as horrifying and damaging as the actual abuse. I struggled in the last days of my silence tremendously, I became depressed, and it was killing me to live the lie of being happy when all i wanted to do was die inside.
After I had the nervous breakdown from holding everything in, i began treatment with a counselor/therapist and i began working on my issues, but it didn't work out, I never began feeling better or healing from the pain.
2 years and about 15 different therapist later, I met the therapist who changed my life. In my second session we really began to work on the things that happened to me. She ask me how i felt about things and what was going on in my mind, and i was thinking here we go again with the same things and normal routine of therapies that hadn't worked, because if it had of i wouldn't have been sitting there working with yet a new therapist. That's when this young girl not much older than I looked into my Eyes and told me the very thing that i needed to hear to begin my journey towards healing and happiness.
She told me " YOU CAN NOT HEAL FROM OR MOVE PAST THIS PAIN AND HURT UNTIL YOU BEGIN TO ACKNOWLEGE WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM YOU, IN THE RAPE, IN THE ABUSE, AND BY THE ATTACKER"
As I sat there taking in what she was saying, I knew deep down she was right. All these therapist gave me techniques on how to relax, control my thoughts, and gave me tons of coping skills, but none of them told me how to really deal with what had happened.
She asked me to go home and make a list of what had been stolen from me.
Here's what I came up with in for the next session.
1. My Virginity.
2.My youth.
3. My happiness.
4. My sense of Self.
5. My faith in me, in others, and humanity in general.
6. My Safety and my family's safety.
7. My peace of mind.
8. My heart.
9. Love
10. and the most important of all to me WAS HOW I DEFINED MYSELF.
11.My innocence.
The next session we went over every single thing on my list and then some. We talked about how I felt about each thing, and what its lost meant to me, and some ways that i could get those things back.
That very first session, with that brand new therapist, who had been out of college less than a year, and i was litterally one of her very first patients, I began my turning point, because she new the secret to beginning to heal, where therapist 2 times her age had not.
So I know rape is a hard thing to talk about and overcome and I still face obsticles myself everyday. But I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to get help, thousands and thousands of people suffer in silence like i did at first. and that Makes it 20 times worse.
So if you are suffering in Silence, or know someone who just cant seem to get past their pain onto happiness. ask that one question.
WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM YOU IN THE ABUSE? IN THE RAPE? AND BY YOUR ATTACKER? I have asked that question to those i told my story to, those that confided in me their own stories of and rape, and I was not the only one who had a breakthrough with that question.
a powerful song that describes the power of love and hate is from the band THE AVETT BROTHERS
The Ballad Of Love And Hate"
Love writes a letter and sends it to hate.
My vacations ending. I'm coming home late.
The weather was fine and the ocean was great
and I can't wait to see you again.
Hate reads the letter and throws it away.
"No one here cares if you go or you stay.
I barely even noticed that you were away.
I'll see you or I won't, whatever."
Love sings a song as she sails through the sky.
The water looks bluer through her pretty eyes.
And everyone knows it whenever she flies,
and also when she comes down.
Hate keeps his head up and walks through the street.
Every stranger and drifter he greets.
And shakes hands with every loner he meets
With a serious look on his face.
Love arrives safely with suitcase in tow.
Carrying with her the good things we know.
A reason to live and a reason to grow.
To trust. To hope. To care.
Hate sits alone on the hood of his car.
Without much regard to the moon or the stars.
Lazily killing the last of a jar
Of the strongest stuff you can drink.
Love takes a taxi, a young man drives.
As soon as he sees her, hope fills his eyes.
But tears follow after, at the end of the ride,
Cause he might never see her again.
Hate gets home lucky to still be alive.
He screams o'er the sidewalk and into the drive.
The clock in the kitchen says 2:55,
And the clock in the kitchen is slow.
Love has been waiting, patient and kind.
Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign,
That the one that she cares for, who's out of his mind,
Will make it back safe to her arms.
Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door.
Weary head hung, eyes to the floor.
He says "Love, I'm sorry", and she says, "What for?
I'm your and that's it, Whatever.
I should not have been gone for so long.
I'm your's and that's it, forever."
You're mine and that's it, forever.
lyrics from http://www.a-zlyrics.com/
Hate in the song symbolizes for me the way i felt before healing began, and Love in the song symbolizes that there is more than life than simply existing and making it from one day to the next.
I hope that whoever shall read this and has been through something similar to my expierence, finds the peace of mind to continue with life head on and happy, and not simply existing through what ever happens in life.
Go find your happiness and the things that you need to complete it. It often takes hard work and a hell of alot of self discovery and faith and love. But You can find your own happiness.
Until we Meet again.
The real Candie Wilson
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