Something You'd Never Know

I met this guy online once when I was 19.  We'd been chatting and hell, I thought he was a good guy.  He was sweet, his picture was hot, and we'd been chatting for months before I agreed to meet him....at my house.

I know what you're thinking: "Vic!  NO!!!"  Alas, yes, I did.

This is something that I know is a big no-no now of course but at 19, I was still full of sunshine, daisies and still trying desperately to be a "girl".

So he came over (and I'll never forget his name-Gordon) and before he got there I wisely hid knives underneath all of the cushions in the living room.  Why?  Well, in case he tried to rape me or kill me of course!!!

When he got there I noticed a few things almost immediately.  He was about a whole foot shorter than he appeared in his picture and about twenty years older.  I didn't let that stop me, he'd driven all the way to my house from Orlando.  That's almost an hour.  So I invited him in and we talked.  Slowly I became more and more comfortable, until I finally admitted that I'd hid the knives and then retrieved them all and put them away.

Big mistake.

I returned to the living room and, I kid you not, he attacked me within seconds of me walking back into the room and raped me.  On my mother's gold couch.

It was violent and vicious and I bled all over my mother's couch.  It wasn't the first time I'd been raped, and unfortunately, it wasn't the last time either, but it was the one that I learned the most from.  I learned a lot about that little voice of instinct and hesitation.  As I lay on my mother's couch, shivering and bleeding, watching as he walked to the bathroom and cleaned up, wiping the blood and semen from his groin and chest, I felt such hatred fill me, but I felt a wisdom infuse my body as well.

You see, I realized then that I gave people the power that they exhibited in my life.  I gave them the power to hurt me, the power to heal me, the power to help me, to support and encourage me.

This is something you'd never know about me.  The fact that I'd been raped, that I'd been so stupid to put myself into that situation.  It's not something that I'd planned on sharing.  I was going to share Friday of GRL with you all today, but I had a friend ask me to write a blog post about online relationships and it made me think of this incident, because this is not what I'm going to share with her.

I didn't let that horrible incident or any of the others I had (and I've had LOTS let me tell you!) stop me from forging relationships, stop me from believing in the basic goodness and kindness and decency that everyone has within them.  I would have missed out on so many wonderful relationships if I would have looked at everyone as being a liar, everyone as being a fake, everyone as being a figment of someone's imagination.  I've experienced all that.  I've sent $800 to someone who said that they were about to be homeless or had cancer only to find out that it was a fake.  It didn't stop me from doing it again.  I've met guys who lied about what they looked like.  I've found out that the person I was talking to, wasn't who they said they were, or were in fact characters from a book (imagine my shock to pick up a book and see our conversation within the pages of that book), but NONE of that has ever stopped me from treating the next person as a completely unique individual, because they are.

Not everyone in this world is out to deceive me, to hurt me, to rape me, to attack me, to extort money from me, to lie to me, to use and abuse me.  And I can't look at everyone as if they are.  It makes for paranoia and fear and misery and I don't like to be paranoid, scared or miserable.  I'm not pleasant that way.

So as I prepare to write this blog post about the wonderful people that I've met online.  The ones who befriended me and supported me, the ones who saved my life...twice, the ones who encouraged me and pushed me to become a better me, to live my truth, those are the ones that I'll be writing about.  I'll talk about the things I learned not to do, but more than anything I'll emphasize trust and the bigger picture and I'll definitely talk about hypocrisy, because I'd never ask them to give me something that I'm not willing to give myself.  For every picture requested, there's a picture sent.  For every text message asked for, there's a text message given.  And for every proof of identity that I need, I given one in return.

Because I can't sit around on my high horse judging others for their online personifications when I've spent years pretending to be something that I'm not and I can't begrudge someone for wanting to keep something private when I know that I'm doing the same thing.

So that's something you'd never know about me unless I shared it and I hope as you all go throughout your day (many of you have sent me emails or comments regarding Thorny-I encouraged him to close his blog and his GR account-but thank you for being concerned for me-LOL) to remember that just like you don't see every black person as being a drug dealer or a drug addict or a gang banger or as being on welfare, just as you don't see every Hispanic as being a drug dealer or an illegal or illiterate or only speaking Spanish, just as you don't see every white person as being racist or thinking that they're superior or being rich and snooty, etc.  you shouldn't see every online person as being out to hurt, manipulate, deceive, extort or rape you.

Sometimes you have to have blind faith, sometimes you have to believe even when evidence points to the contrary.  Do you know how many men and women have been incarcerated and executed based on evidence only for it to be discovered later on that they were innocent?  A good lawyer can get someone off with all the evidence piled against them, just as a good lawyer can get someone found guilty with no evidence at all.

Be cautious, but still believe.  You never know what you're missing out on when you're suspicious of everyone.

Revelation

I was ten the first time I can remember reacting negatively.

My parents had pissed me off.  We'd been visiting friends of theirs and I hadn't wanted to go with them.  I'd wanted to stay in the hotel and watch some movie that was about to come on.  They'd made me go with them.  When we got there, I was looking for a way to show them exactly how mad I was.  I thought about breaking something.  I thought about being rude to their friends.  By the time they sent all of the kids to the back room I'd still not found a way to show my parents how mad I was.  Their friends had a son, he was 17, muscled, gorgeous and he kept smiling at me.  I bet you guys know where this story is going don't you?

You'd be wrong.

We played house.  Me and him, our younger siblings.  All of us packed in that room, the lights off and it was getting dark and he, we'll call him S, suggested that everyone go to bed.  Since he was the "daddy" and I was the "mommy" we laid next to each other away from everyone else.  He leaned over at one point and asked me if he could "do something" to my butt with his fingers.

What the hell?

I had laughed and said "That's how we got our kids."  Because at the age of 10, I wasn't a virgin (that's another story and one I'm not sure I'll ever share on here), so I knew what he meant when he said "do something."  He laughed and said "No, I'm serious.  Can I do something to your butt?"

Here was my opportunity.  I was going to get back at my parents.  I was going to let this older boy finger my ass and then I was going to tell my parents that I had LET him do it.  So I nodded and said yes.

I don't know what he used.  His saliva, Vaseline, hair grease (it's some that black people use for their hair just in case you didn't know)...all I know is that first he had one finger in my ass, then that one finger became two. I was in pain but I knew that pain was a part of sex, so I didn't say anything.  When his hand covered my mouth and those two fingers became three I became afraid.  What was he about to do?  When his fingers left my ass and he pulled my pants down even further and lifted my top leg, I knew then that he was planning to fuck me in my ass.

I changed my mind at that moment.  I started to try and push him away but his hand was held over my mouth and I was more concerned about the fact that my younger siblings were in the room.  So I stopped fighting and let him fuck me.

I had someone tell me that that was rape.  I think it would have been had I not agreed to it initially.  There's still some debate.  I saw S two years later and he apologized for raping me...right before he asked to have sex with me again.  By this time, I was drinking and had begun doing drugs.  More bad reactions to more bad things that happened to me.

So why am I writing this blog?

I learned a few years ago that it's natural for a person to react.  It's instinctual.  Someone does something nice for us, we react and say thank you.  It's someone's birthday that we care about and we react and say happy birthday or get them a gift.  If someone does something bad to us we react.  We want to retaliate.  We want to lash out.  We want revenge.  We cry.  We get mad, we cuss, we do things that we may regret later but our humanity is proven in the fact that we REACT.

I think sometimes that people forget that people react.  That we were all young once.  That when someone feels pressured or ignored or offended or trapped that they will lash out.  Sometimes the wrong person is hit and when that happens then the person who reacted needs to apologize, but once the apology is accepted then the incident needs to be forgotten.

We've forgotten how to forgive and forget.  When you forgive someone, TRULY forgive someone for something that they did, especially when it wasn't malicious or spiteful, then you forget that it ever occurred.  That's what true forgiveness actually is.

Yes, it hurts when we've been wronged, but an apology doesn't ease the emotional pain.  An apology CAN'T ease the emotional pain.  An apology shows that the person who did wrong is taking responsibility for their actions.  The healing of that emotional wound?  Well that's on the part of the wronged party.

I had to learn that the hard way.  I'm still learning it to some degree.  But when I think about all the times that I've been hurt, been suspected of being "selfish" or "self-centered" or "neglectful" or for even "being too private", when I think about the people who have wronged me, to a very serious degree...when I think of the malicious attacks on my person, I get angry all over, I hurt all over, I want to cry all over again...but then I remember how I REACTED the first time those things happened and the consequences of my REACTIONS.  Then I remember coming home to my mother with tears in my eyes, sobbing, begging for her to let me move back in.  I remember crying, begging for Christopher to forgive me for cheating on him...AGAIN.  I remember begging my best friend to help me kick my habit one more time because I wanted to go to seminary school and make my daddy proud.  I remember standing before a group of people and asking them to forgive me for turning my back on them at a time when they needed me the most.

Each time I remember those people forgiving me, giving me another chance and forgetting what had occurred.  I remember them welcoming back with open arms.  Most of all I remember them saying some version of, "Your actions hurt, but your reaction was understandable."

We have GOT to learn to display compassion to others.  To be quick to love and slow to judge.  To be slow to anger.  To observe the situation from the other person's point of view before we take offense and allow ourselves to be hurt, because no one has the power to hurt you unless you give it to them.  Most of all, we have to remember our own negative reactions to things so that we never sit in judgment when someone else reacts negatively, unless that reaction caused physical pain, financial ruin, or something equally destructive.

The biggest thing is this, as we mature we learn to think about our reactions, before we do them.  We feel the instinct but we've learned to hesitate and think before we do it.  When you're younger you haven't learned that yet, unless  you've been through a lot.  So when my baby cousin, at 9 years old, pushes someone who insulted me, I don't fly off the handle and berate him as I would someone who was 49 or even 19, because he is still a baby, I gently tell him that what he did was wrong and he reacted in a negative way.  Then I discipline him, tell him I still love him and then I forget about it.

Again (and I've said this in earlier posts), this is how mature adults handle things.  Yes, we still hurt, we still get angry, but we've learned to be quick to love, quick to forgive and slow to anger and hurt.  Slow to react.

That's my revelation.