Don't Feed the Demons

Sex and Violence part 4: Fear and perversion.

It’s been along time since I posted I know, but I really had to think about what needed to be said next.

Please be warned that this could be considered graphic and inappropriate. 

I had always feared men. Had being the key word in this statement. 

I know now why I was afraid, but back when I was younger, back even two years ago I could not and would not tell you:

1. I was afraid

2. Why I was afraid 

3. How I dealt with that fear

I know now what I didn’t know then; that my fear of the male sex began after I was molested. Here is a small example of my inner process whenever I was around any male my age or older:

1. Where are the exits (slyly look around for exits sure if they caught me looking something terrible would happen right then and there)

2. Who are they?

3. What are the likely hood of them raping me?

4. What’s the likely hood of them beating/torturing me?

5. What’s the likely hood of them killing me?

6. If they are to strike which would they go for first?

7. How fast are they? / Is there anyone around to hear me scream?

8. Can I get away? 

9. What will it feel like when they decide to attack?

10. How long until I can leave?

Those were my top 10 thoughts every single time I met a man or hung around with a man until I got to know them really well. I was to say the least exhausted. I think it was a mixture of these plaguing thoughts and the great depression that hung around my neck like a cement block, that lead me deep into porn. 

My number one fear was being raped. I dreamt about it, I watched shows and documentaries about it, I read about it, I listened to songs about it. I figured that if I knew as much as I could about it, than when it happened to me I would be prepared and it would hurt less.

When others daydreamed about who they were going to be when they “grew up”, I sat and thought out who I would be after I was raped, if I’d recognize myself, if it would matter at all, if the person would kill me, if it would be someone I knew. I obsessed and I feared and I had nightmare after nightmare. Each day I wondered if I’d make it to 18 and if suicide would be better than the constant worry. I believe these thoughts and fears were at the heart of my eating disorder, my alcohol addiction, my self harm, and my addiction to porn and masturbation. All of those things gave me a chance to obsesses over something else if only for a little while. That’s why I continually went back to them, because they gave me a sense of power, and control, and a rest from the continuous and terrorizing thoughts of whether or not my rapist would kill me or leave me to live a life scarred by what he’d done. 

So how of all of this turn into a porn addiction? How does it relate at all?

Well, I began watching porn as a teen, after my first serious boyfriend and I started fooling around. My general thought was I like him and he’s willing to put up with how fat and disgusting I am and he seems sweet.

We started fooling around right away and even though it made me uncomfortable, at first, I continued to do more and more sexual stuff with him thinking that if I just keep him happy this way than he won’t attack me. Survival in any possible situation was my first priority, it was always in the back of my mind. Yes I had the butterflies in my stomach, yes I thought I wanted to marry him, yes I thought we could be soul mates, but underneath all that, every time I was with him I was thinking: 

1. Exits

2. Is today the day he rapes me

3. What if he kills me

4. Just keep him happy

I just assumed thats how everyone felt, I thought thats how love was supposed to be, find the one that is least likely to rape, butcher, torture, and kill you. 

So we dated for 6 months and then it ended like most high school relationships do. I was needy, he was verbally abusive, we were codependent, he couldn’t save me, I couldn’t trust him. He did however leave me with an awakening to sex that I hadn’t known before. Fooling around felt good and I could be in control of producing something pleasurable. A few months after we broke up I found my dad’s porn collection and so I turned the tv down low, I sat in his room and I watched, and I watched, and I watched. It wasn’t violent stuff, it was just sex (I was still technically a virgin at the time and I feared having sex more than anything in the world), and the way they made it look made it look good. So I started going on the computer and found more of it. The more I looked, the more I fantasized about being in control, the less respect I had for myself and men. (if you haven’t read the 3 other parts in this series I would go back and check those out)

Two years after I started watching porn and masturbating (for me the 2 just went hand in hand), I started looking for homosexual porn and porn where women anally assaulted men. I found that the more I fooled around with men, the more I drank, the more I hated myself, the less it became about watching people have sex and the more it became how powerful can I make myself feel? After I was sexually assaulted for quite awhile the only porn I really watched was women having anal sex with men where the women was dominate.  I was afraid, I felt alone, and I didn’t know what else to do but dive as far into my perversions as possible until I drowned the scared little girl part of me. The part of me that knew where every possible weapon was and had mapped out every possible escape route, the part that had her dreams die and didn’t think she was worth living, the girl who believed in the deepest part of her that she was a whore, that she was dirty, and that if a man ever wanted to hurt her he would have every right. 

All I had wanted was relief. All I had wanted was to be free. All I had wanted was to be a moonbird, with no other cares than to sing in the darkness. Instead I allowed myself to be lured into a trap, into a massive spiders web, and the more I tried to find away out and to control what was going on in me and going on around me the more wrapped in the web I became. 

Relief came and at first I didn’t recognize it,

It came as beauty.

Freedom came and at first I wouldn’t stop to listen,

It came as joy.

My song came and sang over me but I could not connect,

It came as light. 

I struggled, and I struggled, and I drowned in my deep well of hurt and fear and hatred. I watched and I watched and as the years went on I met a man, His name is Jesus. I had met Him before and we had a casual friendship and when He asked me to go deeper at first I ran. I couldn’t show Him my filth the deep dark parts of me. But He pursued. He continued to ask for my hand over and over, He showed me His heart and I saw nothing in there of the fears I had known. I saw love for the first time, not lust, which I had mistaken for love, or control which I had mistaken for freedom, but love. True, and simple, and complex. He told me there was nothing so disgusting that I had done that could keep us apart and nothing so terrible that I could not be rinsed clean. From the moment I first met Him it slowed down, but the urge to watch and masturbate and fear didn’t go away all at once like my eating disorder had. It took years of trusting and learning and believing in His love to finally cut me completely free from that web I’d allowed myself to be caught in. It is here recently that the final cords have been cut and that I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am free. 

I am pure. White as snow. Beautiful. Funny. Smart. Silly. Wonderful. Clean. 

I am CLEAN!

And what of that fear? 

Perfect love drives out fear. I can honestly say that I am not afraid of men anymore. Besides Him and His love, Jesus put men in my life that taught me how to respect myself and how to walk as a woman who knows her true worth.

Thank you:

K. ,S., J., J., R., M.

My Jesus used you to change my life! 

I want to thank all of you who have read or responded to this series, it’s meant a lot to me. I’m excited to see what I’m going to write about next and I hope y’all are too!

Back expect a new post in my series Sex and Violence by wed or thursday for those who are reading!!! Had an awesome God filled weekend!

I’m taking a few days of a break from my recent series of stories on sex to go to a conference. My next post should be Monday! Love you all!

Sex and Violence part 3: Of what was stolen

I’m not sure what I can say except, just because something has been stolen from you doesn’t mean you can’t get it back.

Two posts ago I shared that I was molested. That was hard. To admit something so personal to people I don’t know, and even more so to know that people that I love dearly and greatly respect would find out as well. It was hard but it was worth it.

When I was little my brother molested me. When he was on trial for molesting another little girl my mother asked me if he had ever touched me, my answer… “I don’t know.” My mom looked so hurt and confused that I quickly changed my answer to a resounding no. I told her no and I moved on never forgetting that look on her face. I think that’s where the shame first grabbed hold. I didn’t know there was anything to be ashamed of, at that point I honestly wasn’t sure if anything had happened, but I knew by the look on my mothers face that something was wrong. For years I mistook that that something was me. 

About shame, shame in case you didn’t know is a coward. It sneaks in as quiet as a mouse, it slithers around as skillful as a snake, and it chokes the life out of you. It makes you feel as though nothing can ever make you right, nothing can ever make you clean. That feeling is hard enough, that dirt, when you know what the cause is. It’s made even harder to bear when you sit in therapy twice a week and your therapist and dad can’t understand why you hate yourself, where they can’t find anything in your past to tell you why you throw up 12 times a day. I never understood that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, that I wasn’t to blame, mainly because I didn’t understand that I was blaming myself. 

Something is stolen when your will is assaulted. 

I was in college, I was drunk, my friends were in the other room watching a movie. 

A guy who was friends with one of my friends was sitting on the couch with me, he said he would stay out in the living room with me because I was drunk and because the area we were in wasn’t the safest. We started far apart and then we moved closer. We began kissing, and then I began to try to sleep, he started unzipping my pants, I told him I was too drunk, he replied he was drunk too and began pulling my pants down some, I told him no again, that I could barely move I was too drunk, it was the truth I had stopped kissing him because my brain was too heavy to me my lips. He was a lot bigger than I was and he pulled me with one arm on to his lap and began touching me, I began to realize if something didn’t happen I was going to be raped. Luckily a few minutes later my friends finished their movie and came out and he threw me across the room, I fell over the table trying to stand. He left and I slept a little on a couch, and when I woke up an hour later my friend and I walked home.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I fully realized what had happened. I felt disgusting, I didn’t eat for two days and when I started eating again I purged after every meal. 

I spent a few years rationalizing what happened, making it my fault. I have to take some responsibility for what happened yes but it was only when Jesus and I began to really have a deep relationship did I realize it was not my fault. That that man said he would protect me and then did just the opposite. 

I never knew something had been taken from me, until it was given back. I never understood, I was suffocating, until I could breath again. 

What was stolen:

Innocence,

Playful spirit,

The ability to trust men,

The ability to discover who I was.

I spent years thinking I was something I am clearly not. I thought I was bad, I thought I was no good, I thought I was unworthy of love, so I punished myself. The Lord flipped that, My Jesus says I am beauty, I am love, I am worth pursuing, I am wonderful, I am clean, I am as sweet as the most fragrant perfume.

Things are stolen, but they can only be lost if we allow them to be. We have the right to take back what is rightfully ours. 

I’m not sure that this is the most articulate post I’ve ever written. Feedback would be great, but either way, feedback or no I’m going to keep writing because I feel like this is important. I just want to warn you my next post is on porn, fear, and the perversion of love.

Hi new followers! I’m very excited to meet you! 

Sex and Violence part 2: The birds and the bees

Neither of my parents ever had the sex talk with any of their children. There are five of us. I’m not sure if they never found it to be an important topic or if they were too embarrassed to sit us down, but it just never happened. That was a mistake. Just sayin’. 

I’ve always know what a penis and a vagina are, and I always knew that babies didn’t come from the cabbage patch. How you ask? I have no clue I just always knew it had something to do with a mom and dad. 

The specifics of sex were explained to me when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. It was a warm spring day and my best friend, who was quite a few years older, and I were sitting in my back yard playing Barbie. She grabbed the Ken and the Barbie and said, “This is how people have sex, this is how babies get made,” and she proceeded to rub their genitals together and made quite moaning sounds so my mom who was inside couldn’t hear. 

That was my first official introduction.

Let’s fast forward several years to high school. 

My sophomore year I was really unhealthy, I was too depressed to eat, I was cutting myself and burning myself upwards of 30 times a day, and I was in a verbally abusive relationship. 

My self esteem was in the dumps… to say the least. 

He was cute to me, he liked me, and he was really into to sex. Our first official date we sat at the back of a midnight showing of the Incredibles and he and I fooled around. Throughout the course of our unhealthy relationship we did just about everything that you could without having intercourse. 

The first touch of his hands on the buttons of my jeans changed everything. 

No one ever warned me that sex could be addictive, no one ever warned me that a blow job was still sex, or that giving them could get me labeled a whore, no one ever warned me that some men will do whatever they can and say I love you to get you to give your body away. 

Our relationship ended, a big surprise there, and when it did I felt like a prostitute. I had given him my heart and he took from my body and then left.

After a few months alone, I began to drink, and starve, and binge, and purge, and I continued to cut myself, and burn myself, and the hole that I was trying to fill got bigger and bigger. 

I didn’t engage in any sexual behaviors for quite a while after that, and then one day I went to college.

College changes things, for those of you who have never been. Whatever problems you had in high school are typically amplified your first semester.

For example:

I only drink on weekends became, I drink only twice during the week and on weekends.

I only binge and purge when no ones around became, taking five showers a day in the dorms so I could purge whether my roommates were around or not.

I only fool around with someone I’m in love with became, I’m empty inside, get me drunk and I’m yours. 

I fooled around a lot during my first semester of college, mainly because I drank, mainly because I felt ashamed, of what? At the time I didn’t know. 

I dropped out of school after that first semester, because I had run out of money. I had drank it all or purged it all away.

A year later, I was 19, I was drunk and I was lonely, empty, scared, scarred, and I was about to lose my “virginity”.

I was at a party and all of my friends except two were drunk. My two somewhat sober friends cut me off, mainly because I was so drunk I couldn’t walk. They sat on one side of me, and on the other side a 25 year old sailor kept feeding me drinks. He gave me drink after drink when my friends weren’t looking and the next thing I knew we were in his apartment. I don’t remember all of losing my virginity, only that I was drunk, I broke a lamp, and I had only known the man I slept with for two hours. To this day I can’t tell you what his name is. 

The next day when I realized what had happened I felt disgusted with myself. I went to my EDA meeting and I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. In all honesty I wanted to kill myself… instead I binged and purged and a week later went to a party where I got drunk, rode shotgun with a very drunk driver, and then after buying the condoms, had sex with a guy from high school that I still to this day don’t like.  

My point is that my ever constant companions guilt and shame told me that no man would ever love me, sex was all I would be good for. This I would learn much later is a lie.

I learned about the birds and the bees from a cruel world, the world taught me that I was nothing if I was not indulging in my need for sex. 

My parents never warned me. I don’t think that they knew. I’m not sure if it would have changed anything then again, it might have changed everything. But after that first taste and with having no guidance or someone to speak to I gave in to my loneliness, my guilt, my shame, and I didn’t look back for a very long time.

Below is a poem I wrote about sex, you may be tired of my poems, you may not be. I’m hoping for the latter.

My parents never warned me of what boys of men would want from me,

I gave it freely, sure that it would bring me love,

They used me, they abused me, they left me feeling empty,

I never knew, I never knew, how empty I’d be left.

Please understand that my parents are not to blame for the choices I made.

My point is that at this stage of the game the guilt and shame were stifling me, and it has taken quite a while to realize that even though I didn’t know when it began, a choice was made somewhere and that choice could only be made right by one thing.

I hope you check back soon for part 3.

Sex and Violence part 1: Of how it all began and everything it affected

I was molested, and for a long time I never knew.

I have never said the above words out loud except to Jesus. I told Him once and we wept together. We both sat and cried for me, and He wrapped me in His arms comfortingly, and we cried some more.

I sit here at my computer unsure what to share, unsure what to say, unsure what to do. But I will share my heart, I will speak as Jesus leads, and I will do what needs to be done. 

Those who know me know that I don’t remember most of my childhood. Ages birth to 11ish are mostly a blur to me, only realized through the stories of others. This past year the Lord has been revealing more and more of my childhood to me and on one night He showed me something that shook everything and made the dark things of my heart step out into the light to be dealt with. 

It was September or October, the ministry that I’m involved with was having their monthly night of worship, and I felt like no matter what I needed to be at the church that night. The music began and the lights went down and I began to pray and worship. Then it hit me, an image, a memory I had never known, but had dreamt of and I began to weep. I don’t weep often, I am passionate yes but I typically hold back my tears, but that night I wept and I wailed and I locked myself in a small bathroom trying to feel shut in, trying to feel safe. I wept and I wept and I wept. My friends asked what was wrong and I had no words. The memory of the molestation was there and I had no words. I felt guilt and shame.

Guilt and Shame and I had been friends for a long time. I never knew how we met, but met we did at a young age and we grew together. There were a lot of things I could never explain. The list is as followed:

Bulimia,

Anorexia,

Self-harm,

Drug abuse,

Promiscuity,

Alcoholism,

Self-hate,

OCD,

Major Depression,

Suicidal thoughts,

Suicide attempts,

The fear of men,

Fear of taking baths,

Porn and masturbation,

Fear of being alone.

I never knew how these came into my life, but I knew shame and guilt gladly walked me through them. They handed me over to each and watched with delight as I was violated, as I was repeatedly ripped apart, as I lost so many pieces. They watched and joined in feeding off the violence my life produced. 

That one act (how many times it happened I still don’t know), that violation, left a hole in my heart which I willingly let shame and guilt fill, and they being a sweet as they were brought they’re friends. 

Below is a quote from a poem I wrote in high school, I feel as though it sums up this post quite well:

It starts with one thought,

which infects your dreams,

and makes it so your shower can’t even get you clean.

“People who have hurts create doctrines to embrace their disfunction”

—-Kris Vallotton