survivor stories Archives – Amandla Awethu- Power to Us!

Hours after my rape: The Silent Struggles of Acute Stress Disorder After Rape!

Hours after my rape[2], my brain was not only bruised but hemorrhaging from the massive trauma it had incurred. I was experiencing paranoia, hysteria, and confusion. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had just been violated in my dorm room, by someone I had thought of as a friend. I know now, that I was suffering from acute stress disorder (ACD), but at the time I thought I was losing my mind.

ACD is a medical condition that develops during or shortly after a trauma. ACD manifests itself through behavioural changes that affect you for at least a month, after which, it develops into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). [3]

…

I spent the better part of the evening in Vuyo’s room trying to calm down and process what had just happened. As soon as I could, I dimmed down my hysteria and tried to explain to her what had happened. You would think repeating a traumatic event that had just occurred a few hours before would be a simple task, but it wasn’t. My memory was full of gaps, thus I could only recollect bits and pieces. How was it possible to remember some parts of my rape and at the same time forget others? I thought to myself. As soon as I was done talking, Vuyo gave me her two cents. She was certain that the short EASOC boy had taken advantage of me and I had done nothing to warrant his sexual advances. A part of me agreed with her but, another part refused to believe that a guy I had trusted could have raped me. I slowly drifted into my own train of thought and decided to piece together what had taken place.

I remember letting him into my room. I was rather emotional and my state of mind was not the best. I told him about my day and what had been upsetting me, this immediately triggered a wave of emotions and tears. He offered to cheer me up and downloaded a movie called Amelie. I hated the movie as it made me rather uncomfortable but I chose to remain silent about my discomfort. The next thing I remember was him on top of me and this initiated an out of body experience. I watched him violated me but couldn’t do anything to stop him. I replayed the assault over and over in my mind but I couldn’t fill in the gaps; and the harder I tried, the more frustrated I became and the more unanswered questions I got. For instance, How did he get on top of me? I thought.

Did he push me down or was I already lying down and then he decided to take advantage of me?

Does lying down next to the opposite sex constitute non-verbal consent?

Is cheering up a synonym for sex?

Did he really penetrate my vagina and break my hymen?

If he did, wouldn’t I have felt it?

Shouldn’t I have felt excruciating pain?

I’m I going to get pregnant now?

Did he infect me with an STD?

Why the fuck couldn’t he have used a condom?

Better yet, why the fuck couldn’t he have paid someone to have sex with him if he was so desperate?

In the midst of my inquisition, I realized I had left my airtime in his car. I jolted back into cognitive consciousness and yelled out; “He has my airtime.” I imagine if you were an outsider watching this, it must have looked like I had gone into V-fib and some unseen spirited had compressed life back into me, all in the while alarming my friend with my erratic behaviour. I watched Vuyo for a few minutes then repeated my earlier allegation.

“He has my airtime, he has my fucking airtime”.

“Airtime? What are you talking about?” Vuyo said.

“I bought airtime together with the morning after pill. I didn’t want to look like a whore in front of everyone so I decided to buy two twelve Rand vouchers, to conceal the real reason I was at that shop. ”

In hindsight, I can see how erratic and illogical I was behaving but at the time the only thing I wanted was not to be judged as a whore and a worthless being.

[1]http://amandlaawethu.org/misbeloved/memoirs-of-a-rape-victim-my-rape/

http://amandlaawethu.org/misbeloved/my-rape-part-two/

[2]

[3]

©misbeloved/mwk

[Maryanne Kamunya] and [misbeloved], [2014]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to [Maryanne Kamunya] and [misbeloved] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Awake, The Tormentor! A Survivor’s Story of Coping with Trauma and Healing After Rape

posted by Maryanne Kamunya

(copyrights huffingtonpost-cpap-ptsd-nightmares)

Awake, The Tormentor! is inspired by the agony I experienced and sometimes still experience when im awake. In the previous post I wrote about my treaty with denial, this was part of the first stage of my’ healing’/ coping process. Denial was my first line of defence. It was a response to the state of being awake, I’ve written in the past how sleep was a difficult/ an impossible task after being raped, well, being awake was its own form of torture!

Awake, the Tormentor, won the battle because he managed to separate my soul, spirit and body from each other. He intertwined them into opposing whirlpools, corrupted and convinced them to work as tripolar opposites. In the rare occasions I left my dungeon, whether to go to Vuyo’s room, the grocery store, upper campus or wherever, I left as three forms. My empty shell of a body, walked along side my spirit and soul; and they existed as phantoms. To the naked spectators I seemed whole and conventional, but in actual fact, the being before them was a corpse, with the affliction of my rapist gestating in my womb! My rapist had many abettors and Awake had joined his employ!

I hadn’t left my dungeon for over two weeks and to be honest, if I had it my way I would have stayed in there forever. The level of torture in there was alpine. It was the very territory where I had been violated but it was also the only place where I could protect myself from further violation. My room in Woolsack was both my cage, and my deserted island away from testosterone annexation. Salvation was very limited, so any source I attained had to be held onto. The irony of this situation was the very person that could save and heal me, I hid from! I was certain that God had deserted me, the minute he let someone assault me. Not to mention, I had always thought of God as male, so asking me to trust another male, especially, the very male being that had created such a monster as my rapist, was really overstepping all bounds of my logical centre. Unfortunately for me, no woman can be island; just because I suffered a traumatic event didn’t mean that the world had stopped spinning. So duty called and I had to attend an East African Society meeting (EASOC). The problem was, the organizing committee, also know as the Comm, had 5 guys in it. These guys had become like family, we laughed and made inner jokes together, we also went through ridiculous challenges and came out on top. These guys had taught me how to relax and take life as it came, as they would say, ‘its never that serious!’ Unfortunately for me, it had become that serious and nothing could save me from my demons….

It had been over two weeks since I had seen the EASOC comm, but I was dreading it. It’s almost as though I was carrying my rape as a cross, where my audience, was the one and only male race. My judge and jury were male and from the African continent, where patriarchy was hailed because it uplifted their sexist beliefs and culture. I only had three females as my potential allies, but we were up against a couple hundred men (as the EASOC meeting was held in male residence in UCT, known as Kopano). The problem was I was too afraid to confess my rape, so I bore my cross alone. As I walked to Kopano from Woolsack, my spirit and soul phantoms secured my alleyway. Each time a male walked passed me, I envisioned my soul and spirit being entrapped and that male charging towards me like a Springbok player at the ruby world cup finals. My fate seemed sealed and my body was failing to cope with reality. My heart was pulsating harder than the African drum, my legs had become stiffer than Table Mountain and my chest had tightened into a ball of fire. I was gasping for air and my ear drums felt like they had exploded. My gasps were so loud and hard. It felt like a Rwandan gorilla was banging on my chest and trying to reclaim his territory. I tried to seat down but my knees wouldn’t bend, and I’d be out in the open without any camouflage, so I ran! I ran to the entrance of Woolsack and hide myself in a little corner and tried to calm myself down. I began to count out loud but it sounded like a radio comm had reacted with a cellphone and I all I wanted was for it to stop. I need you to stop, I said. I commanded my heart, chest, legs, and tears to stop but they wouldn’t heed my call, so I retreated to my sad position and let the panic attack pass, on its own. The bright side was, I was late, so they wouldn’t be any time to hug anyone,

“YAY! I thought, NO PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH THE BOYS!!”

My attack finally stopped and I began my journey again. Same formation, spirit and soul led the way and my corpse followed. I arrived at Kopano and tried to write my details in the sign in book. My hands were numb and so was the rest of my body. I couldn’t take my eyes off the guy giving me instructions. I honestly wanted to shit my pants.

“ALL AROUND ME WERE MALES!!! ALL MALES!! RUN BITCH! RUN!! NO WAIT, WE HAVE TO FACE OUR DEMONS SOMETIMES, STAY STRONG MARYANNE KAMUNYA, STAY STRONG!!”

These are words I told myself. Unfortunately, my heart started palpitating again so I wrote my details down as quickly and neatly as I could and blended into the wall and walked away. Throughout my ‘normal’ absence at Kopano my mind’s eye, soul and spirit held my cover! As I approached the meeting room, I noticed the boys hanging out outside, I quickly looked around and couldn’t see any of my allies.

SHIT!!! I CANT DO THIS, THEY WILL ATTACK ME!

Suddenly it dawned on me, all my male friends had now become a thing of the past; men WERE NOT to be trusted, especially Kenyan men. I propelled myself forward as my soul and spirit were urging me to turn back. The irony of this whole situation was, as I was shuddersome of being around the boys, they seemed happy to see me. So one after the other they hugged me and throughout those hugs I checked out and escaped my body completely.

If they were to have me, they would have the empty shell that they called my body but they would never break or have my spirit again!

This dear brothers and sisters is what rape does to a victim, it alienates us from the ones we love and turns our minds against us!

©misbeloved/mwk

Filed Under: My Memoir as Rape Victim and Survivor Tagged With: coping mechanisms., coping with assault, emotional recovery, healing after rape, overcoming trauma, PTSD, rape, rape and recovery, survivor stories, Trauma survival

MY RAPE PART TWO

posted by Maryanne Kamunya

Please find the first part of my rape here: http://amandlaawethu.org/misbeloved/memoirs-of-a-rape-victim-my-rape/

Part Two of my rape

Despite my inability to hold back my tears, I thank God I’ve never been able to cry loudly. You know what I’m talking about, some people cry really loudly, there’s absolutely nothing with it, but that’s just not me. The minute I began to cry, he moved closer to me and began to try and comfort me. He hugged me and said:

“Don’t do that, think about it this way, your problems aren’t that serious, there are people out there that are dying of hunger.”

He hugged me, and then he tried to kiss me. I got upset and asked him seriously? Looking back now, it was at that moment that I should have thrown him out. I should have physically gotten up and opened the door and demanded him to leave. I can’t tell you why I didn’t do that, all I remember is feeling very tired and weak. I don’t mean fatigued like from crying, I mean I was physically and emotionally drained. The next thing I knew, he was on top of me. I can’t tell you how he got me to lie on my back, or how he managed to get the better of me, but he did.

I felt his hands holding my thighs; it felt like a shovel of hot coal was being pushed against my thighs. I tried to get up, I tried to push him away, well it felt like I tried, but alas my hip had failed me. I remember thinking, I did this. I told him how to plant his flag on me. When I opened up about my hip replacement surgery, I told him the precise nature of my problem, I told him about my limited range of motion, and with my own mouth, I had signed my own death warrant. The minute he got a hold of my legs, he had the power and he knew it. He knew that as long as he held onto them, I couldn’t kick him or fight him. Like a moth flying towards the light, the demise of my virginity was nigh.

He held onto to my right hip very tightly and forced it to move into the correct position. In those days, my hip was very stiff, so the position he was forcing it to be in, would be natural for many of you, but for me, it was aberrant and extremely painful. Let me try and paint a picture of how intense that pain was, imagine you sprain your ankle, then as you trying to recover someone comes along and forces your ankle into an unnatural position. You try to free yourself from their grasp, but the more you try, the more pressure that’s placed on your ankle, and therefore, the more excruciating pain you feel; that’s the pain I was experiencing. Then couple that pain, with the image of a rapist on top of you grinding away at my hymen. I couldn’t see him properly, as I said earlier he is significantly shorter than me, but I did see his head popping up.

The minute he put his penis inside my vagina, my whole body went numb and into shock. I lost all feeling and completely detached my spirit and soul from my body. I had an out of body experience. I watched each and every second of him violating me. I lied there, motionless, unable to fend off this predator, all I could see were tears streaming down my cheek. I saw the tears but I couldn’t feel them. Those tears symbolised my power as a human being diminished.

My spirit tried to awaken my physical form. It began to scream at its body:

Scream bitch! Scream! I tried to move my lips but they wouldn’t cooperate. I then yelled at my body, fight him, move him, do something, don’t just lie there. I tried to gain the strength I needed to fight him, my soul tried to gain entry back into my body, but another spirit had already conquered my corpse. His demon spirit had occupied my flesh and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

With every motion, my body got benumbed. My soul became heavier and my body became lighter. In those moments he violated me, I felt my spirit die and my faith disperse. After he was done, he said:

“we need to get you the pill.”

This git hadn’t even bothered to protect himself!!! There were fucking condom dispensers all over this residence!!! Those words ‘we need to go get the pill’ kept ringing in my soul all night and for nights to come. Those words symbolised the death of my virginity, my innocence and my rights as a human being.

That ladies and gents, was how I was introduced to adulthood. This was also the beginning of my rape trauma syndrome!

For those of you (because believe me I know from my experience, you do exist) that believe I deserved this because I let him into my room or think because I did not scream or fight I gave him informal consent. Well here’s what I have to say to you, sex requires informed, verbal and not coerced consent from each sexual partner. If your partner is too young, that’s rape, if your partner is unclear about your intentions, that’s rape, if your partner is incapacitated or and of unsound mind, that’s rape. Basically, if your partner cannot willingly and free say yes to sex, DO NOT DO IT, THAT IS RAPE!

Sex for me meant, the intertwinement of two bodies and souls. It is not a mindless activity that one party decides consent on behalf of another, neither is it a right for any boy! (yes boy, because no man forces himself onto any person!! It doesn’t increase your masculinity it only diminishes it).

For those of you that believe that I just got confused after giving formal consent (Because I’ve had two female law students say that to me). It never ceases to amaze me how educated, ignorant idiots like you, continues to roam the earth. Anyway my response to such individuals is:

“Rape is a violent crime in which a person commits a sexual act without formal or informal consent. Consent: to agree to something, give permission or say ‘yes’ when you understand what is being asked of you and when you are not forced or deceived into giving consent.” (Rape Crisis Cape Town trust, 1992:-4-6).

Now, my understanding of formal consent is when a person willingly indicates verbally that they wish to have sex with you. Informal consent is a physical indication of consent through open and positive response to sexual advances. NOW I MUST EMPHASIS ANY PERSON CAN CHANGE THEIR MIND AND REFUSE YOUR ADVANCES AT ANY TIME. No person has the authority to steer you ship/ destiny without your consent!!

In addition, most rapes are committed by people you know, that makes it violating, hurtful, confusing and evil.

Now, I thank God that my battle was a mental battle and I wasn’t harmed badly physically. Unfortunately, because I did not know better, I cleaned myself and discarded away the evident as soon as I could.

I need you to understand that every fibre of my being had been engrossed in my rapist bile. My vision was blurry and I was suffering from inner turmoil. Even the sweet, sweet smell of Dettol couldn’t cleanse my soul, mind, spirit or body; as far as I was concerned I was a walking corpse!

AFTER BEING RAPED, YOUR FIRST PRIORITY IS TO GET YOURSELF TO SAFETY. Once you are in a safe place, try and call a friend, loved one or family member, or a helpline and IMMEDIATELY SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION! THE FIRST 72 HOURS ARE CRUCIAL!

Lastly, I didn’t get the opportunity to file charges, due to various reasons. However, that does not mean that you can’t do so. Please feel free to check out this link: http://amandlaawethu.org/misbeloved/memoirs-of-a-rape-victim-my-rape/

This will inform you on exactly what to do if you are raped.

In conclusion, I’m really hoping and praying that this blog post helps someone out there.

At the Rape Crisis Centre in Cape Town, my therapist used to tell me, DON’T HIDE, SPEAK OUT!

I SAY SPEAK OUT AND BREAK FREE! For God is your father, and he alone knows your heart. Let no one persecute you, as they too will lay down in front of our father!

Filed Under: My Memoir as Rape Victim and Survivor Tagged With: healing after rape, impact of sexual assault, rape trauma syndrome, survivor stories, what to do after sexual assault

Hours after my rape: The Silent Struggles of Acute Stress Disorder After Rape!

Awake, The Tormentor! A Survivor’s Story of Coping with Trauma and Healing After Rape

MY RAPE PART TWO

Part Two of my rape

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