I went back to the doctor today. Turns out she was worried that I might have pneumonia. Ugh. But a chest x-ray later it turns out I don’t have it. I’m just taking a really long time to get over whatever this is. So I go back on the antibiotics and she’s given me prednisone, which I hate taking. It’s evil stuff. Hopefully I won’t end up sick long term like the last time I took prednisone. (It works by suppressing your immune system, which can be a bad thing if that effect lingers.)
Each day I feel a little better, but it’s such a drag to be sick this long. I want to feel normal and healthy again. I’d like to have a sex drive again.
Yesterday in therapy I talked about the incident where it turns out the Latina knows asshole. I just hate how this brings up all the old feelings – the feelings I want to put behind me. I had a hard time falling asleep last night concocting a long fantasy of him getting charged and convicted for what he did. In my fantasies he always comes to realize that what he did was wrong, and apologizes for what he did. And in most of the fantasies I don’t forgive him. Why the fuck would I give him the satisfaction of being forgiven? Fact is, he’s never given me the satisfaction of taking responsibility for what he did, so I have no desire whatsoever to give him any sort of satisfaction. I hope he rots. I hope he’s still drinking heavily and he drinks himself to death. He’s one of the very few people on this earth who I hate. Really and truly hate.
Unfortunately that hatred keeps me angry and keeps me chained to the memory of what happened. I’d like to move on but really, how can I forgive and forget? I hope there’s some way I can forget even if I don’t forgive.
I’m still struggling with the idea of justice as regards the rape and the abuse. Since I’m not religious, I can’t be comforted in thinking that they are going to hell or will get a huge karmic payback.
I used to think a great deal about whether they understood what they did. I think about it less, and am resisting the temptation to email the ex and pester him about going to therapy so he can be told what he did.
This is just me, but I don’t use words like “forgive” or “forget.” I prefer another term you used, “move on.” All I can say is that I’m thinking about it less, and am trying to not let the idea that there may not be justice in the end eat at me.
Yeah, I know that ultimately I need to find a way to move on, and not obsess over whether he realizes what he’s done is wrong. That’s the real challenge ahead. Like you, I’m not religious so I don’t feel that karma or some other magic force will get back at him. Sometimes bad people get away scott-free with what they’ve done. That’s part of life. I need to find a way to move on for my own sanity and well-being. I’m just struggling with how to do that.
Well, this is just me, but one thing that helps me is helping other women, even if just a little. So I’ve been trying to go to my support group every week, and once in a while I’ll say something that helps someone, and so I think that my experiences can at least work for someone else.
I understand this need for justice and for acknowledgement from the offending party.
In my own experience, at least one person involved in my incident (my mother, who introduced me to my rapist and blew it off when I told her I’d been raped) *has* come around and realized she was wrong. She has not asked for my forgiveness, but has said she can never forgive herself. And she has also come around to condemning the rapist’s actions.
All of these things were things I thought I desperately wanted from her: acknowledgement of wrongdoing, apology, condemnation of the man’s acts. I have gotten them all and it really doesn’t feel like anything. I doesn’t change the past, and while it is *like* what I wanted, it does not really *feel* like I imagined it would.
I realized recently no matter how she behaves or what she says, it will never *feel* like I imagined that moment to feel. I had some imagined concept of feeling released or freed in some way, in some great, instant rush. And I am finding that, of course, she is really only human and can’t provide that sort of thing for me. Nor can she act like she acts in my imagination–that is, perfect. I imagine she’ll have the perfec thing to say or do that will free me. And yet, no matter what she does, it doesn’t have that effect. And *I* don’t even know what the perfect thing to say or do is. I just keep hoping somehow it exists, and that she should know it.
So lately I’ve to terms with the fact that that perfect release moment *doesn’t* exist. And that it’s just not about the others on the outside. Even IF my rapist came and begged for forgiveness, or explained he saw the error of his ways, even if he voluntarily put himself in jail, or even if *I* managed to have him jailed…I’m not sure that would give me the imagined release I was looking for. So far I’ve found the only incindents that have provivded me with that feeling of release were in doing things for *myself,* outside of them and their behaviors/beliefs, positive or no.
I have begun to feel now that nothing else matters. Whether they realize doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if they get healthy or enlightened. It’s not my job to make them see the light–and i no longer want that job, as there’s no real return on investment. And in terms of my rapist, that almost feels like i’d be “helping” him, and I really have no desire to provide him with any aid whatsoever.
I’m finding that only I and my healing matter, and only I can give that to myself. Those people on the outside, no matter what they do, can’t give it to me. On Hiromi’s blog, she mentions people suggesting “living well is the best revenge.” I don’t buy this theory, because, though I in no way forgive of forget what was done to me, I just don’t want to focus on revenge at all anymore. Because revenge is reactive–it’s still all about that other person, not me.
I’ll go with “living well is the best reward,” though. not because I want to prove anything to anyone. Just because, dammit, after what I’ve been through, I deserve some spoiling of myself. I deserve everything.
And so do you.
Thanks so much for that long, thoughtful comment Miss Syl. It’s helped me tremendously.