Sexual Assault Showers are hard

[Seaweed]

I’m struggling with showering as I want to feel gross after my assault I don’t know why and I don’t know how to go about confronting these issues. I wear dirty clothes and try not to shower for as long as I can. Working out so I can be even more disgusting. The few times I do shower, I wash myself with a dirty towel that has old menstrual blood all over it. Idk what’s wrong with me. I hate showering so much I begin having a panic attack and start hitting myself and the shame once I’m “clean” is so overwhelming it makes the idea of showering in the future even more terrifying. I like being gross and I hate it

 

[Friday]

I picked up a homeless Russian lady, (in the US, driving cross country) once. We drove about 3 states before I dropped her off at a dumpster behind a boogie grocery store.

She was good people.

I liked her.

She had a bloody scalp shaved head.

Indeterminate clothes.

Pristinely clean (as she was hitchhiking, and wanted clean people to pick her up, as clean people usually had food/money & were less rapey).

She STRONGLY recommended I make myself as ugly as possible, as soon as possible. So I would be “raped LESS often”. As I dropped her off, she deliberately shat & pissed herself, for the stink.

That’s not the life I want to live.* But I respect her choices.

What kind of life do YOU want to live?



*Nor my lived experience. I was gangraped daily, for months. Covered in piss/shit/blood/cum/puke/filth. At my MOST disgusting? I was raped hundreds/thousands of times. Shrug. So it’s not something that logs in MY head as an effective deterrent. It worked for her, though, and she was trying to be helpful. Which is a kindness. Respect.

 

[Movingforward10]

I get it. I didn't wash really after my first assault. And did all those punishing things that essentially reinforce your unworthiness. All the messages of you are gross, you are disgusting, it's your fault, something is wrong with you, you make people do these things etc etc etc.
But none of that is true. And maybe by looking at some of your core beliefs about yourself and what happened, and shifting them, might help to change how you treat yourself.

Because if you shift the "I am disgusting" to "I am worthy and wonderful", you can then see that cleaning yourself is easier.

Changing "I don't matter" to "I do matter" means so many things. For me it meant: my body needs my care.
I can clean my teeth and floss and look after myself.
I can clean certain parts of my body.
I can feel my body and it's ok.
Etc etc etc.

It doesn't need to stay how things are at the moment. Life can be different and better.

 

[arfie]

i attribute my offensive slob phases to an effort to push people away. like @Friday 's hitchhiker, my psychosis believed that i would be raped less often if i was a genuinely gross prospect. alas, it didn't work. these days i believe that rape has more to do with availability than good looks and sex appeal.

self-defense classes were my ticket off that not-so-merry-go-round. it proved to be a far more effective rape deterrent than making myself hygienically repulsive.

 

[Rose White]

I don’t see it as self defense but rather communication without words.

I want to feel gross after my assault

Because people might notice and step in and help—or at least our survival instincts tell us that.

There’s a lovely book called “Nervous Conditions” by Tsitsi Dangarembga. It’s about what it’s like to grow up in a colonial African country. Something that struck me was that for women in the village, when they were grieving (a death, being beaten or raped, etc) they would do just like you do… not clean and become a shell of themselves… and you know what the other women would do? Carry or force her to the river… everyone takes off their clothes (it’s the women’s part of the river) and the women would sing and wail loudly and splash her and wash her as long as it took for her to smile or move. Because that’s what women did for each other. The book contrasts that with what happens when people (in desperation) emulate the lives of the colonizers and the tragic consequences (but also highlights that village life has its own sets of dismal moments—there is no perfect place.)

My point is that your body-mind is doing its best to make sense of what happened. Yes it’s confusing. And since we don’t have a group of supportive people around us to take us to the river we have to figure out strange ways of dealing with life’s tragedies.

Like coming here and just sharing your story as much as you need to. And somehow miraculously finding humans in the world who listen.

Sending lots of care to you. It’s super common reaction to want to be seen as dirty and gross after sexual trauma.