Rape Or Drunken Sex?

[bombwife]

I am not sure how to start. I just can't believe that I am having a day like it just happened yesterday. But it wasn't. It was almost 15 years ago. I had a friend or so I thought. We talked on the phone all the time. We hung out. He was my male best buddy. Let's call him L. He had another friend, named M, that was interested in me. M tried to kiss me once in his room, but I turned him down. He called me. I told him I wasn't interested, but we could be friends. I liked my male friend L. What's wrong with 2 male friends, right? He said, "I don't have girls as friends. I'm either f@%ing them or trying to." I told him he was a pig and hung up. Told L that he was a jerk and how could he hang out with him.

Christmas break...

L and I make plans to see each other for the break. I don't have much time as me and my friend, T are going to Philadelphia that weekend to hang out. L says he wants to see me, but also wants to hang out with the pig. Let's call him PIG. I begrudging agree to be cordial to pig just so L and I can catch up.

We decide to get malt liquor. Let's drink now that we are legal. It's fun getting tipsy. There's one in particular that made me feel so giddy and free. I'll take that one. Let's make it two....Two liters. Pig is dressed nice. Still a jerk, but looks good. (idiot).
We get to pigs house. The parents are upstairs asleep. In the kitchen. Already been drinking. PIG dares me that I can't down the whole liter that is left. I prove him wrong. (idiot me). L takes my friend T in the other room. I guess he likes her.

I trip over a TV dinner stand. Pig leads me to the couch. He kisses me. I laugh at him. I am so wasted, but happy. Glad to be done with classes. Can't wait to go to Philly. We make out a little. I try to stand up to see what L and T are up to in the other room. Not really another room though. The couch and a small wall cuts off the rooms. I stand up and ask what L and T are up to. Pig pushes me back on to the couch. He has sex with me. I don't say no. I don't fight it. I'm so high. What is happening? What am I doing? I get my pants back on. I get up and go in the other room. I fall down. They argue about me not waking their parents up. They have to get me out of there.

In the car. I look back and see T crying in the back of the car. What could she be crying about? I ask L why she is crying. Pig says to just drive. They drop us off at my house.

We go to my bedroom in the basement. T starts yelling at me. Telling me not to touch her. What happened? What did I miss. Huge sense of waking up at this point. Startled. Where have I been. I was in the next room...half room even. I try to calm her down. Talk to her. My mom comes downstairs. She knows immediately whats wrong.

Hospital. We are taken separately. They do a rape kit. It takes a two doctors to hold me down. Nurse watches on. This isn't happening to me. I wasn't raped was I? Just drunk and stupid, right?

I'm asked who did this and mums the word. Doesn't matter. T eventually breaks down and gives names.

I wasn't raped, was I? The problem is that when you are so high on alcohol you sometimes think you have it under control. You think you know what you are doing. Maybe make bad decisions. Can't remember details. Just know that in your right mind none of it would have happened. Still hate pig. WTF.

Pig gets off cause I can't recall details of much of anything including saying no. Apparently, pictures of me, bruised down there, get lost in evidence. I thought that only happened on TV. Mom is pissed off. Apparently, Pigs parents are in tight with local po-dunk town police. Bruised? I don't remember fighting at all. How did that happen?

T... She fought back. Left bruises down there and scratches on the face. She fought really hard. Didn't even notice them till I saw her after the rape kit. How did I miss that? Was I that messed up?

L goes to jail. Pig gets off. Guess i wasn't raped. Just had a pig get me drunk enough to take advantage. If it isn't rape, then why has that night totally ruined our lives.

5 years ago, T finds me and calls me. She has kids. 3 if I recall. I can't talk to her. I wasn't there for her. How could I not known? Conversation last only a few minutes.

God, I hate me. So weak.

Nightmares that I can't move, but everyone else in my dream can. Dreams that a shadow is having sex with me. Feels like the shadow is reaching under my skin; not just touching me.

T drops out. I go back to school. I go from deans list to C's and below. Roommate thinks I've been possessed and not being myself. I start having sex with my boyfriend. alot of sex. Sex with more than one person at a time cause F pig. I can do this. Sex means nothing. Just a transaction now.

FYI, My roomie goes home on the weekends to be with her boyfriend...

I notice weakness in my legs that day as I leave my Chemistry class. My friend, let's call her, F, comes over. I tell her she can sleep in my dorm room since my roomie won't be back till Sunday night. Good thing. I wake up and I can't move from the waste down. F calls 911 and the ambulance comes. They test me for Lyme Disease, meningitis...nothing. Doc asks if I have experienced any trauma lately. Mom and Doc go in a separate room. He gives me an Aleve and I'm sent home as the feeling returns several hours later back to my legs. Psychosomatic WTF? I wasn't raped. was I?
Dad calls and tells me it's ok to take a break. I skip a semester. Get a job. Go to therapy. Diagnosed with Depression. I think about cutting myself. This way, I can concentrate on the physical pain instead of the emotional pain running through my head. Never cut though. Not yet. Go back to school. Get back on Dean's List. Hate men. Meet my future husband. He fights to show he's different. He doesn't give up on me. My nightmares don't freak him out. I fall in love...

Married the first man that I felt safe enough to have sex with. Only problem now is that I get the creepy crawlies if we have sex and haven't spent much time with each other. Need emotional intimacy to feel ok. Hate foreplay; being touched. hands all over. Urgh. Just get it over with. Concentrate on just trying to have an orgasm. Hubby knows there's a wall up with me. Tells me to relax. I tell him it helps if we talk a while beforehand. I love him. Why can't I relax? Almost 15 years and my life is still screwed up. When I masturbate, I think of having sex with more than one man at a time. I like to be spanked.

Therapist and I discover that I like the sense of not having control, but being in total control, because I'm the author of my thoughts. How sick am I?!!
If I wasn't raped that night those many years ago, then my mind and that night raped me of who I was before that night.

Hubby and I go to counseling in the summer. Now it's the end of February and this whole crap comes up. I kick my husband out of the session. I cry. I admit to the wall. They want me to expose this to my Hubby. Says my hubby can help me deal with my PTSD. That was Friday. It's now Sunday at 3:10am and my thoughts are consumed with that horrible night like it just happened last night. It's not fair. How can this still be affecting me. How come every Christmas, I google pig? I look at L's sex offender profile? I found pig's resume online. He been a flagger for construction, grocery clerk. He lives in apartment. I bet his life is just f#$%in peachy.

T. I want to find her, but I'm scared. She was so excited and happy to talk to me. Why did she seem so much better than me? Am I that weak? How can she not hate me? I would give anything to remove that night from my life.

I want to be normal. I don't want to feel creepy when I'm touched. I don't want to think about pig and L every winter. I don't want to get uneasy and weirded out when I see a folded TV stand. I don't want to race for the remote control when there's a rape depicted on TV. I just want to be normal. Will any of this ever go away? Was I raped? Does it matter?


<Edited for readability>

 

[Nicolette]

Your poll has been removed and this will now be moved to PTSD Discussion due to such. Your post is too complex and involved to be a poll that will produce any benefits for you versus member input via conversation.

Please be mindful where you post as you posted the same topic in Trauma Diaries with a poll which is not the right place and duplicate threads are not necessary. It is wise to pick the best fit forum for your topic and note that threads with polls belong in the polls forum thank you.

 

[Sunrise]

Hello bombwife.
First, welcome aboard and I hope you experience soon the healing you truly deserve. Second, I acknowledge your bravery in sharing here.
My thought is that whether you decide you were raped or not, memory is such that it can still seem like yesterday and the years don't always dull the memories of what we would like to forget. Thinking about them will often not make the difference we want to achieve, unless it leads to a new way of perceiving what happened.
I wonder about the therapy you had - it seems it was not getting to the heart of the matter. Sometimes when we reflect on therapy that we have had we may be forced to decide that some - or even most of it was ineffectual. Sometimes therapists try different things that work with some and not others.

If you were raped, you were violated and if not, from what you say you were violated just the same. So to me the violation seems to be the issue. If another person had the same experience and regarded it as a bit of fun, the violation you felt would still be just as real, so thinking about the 'whether or nots' might not be helpful to you. The point I am making is the experience is what it is to you. If you want to think of it as violent rape (there was bruising) then that is what it is to you. So once you can accept what you think is totally valid you can maybe move forward a tiny step toward healing. I am not trying to make you any angrier toward him than you already are, just encouraging you to accept without question how you see what happened.
Another issue is how you feel about what happened to your friend.
Another issue is how you feel about intimacy now.

In what I see as the most ideal therapy, you would address first the issue you see as the most approachable, the one you feel you more able to deal with first. I don't believe it is for the therapist to decide, no matter how convinced they might be as to which should come first. What does seem certain is that more work, if it helps you, will be something to strongly consider.
Love to you on your journey.

 

[myself]

I was told by a friend that a drunk person can not legally consent to anything while drunk in the US. And therefore, it is considered rape to have sex with a drunk person if that drunk person had not agreed to the sex before becoming drunk, and that if she/he said no at anytime then any agreement to have sex is then voided and must stop right away.

 

[Sunrise]

To "myself"
One thing to consider is healing, coming to terms with what happened etc, easier said than done but vitally important for one's own mental and emotional welfare I would think.

The other is legal redress and is something we have less control over. If we put a couple of years effort/emotion/money into it and it came out badly, what then? Doesn't mean it should not be pursued. I don't know how anyone could advise someone else not to take action when they were not the victim. Here in Australia I know of a case where there was consent with one person but not with a second and felt powerless to report them due to the circumstances and the fact that he was pillar of the local community - who would believe her? 25 years later she reported it through a scheme that compensates victims of crime. The police were really good but although they decided in the end not to take it to court, the government scheme accepted her account and awarded her $30,000 compensation. The money is one thing but the validation that she did not have to hide it any longer and that she was believed was a good thing. Still sticks in my craw that he "got away with it" but she was very pleased with the outcome.

 

[myself]

it is a sticky widget. I think it horrable when rapist get away with being monsters. I like to take comfort knowing that someday karma will come round and bite rapeists and abusers of all kinds in the @ss, in the most unpleasant of ways.

 

[anthony]

Rape or drunken sex, seems to be the question.

From what you wrote above, with your interpretation of events, you are within that exact grey area of the law between what is legal and what is consensual.

Regardless of law, and that you didn't say no, it is actually your decision whether you were raped or not. Did you consent or do you feel you were taken advantage of? If the latter, then you were raped. If you feel you consented and wanted to have sex with him, then it is consensual.

Only you can actually make that decision.

I know the laws now are that two drunken people who have sex are not classified as consensual, however; that gets grey when applied to a relationship, as sex is then usually consensual between both parties and is established with a history, thus becomes grey in law if either the guy or girl suddenly had sex with the other to wake them up or such. Otherwise, any female who had woken their guy up with a headjob in the morning, or night time, would technically have raped them, and vice versa with a male waking up their partner by going down on them for oral sex, or even putting their penis in the female to wake them up for sex... happens all the time in relationships. Hence... grey area in law vs. what defines rape itself.

Saying that, laws constantly evolve and whether this law existed at that time.