Unrelenting, Vivid Nightmares

[Valer]

@Lucycat contacting my family would be a mistake. i told them only of the first time i was raped, when i was 15. Before i left home, my parents idea of fun was then inquiring "how'd you take it today?" after returning home from school. Never again. i did talk to my floor CA vaguely, and i plan on talking to him a bit more. However, i do know my options quite well at this point. It is incredibly invalidating to assume that i choose not to leave, and just keep taking it. i would not be on this forum if i could just as easily step out after taking just about 4 years of this garbage. Maybe i am just a scared 18 year old, and have less insight into the situation then some older members. Then again, perhaps i know a threat when i experience one, and just may have received anonymous legal counsel already. The lots are not particularly in my favor- and i'm not about to start playing Russian roulette when it comes to these death threats. On multiple occasions he has flicked his blade out or given me just a glance of the gun butt to make clear his intentions.

 

[Lucycat]

Can I ask what your floor CA is? This is not a term I am familiar with. I don't see whether this is seen as protective or a danger.

I am sorry that you feel invalidated. I certainly did not mean to do that. I guess I take it back to how I was at 18. Yes, I had escaped the abuse but I was vulnerable to others. I made the false assumption that you are vulnerable to - for that I am sorry.

I am sorry that your family are no help. That really does reduce your options. I do see that simply running away is patronising to say the least.

But ... What are you going to do?

 

[Friday]

I am not convinced that suggesting a frightened, vulnerable 18year old arms herself with a gun is the best suggestion - the consequences of that going wrong are, to me, unthinkable.

Well, I did suggest the police first. However since the fear is that he'll rape then kill her, not sure how much worse things can get? Dead is dead. Whether you took a shot at defending yourself or not.

To be clear @Valer , my intent was not to be patronizing. These were my choices, from my life. That was the life I lived for many years. Stay, stop him, leave, or die.

 

[Hashi]

not sure how much worse things can get?

Gosh, I don't know.

Failing to use the gun effectively, maybe, and the results of that?

A long time in prison, if you step outside what's perceived as reasonable self defence?

Your personal feelings and ethics about using a gun against someone to seriously injure or kill them, whatever the situation?

The psychological damage that's already been done to you by your family and your abuser, and the fact that you are you and not FridayJones, inconveniently getting in the way of such a supposedly simple and straightforward way out of your situation?

 

[scout86]

The person is not "choosing to be raped", they are choosing to protect themselves from being even more seriously harmed or even killed.

I'd be surprised if anyone responding actually thinks anyone would chose to be raped, if they had a real choice. There are definitely situations where one might "chose" to be raped rather than risk even more serious injury or death. Not much of a choice, obviously, and not something anyone deserves to be criticized for, for sure.

My own concern, in this situation, is it sounds like there's a reasonably good chance that @Valer's life is already seriously at risk, "cooperation" or not. A person who is willing to kill you for trying to leave, or anything else, is a person who doesn't value your life and they may just decide to kill you for some other reason some day, no matter what you do or don't do. It was mentioned in the original post that the abuse is escalating. That can't be a good sign, can it?

Leaving may be next to impossible, but it really doesn't sound like "not leaving" is an option that's going to work in the long run.

@Lucycat , when I was in college here in the States, we had a person called an "RA" or "resident assistant" on each floor. They were an older, generally responsible, student, employed by the college to maintain order and enforce rules. This would potentially be a good person to talk to, as a start. I'm not familiar with the term "CA" either, but I'm thinking it's probably similar.

The "abuser" (that hardly seems adequate to describe someone like we're talking about), in this case, is qualified for way more than a restraining order. There have been multiple felonies committed, from the way it sounds. Granted, you have to prove that kind of thing and it's not easy. This person needs to be in jail, not running around loose. @Valer you deserve to have your life back. That may be hard, but it's not impossible. I hope you can and will find some help where you are. I think you have a good idea in going to your floor CA, as a start. Maybe he can help you find the resources to deal with all this. I really hope so!

 

[Hashi]

I'd be surprised if anyone responding actually thinks anyone would chose to be raped, if they had a real choice. There are definitely situations where one might "chose" to be raped rather than risk even more serious injury or death. Not much of a choice, obviously, and not something anyone deserves to be criticized for, for sure.

I challenge this. Choosing to avoid a worse alternative is not the same as choosing to be raped. In a different situation, I chose to avoid a worse alternative and I can assure you that was not in any sense a choice to be raped. Being raped was a consequence of keeping myself alive. It would have been nice if keeping myself alive had involved any choice over being raped or not being raped but unfortunately it didn't. If there was no choice, then I didn't choose it.

 

[Hashi]

I'm really curious as to whether people who think being raped at 18 is a choice would apply the same thinking to, say, a seven year old who didn't tell on their abuser. Did that seven year old choose to be raped? Because, technically, they had an alternative just as an 18 year old might be said to have an alternative.

Except... maybe there were circumstances that mean you wouldn't say that about the seven year old? And no possible circumstances where an 18 year old isn't afforded that same level of understanding?

Or do you think that seven year olds who were raped chose to be?

 

[Friday]

I was really trying not to thread jack this thread. Since it keeps coming back around, though I'm going to quote myself, because I said what I said very carefully:

1 - Continue to choose to be raped (which is different than consenting to sex) until he gets bored and stops, or angry and kills you. A lot of people make this choice for various reasons. But you do have options. You're not a child, and not a prisoner. You may not have had options in the past but you do now.

There are some people who have no choice. Children & prisoners have no choice in their lives. By definition.

It would be very clean, very simple, if the only people who were ever raped or abused were the incapable or the ignorant. Children & prisoners are incapable of leaving. They have no choice. But many people also seem to think that "the rest" are made up of people who don't know any better. Who have no choice. Bite me. Not all of us are ignorant.

Because, yes, Hashi. People do choose to stay in abusive situations (or enter into them) for many many many different reasons not just because they're ignorant or incapable. It doesn't make rape consensual sex, it doesn't make being beaten their fault. Don't blame shift here, taking the blame off the rapist or abuser, because a person is making a choice to put themselves in an assholes sights (or not take themselves out of them). Parents do it to protect their children. Cops do it in deep cover. Criminals do it to protect their families. Soldiers do it in war zones. Leadership does it for politics. Activists do it for equal rights (ever try sharing a taxi in Tehran?) It's not simply ones own life, in the moment, that people make these choices for. For love, lives of others, careers, fear, politics, money, security, national security, determination, hope...

I don't condemn this choice, as it's a f*cking hard one to make. It's very Hollywood to think "I'd rather die!", deluded martyrdom to think that just because it's a shitty choice that there isn't one, and totally blames the victim to think that ignorance is the only reason people stay. That if you know it will probably happen, if you know it will happen, that it's your fault instead of theirs. It's not. It's still rape, not consenting to sex.

Like you, I didn't know whether the OP was coming out of a situation in which she had no choice (and that could be childhood as easily as living in a country where women don't have the right to choose), or this might all be new / not realizing what choices are out there. But if she's making the choice to stay (and Christ if I know her reasons, for all I know her family could be killed if this guy gets mad at her, or she's here illegally, or, or, or. Whatever her reasons), that's not something to look down on. It's something to fear, but not look down on. It's a hard f*cking choice.

 

[Valer]

@FridayJones thanks for clarifying, i misinterpreted your post above a bit. This situation isn't new. He's been doing this since i was 14. To clarify, we were never lovers, or anything of that nature. He was my closest and only friend, and it all just went completely to hell. i've been trying to find answers for years but, the situations keeps becoming more and more complicated to deal with. i'm not just afraid he'll kill me. One of the only real pieces of evidence i have that could get him booked for a while is a picture of an army jeep that he flipped. He had been on Oxy and coke on his way to a "deal." While he was there, he was part of the dealing community within the Marines. Lots of Oxycodone, Roxycodone, coke, and Vicoden. With that he would be arrested for possession and intent to sell. However, i have no clue who elses cheerios i would be pissing in- quite frankly I'd rather not find out.

 

[Friday]

The transition between having no choice, and having choices is a hard one. I did it the other way (from being a prisoner to being free, not from child to adult) and it took a long time to realize that I had choices. I was so used to there not being any, I had to lay them all out (like the above) to figure out what to do. Technically I had to have someone else do it, because my mind didn't do that naturally anymore. Heck, it's been years and years, and I still have to break things down into component parts whenever I get stressed.

Like I said above, if it's your choice to stay, I'm not going to condemn that. But there are ways out if you want to take them. It's rarely easy. But there are people who can help you do it. Battered women's shelters (you don't have to live there, advocates and counselers work with everyone) tend to be a good source of information.

 

[scout86]

Choosing to avoid a worse alternative is not the same as choosing to be raped

Maybe I was being too literal. The way I meant what I wrote is that, if you have 2 choices, #1 being "die" & #2 being "submit to rape", choice #2 looks like a no brainer to me. But it's not a "real" choice, because the alternatives are all bad, unfair, and just plain wrong. So, to my (sometimes excessively) literal mind, one would be making the "choice" of submitting to rape. I'm not at ALL saying it's the WRONG choice. @Hashi, I could be wrong, but I don't think we disagree on this.