The Doors.

Occasionally symptoms of my PTSD leak out. This was more apparent when I had a roommate. Eventually, I moved out because I started to feel unsafe there. Now I live by myself and sometimes I notice they come out more often than other times. Sometimes, while lying down to get to sleep, I think, "I didn't close the window. I have to close the window because someone might see it open and I'll wake up with someone in the house, standing over my bed." These thoughts mostly relate around locked doors and windows. For example, for whatever reason, there are three locks on my front door and only one regular door lock on the back door. I have gotten myself down to two locks on the front door because I used to think that if I didn't lock the top, chain lock that someone would come in. Now that my neighbor is moving out, I am more worried about people breaking down the back door. So, I've been putting the chain lock on the basement door. There's a way to break in through the basement and I want to make sure it's not easy. There's also a lock on the real back door too. It's kind of weird-- there's a door to the back stairway that leads to the basement and both of our back doors.
Also, one of my bedroom windows is on ground level. Other parts of the house are above ground level as it was built on a hill. I am so afraid of someone seeing that I'm sleeping by myself and coming through this window. Sometimes I tell myself that the fire department is down the hill and the other houses are close by so they would hear me scream or they would see someone lurking around. I would be safe. But then I tell myself that I might be leaving myself open to a break in if I leave the windows open. I also worry that the guy who breaks in will cover my mouth so I can't scream. Then what?
Basically, all these revolve around my safety. Because of these times when I didn't feel safe, I have trouble feeling safe, even at home, even with the windows open. When I write it like that, I feel like it's so simple and small. But in my mind, it's a big deal to me. It haunts me most nights.

High School

I did this last night after work. This is what it felt like to throw up with I was fighting with that girl who said she was going to talk to Kirk.

More stuff came up for me this morning. Kirk talked to my mom once. He told her that I lied about my age. Let me tell you, I DID NOT LIE ABOUT MY AGE. He knew the whole time how old I was. I vowed to not lie about my age because my friend was always lying about her age and I didn't want to be a part of that. I thought she was getting herself into bad situations by lying about her age. Kirk was such a fucking slimeball.
I started wondering today about if anyone ever confronted Kirk about what happened. Of course he lied because what rapist is going to say he's a rapist? Really, who admits to that?!

I remember people saying that I was going to a certain high school, different than the one my brother and Kirk and a bunch of other people went to because I wanted to be with one boy. The truth is that I didn't want to be at the other high school. I didn't feel safe there. I also didn't want to be reminded about the time that I peed myself in 1st grade, which when you get around people from elementary school, sometimes they want to talk about the times you were embarrassed about. I knew my brother's friends and I know that my brother would hate if I dated anyone. I know his friends would be watching out for anyone talking to me. I also didn't want to see my ex boyfriend, Kirk, and the various people who contributed to passing around the rumor that I had sex on top of a van with an 18 year old. I really think I would have killed myself if I went to that school.

The high school I did go to felt like I was protected there. I mean the worse I went through was that my ex friend dated the guy I had crush on, two teachers didn't like me, and someone called me ugly. There was a lot that I was depressed about but those are the things at school that upset me. I got to be me without being "Casey's little sister" or whatever people would have called me-- possibly "slut." By going to the school I attended, I had a chance to be around my friends, to be me, and to develop as my own person; that was important to me.

I remember all throughout high school, I was worried about being called a slut. I was called a slut after the rape. I was really fearful about being called one again. I also thought that I was just dirty. It's taken me a while to get over that feeling.

Venus

Associations

Continuing on in the The Sexual Healing Journey, the author wrote about how there are people who are friends with the abuser or choose to hang around him and who you'll associate with the abuser. This is too true for me. As I've said before, I had one friend who was close with him and that was tough for our friendship. I thought that all they did was talk shit about me. I knew this wasn't completely true but in my mind, that's what they did.

On top of that, there were other people who just thought he was cool. He also knew so many people in the town. My brother, some of my brother's friends who I knew, some of my friends thought he was so cool. One time, someone said they saw his van and they thought it was cool. I think I turned white and said he wasn't as cool as they thought it was.
Another "friend" and I got into a fight over something stupid. This was back in the day of pagers. We had pager fights. She had the advantage of if she didn't want to receive messages, she could just turn off her pager. Mine had the option of voice mail and after she turned off her pager, she continued to send me messages.
At the height of this argument, she said that she had a class with Kirk. This made me immediately sick to my stomach. I didn't know if she was going to try to seduce him or if she was just going to talk to him about how stupid I was or if she was going to find out about how I was in bed, etc. I eventually threw up with her constant taunting. I know that a few days later, she left me a message, saying that she talked to my brother and that even he thought I was immature. But I wasn't sure how this conversation happened, did she just bother my brother until he said yes or did she bring it up in conversation and he said it? I think the first option would fit my brother better. I ignored it.
I was going through so much shit, I thought constantly about killing myself-- particularly in front of the bowling alley where the rape happened. It's like there was this thing in my head that said, just prove it to them. Die and you'll prove it. Die and people will take you seriously and they'll only have nice things to say because you're dead.
A few nights later, she wrote me a message, saying good night. I wrote good night back and it seemed like we were OK. There was a time when we said something like "I don't mind being friends with her but I don't know if she's ok with that." So, we just asked our friends how the other was doing. Secretly, I liked hearing that bad things happened to her. Now, not so much. I hope things have worked out for her because I guess there was a lot of crap that happened to her. There's a part of me that still doesn't trust her.

I can think of people I knew around the time of my rape and how I lost a lot of friends around that time. A friend of my brother's named Paul was also friends with Kirk. Somehow Paul and I have made it through and we're friends. I respect that he is a teacher and had a degree in psychology. It's interesting that he's not friends with my brother on Facebook. I don't know what happened between them but that's their thing.
James A was a friend of mine. I told him what happened. He told my ex who loved hearing that bad things had happened. Then it seemed to snowball from there so that everyone knew. Another contributing factor was my friend Danie (Danielle) who told her brother and her brother told everyone. Her brother spoke to my brother once and I don't know what was said. I thought they were going to beat up Kirk but they didn't.

The worse of it was my brother's friendship with Kirk. My brother had said that he was also accused of rape by a girl at school but nothing happened with that. Not only did my brother have Kirk in the house, invite him over to parties, he was mad at me for asking Kirk to leave. Kirk was hitting on some girls while he was over. I was pissed and I said I was uncomfortable. I was upset. I asked him to leave. I visibly shook around him, even when I tried to just get over it. It was like a cold had set inside of me. My brother has got mad at me for flipping Kirk off. I don't know what I'm supposed to do when my fucking rapist is hanging out with my brother.

At one point, Kirk and I were at one of my brother's parties. He tried to convince me that he didn't rape me and that we were cool. I think I let him think things were ok because when I was angry, people got mad at me. I didn't know what else to do or say. It was easier than confrontation. He then went on to hit on more girls. He left early after the police came to tell us to keep it down. And everyone followed him. I tried to hit on a few of my brother's friends. My brother was increasingly mad at me. I think I went through another deep depression after that.

On vacation, about three years later, my brother and I were watching a movie on MTV about a guy being charged with statutory rape. The guy was on the stand, talking about how she wanted to have sex, etc. I was getting upset. My brother, at that point, said, "What are you upset about, you wanted to have sex with Kirk." He was so mad and hateful. I left the room and cried. And we didn't talk much more about it. I couldn't believe that Kirk got to him too.

I remember two dreams which happened around the same time-- one where I pulled Kirk out of a booth in the dinner at the bowling alley and kicked him. And another one where I tried to leave town but I broke down in my little orange VW bug car and everything was the orange of his van.


Thanks for letting me vent and listening to me while I get through this.