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.