Formed by Sexual Trauma

I wrote my first rape novel when I was about 16yrs old. It was my unconscious way of processing and coping with sexual trauma. I wasn’t aware that I was molested as a toddler, but everything points in that direction. I have no proof and I don’t know who the perpetrator was, but I have my suspicions about the time and the place.

All I knew at 16, was that I was terrified of being raped. So terrified that I kept my body overweight because I believed that overweight meant ugly, and ugly girls were less likely to be raped. 

The only way that I could actually lose weight was to decide that I was ready to attract the opposite sex. A conscious decision to allow myself to be sexually attractive. I made this decision at age 22 and it took 2yrs to lose almost 70lbs (30kilos).

My first kiss was traumatic. It triggered an abuse response. I ran as fast and as far from that man as I could go–figuratively speaking. This became something of a repeated pattern in my relationships with men. I went on first dates, but rarely second ones. I dated fatter men, thinner men, taller men, shorter men, dark-haired, light-haired, dark-skinned, light-skinned; men without a driver’s licence, musically-gifted men, men who suffered mental illness, workaholic men. If they rejected me, I was more inclined to want that second date, or even to become unhealthily obsessed with them. But most of the time, I rejected them for a million different reasons after the first date.

And underlying it all was my fear of having sex. Of expressing my sexuality in its fullness. Of actually engaging in consensual sex.

My fear of rape had morphed into fear of consensual sex. Purity culture with all of its abstinence messages, played a big part in that. 

Then, when I was 28, my mother’s death tipped the scales, and my desire to experience sex, outweighed my fear of sex. Because I wanted to be held in my grief. I wanted to be loved–to both give and receive sexual love while I grieved the mother whose vagina I emerged from. The mother who fed me at her breast. I wanted that physical closeness. 

So I began pushing sexual boundaries and by the time I met my now-husband at age 30, I was strong enough not to repeat the mistakes of my past. We had more than one date. And when he experienced doubts about our relationship, instead of latching onto him like he was my only lifeline, I let him go. 2 weeks later he came back. And when I experienced doubts and triggers and fears, he and I were adult enough to talk it through. 

We did a lot of sexual things–except have intercourse—leading up to our legal marriage. Then, after all of the build-up, the fear, the shame, the struggle to abstain, we were both a little disappointed by our first act of making love. Sexual pleasure and orgasm were going to take some work. 

But I didn’t feel triggered. I didn’t feel guilty. And I didn’t suffer the vaginismus (extreme pain) I believe I suffered the first time I inserted a tampon. I also didn’t bleed. There was no “blood of the covenant,” that I had heard preached in sermons. I later discovered that the “hymen breaking” is a myth. There is no physical sign of virginity. My vagina didn’t look any different after having sex. I didn’t lose anything. I only gained a spouse.

And I am still obsessed with rape. Rape culture. Purity culture. Sexual abuse. Sexuality. Sexual ethics. It affects me still. At 40yrs of age. The impact of simply suspecting that I was probably sexually abused as a child–something doctors used to tell parents that children couldn’t remember–that thing is my obsession. It’s what I want to write about more than anything else. The trauma. The impact. The scars. The fear and the overcoming. The fact that something I don’t literally remember has propelled me to write novels, stories, memoirs and ethical books… 

This is who I am now.