The rape

It was ninteen years ago yesterday that my girlfriend at the time was raped.

She'd been sunbathing on the Yorkshire moors when a hooded man came up behind her and held a knife while he raped her. The whole thing took about ten minutes from start to finish, but apart from the event being a turning point in my girlfriend's life, it was a turning point in my own.

It was nineteen years ago today, this morning, that she called me to tell me what happened. Yesterday was a foggy minded day for me, as I thought about the date. I felt kind of moody and angry and lost. It was weird.

I've thought a lot about why her rape affected me as much as it did. The entire subject of rape has become important to me for a number of reasons.

I think one of the primary ones is how it forced me to reprioritise stuff in my life. It forced me to look at what was important about relationships, for sure. It made me look at what I wanted in a lover. It made me look at why I loved someone, and the preciousness of existence. All these thoughts came to me so suddenly, like a tsunami into my life, nineteen years ago today.

So it sent me on a journey, as I had to turn myself inside out to try to come to terms with a reality about life.

The first thing that came to me was that everything I'd felt was wrong about my girlfriend was irrelevent to what she was as a kind, funny, loving and generous woman. Knowing that this man, this rapist (who's now serving a life sentence for the rape of a 16 year old) could have taken her life almost made me feel grateful to him for not doing so. I felt frustrated, confused, and above all so terribly, terribly angry that morning. I was speechless, literally. I couldn't even say the word "rape".

From that moment on, my life changed.

But why, exactly? That's the thing that's puzzled me, really.

I'd been in a number of relationships prior to the one with Frances. I'd pretty much given up on love. I'd been through the heartbreak thing with a couple of women, and I'd been determined to not let myself get too close to someone. I liked her, and we had fun together. There were some good things about the relationship, but some stuff that didn't work. Of course, the rape changed all that.

What I was faced with when it happened was my sense of duty to her. Frankly, I just wanted to run a thousand miles away from her. I didn't want anything to do with her. I didn't want to have to face the rage and trauma and sadness and pain and hurt and fear and all the other feelings that I had no idea of. I knew that if I was any kind of a lover, or any kind of a friend, then I was to be there for her.

But I was so way out of my depth, that's the thing. I was so bound by my loyalty and duty to her. What kind of a boyfriend - what kind of a friend would abandon someone after they were raped? But that's really what I wanted to do. I just wanted everything to be as it had been. I wanted to just have an unraped girlfiend that I didn't have to tread on eggshells with from that moment on. Because that's exactly what it became after that.

And it's treading on eggshells with people close to you, I've realised, that's what wears you down as much as anything can.

But I didn't abandon her. I stayed with her. For six more years I stayed with Frances.

To suggest that the relationship was entirely bad after that moment would be wrong. There were still many good and really wonderful things that would happen between us in the coming years. But the rape was something that lurked there between us. Her subsequent fear, her anger, my anger and rage, and all the emotions that were attached to the event lurked around us like a cloud.

Something like a rape in a person's life is so monumentally life shifting it's difficult to know where to start explaining it. I think so many people are so out of touch with their own traumas that they dismiss the real meaning of rape, thinking of it as some kind of minor thing that can be "overcome" like a cold or a broken leg.

But I grew to understand just what it means to exist, through looking deeper into the whole subject. It made me question the whole business of sexuality. I mean, what is sexuality? What is it to share our bodies with another person? And why is there such a charge around the whole thing? The fact that we own our bodies, supposedly, is something that I had to look at.

Even know, as I write this, my mind feels confused. The subject brings up so many thoughts. It's so incredibly complex, so mind numbingly difficult to clarify, so huge a subject, that it's no wonder people become speechless, as I did. I recently found the word apoplexy to describe what I felt that day, nineteen years ago. I was apoplectic. And so began my journey, thanks to the firing of a few synapses in the rapist's brain that made him decide to go out and rape someone that day, and to the firing of a few synapses in Frances, that made her go to the moors and sunbathe. Who know...maybe had it not been a sunny day that day in Yorkshire, my life would be entirely different now.

On this subject, I suggest you read my earlier entry about ^The Butterly Effect

I might write some more about this whole subject at a later date. Thing is, I get a bit confused about it still, as I write. I can go in so many directions with it that it's difficult to know which one to pick. There's the sexual aspect, the political aspect, the existential aspect, the loving aspect, the personal aspect, the sex/power debate, the metaphysical aspect, the mental aspect, the sociological aspect...that rape got me asking so many fundamental questions, over the years, about just about every aspect of existence.

In some respects, I do actually see the rape as a blessing. Immediately, of course, that throws the question out that how can I have any right to "own" the rape as mine? After all, I wasn't raped, was I?

But how can anyone explain the tears, the rage, the despair, the mental anguish, the literal speechlessness, the sense of helplessness, the heartbreak, and everything else I felt afterwards? Would I have to die to prove I was a victim of the rape?

And that's the interesting and insidious thing about rape. There's a ripple effect to it. In turn, it affects everyone around the victim and rapist. And I was the first in line.

I wonder what it must be like to have a friend or relative who'd convicted of such a crime. I wonder if there's some kind of similar ripple effect, as knowing the victim?
I remember one time reading about a mother who was trying to face up to the fact that her son was a rapist. She said, "what do I do with all the love I had for him now?" How confusing for her to love someone who she would be feeling obliged to hate otherwise?

Rape isn't an easy thing to deal with, I promise you.

I can remember when I was younger, saying to someone that "if someone did that to my wife/girlfriend/daughter I'd kill them".

It's not as simple as that, I can assure you.