Chapter 14

Tonight as I write this entry I watch as the cursor bounces off the screen and stares at me.  As if it's persuading me to express...push on, write on, express feelings from deep inside.  I battle back and forth between the demons deep in my mind and the positive persuasive voices inside my soul wanting to shout only the positive when I know that deep, deep down is so much buried.  Buried for years and years.  Do I really want to dig it up?  If I do, it will bring so many emotions, buried feelings, and memories back to the present.  Things I have tried so hard to forget.  Months and months of therapy that have helped me overcome the past only to drag it up to the surface.  PTSD medications have wiped away many of the past demons, flashbacks, and dark times.  But I feel strongly persuaded to go to the place where I have tried so hard to escape and never return to. It's a persuation that I cannot ignore.

The first year that I was separated I experienced many flashbacks and dark nightmares from which I would wake soaked to the skin with sweat from the reality of those nightmares.  2009-2010 I would have liked to have started my life anew.  Fresh with vibes of a second chance running through my self, however, I was tormented with flashbacks and experiences that were awful......downright hellish.  I brought many of my old things with me on the move out from my ex husband.  Pictures, trinkets, and other things that decorated my home, particularly my bedroom from my married bedroom came along with me to this new apartment.  A newness ran through my skin.  Newness to leave the horrible past behind me.  I never did expect that my own past would haunt me.  Wake me in the night screaming with fear.  At first I didn't know where this fear was coming from.  Just pieces and parts from the past echoing in my dreary mind.  Therapy would later bring out those nightmares and demons from my dark, dreary past.  Many times in my apartment, with my babies down the hall did I wake from shaking terror nightmares drenched in sweat; remembering incidents of the past.  Incidents that had occurred without my consent.  Visions rather; blurry with many faces, bright lights, and familiar objects which sent me into a frenzy.  Full panic attack mode.  A place that I'm not sure how you get back to reality.  How are you supposed to press on with these lingering demons chasing your thoughts and memory?  I remember one night waking to feel nothing but numbness.  Fervent tingling in my hands all the way up to my heart.  I could hear my own heart beating in my head.  I could feel it throughout my body.  Even now as I express these feelings my heart rapidly beats quicker.  Memories that I have wanted to put behind me.  I can feel them overtake me.  If I let them, they will take me back to the time when I was broken.  When I was a victim.  When I was weak and fragile.  I don't want to be there ever again.  It rips at me as I write this.  To have my children know these things real is an awful reality.  I am HIV positive.  I cannot prove that I got this dibilitating disease from my ex because there were others there. I have been the joke of many, and I will never fully be able to erase other dark faces from my memory of different nights alone in the bed of strangers.  I can hardly ask if my oldest sweet daughter remembers others in her parents bedroom?  I am as vulnerable as I can get as I discuss this back and forth in my own mind. Memories of the past, rushed with the future and its uncertainty literally blind me.  I often wonder.....am I broken forever? I have been raped.  With only a few details clear I truly feel I can't express the story.  I can't fully give it the closer it deserves because I can only remember few details.  Medication has erased much of this, and my positive demeanor has pressed on past these gruel details from the past.  This time was not me.  This time was not my own self.  I never gave consent to those faces from the past.  Parts of my physical body I never gave to strangers.  Laughter in the echos of my mind.  I hate going there.  Still to this day I feel that I will only express through tears and sadness to my girls what went on behind those closed doors.  Different nights that summer.  Overtaken and incapacitated chemically.  I never gave consent. What trusted spouse does this to their partner?  Who overtakes their boundaries and invites others there.  There to that sacred place between husband and wife?  I can't piece together full memories.  Only bits and pieces.  Images like clowns with strange men in my bedroom.  I don't know their names.  I don't know what they are doing there.  I often myself if I am crazy?  I sometimes feel downright crazy?  Outside my head.  Outside my own mind.  But I know these things to be real.  I know them to be my past.  Part of me.  Part of my story.  Therefore I must press on.  Press on and tell this story.  Hopefully it touches others.  Someone.  Just one person who has become a victim to sexual assault.  Sexual assault in marriage is real.  It happens.  Disease, sadness, rape, and victomology happens.  These are all REAL subjects.  I know there are many many women who have been impacted.  Diagnosed with this disease.  HIV or HIV related cancers.  These are real.  These are real life impacts.  These things are my daily life.  I take a pill each day that reminds me of this strong beating reality.  Many other women do as well.

My medication costs are enormous. The mental scars are real and everlasting.  Time is healing, however, each conversation, each thought from the past stirs up feelings from the past.  I often wonder. Was this whole marriage of 10 years a dream?  Was is fake.  Did it really happen? Unfortunately it did. It left scars.  It left impacts.  It left deep, and sometimes dark impressions.  More than anything, impressions of the opposite sex that I am working so intently at shaking.  Believing that their are good men.  Pure men.  Men that really want to hold me dear.  Men that hold women in a sacred place.  Men that don't want something behind a good deed.  Will I trust these men again?  That's a good question.  I ask myself this question daily.  I really do.  I want to grow old with someone.  I want to be with someone.  I want to experience grandchildren with someone.  But if that man is not pure in heart, honest, and patient, I do not believe that I will meet this man.  This is a thought that is fine with me.  If I can't find the man who is the most patient, and whom endures the trials of Sara, accepts my past, loves my girls fully; fully in fact loves them as much or more than me....this man will not cross my path.  If he doesn't.....I'm content.  That's completely honest.  I'm content in knowing that the only men in my life will be my Savior and my Heavenly Father.  In fact it will be these men that will or will not send my way someone to hold my hand as I pass from this life to the next.  If this man is not sent from my Heavenly Father I will not accept this precious gift of companionship.  I will exit this life into the next single.  A single woman with righteous desires.  Not fully understanding her past, and the meaning as to "why" behind it, but knowing that there is a treasure brighter and richer than any other waiting for me as I enter into the arms of my Savior.  I did not just come to this earth to endure pain.  I did not just come to endure hardship.  I did not just come here to endure a lifetime of sickness.  Marked with a scarlet letter "A" on her chest.  I did not come here to endure suffering.  No, I came for a reason.  A specific reason.  A mother to two beautiful girls.  Girls that are righteous and strong.  I am proud to be their mother, and proud for them to be given to me.  Motherhood is the calling most highest and honorable.  If I wasn't to have these two precious spirits, I would not have been asked to bear them.  Through hardship, torture, and hell the joy of motherhood came to me.  It came to me in the time when I needed it most.  To this day, ages 10 and 7 I am most proud of my work as a mother.  I love these girls.  They are worth the demons of the past.  They are worth the abuse.  They are worth EVERYTHING I have endured and more.  I love them.  I love them more than myself.  I love them more than any man.

This has been the hardest entry for me so far.  I have really had to let go of some private feelings.  Some VERY private facts.  As I close this blog entry I find myself asking some questions.  "Do I trust men?" "No says me."  Am I working on it? "Yes"  Does that past haunt me?  "More than anything else."  Am I bitter when I take my daily anti-retro-viral? "Somedays"  Am I working as an addict to push past the past? "Every single day."  Does the thought of using pain killers and alcohol to escape the past take over my mind?  "Every Day."  It's a constant struggle.  But I remember those sweet girls who have been sent to me as the positive.  Positive out of a very negative situation.  They are the lights each day when I wake.  They are my sunrise and my sunset.  I live for them.  They make me happy and at the same time drive me insain.  I know with  them I can't go wrong.  I only want the very best in their lives.   Sometimes, honestly, that means a half broken mother.  But, at half broken this mother knows that Christ is her answer.  More than anything else.  Christ has not left her side. He KNOWS what it is like to be in the mind of Sara.  He knows what it is like to suffer what I have suffered.  HE knows the desires of my heart.  He knows the yearns of my spirit and soul.

Only HE knows that the end of the day I can lay down my burdens at his feet.  He has felt my pain.  He has felt my tears on his cheeks.  He has felt my sobs.  HE has felt my past!!  He has been there for me in the dark and the light.  Most important to me is the dark.  He has been there, holding my hand as I have felt the realization of rape and abuse.  He has brought me two precious girls from the filth to the light.  Oh this entry is hard for me.  I hope that many will be able to connect with what I have spoken, and not so much with what I have not said outright.  It is so hard for me to say certain things out loud.  This entry is difficult.  It is hard.  However I have felt pressed to share.  I was a victim.  I was drugged. I was raped.  I never gave consent.

But there is hope.  There is hope and love through everything.  There is love, peace, and salvation through my Savior.   I have endured many HARD things!! I have done this with  HIS  understanding.  I know that many out there can as well.  Lay your burdens at his feet.  Pray to HIM.  Plead with him in the worst times and he will save you.  He will  reach out his hand and deliver you from the suffering you are enduring.   I hope you have my love. I hope I have helped.