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Hard to Love

What the Aftermath of Sexual Abuse Looks Like

By Caitlin CookPublished 7 years ago 9 min read
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As a woman, I was put at a large disadvantage when my family left the clean, inviting air of metropolitan Omaha, Nebraska and landed in the barren, rustic air of southeastern Ohio. Six-year-old Caitlin cheered as we passed the “Welcome to Ohio” sign on the highway, boxes rubbing against my legs and my cat’s cries booming through the holes on his pet taxi. I was always up for new adventures at that point in my life, but it wasn’t long before I found that the woodland creatures in my backyard could not speak to me, and probably wouldn’t even if they could. Living there was like being a bird with a broken wing and stuffed into a cardboard box with a few holes in it, like the excessive amount of trees lining the area served to block any view of the rest of the world. The sweet Nebraska plains were not nearly so stifling. My eyes could see so far into the wide when the wind wasn’t forcing them shut. There wasn’t much to see, but I could see it. In my new home, the abandoned dirt roads were our busy sidewalks, the moos of cows were our honking horns, and the churches were our skyscrapers.

My upbringing was lined with glowing white. My classmates either had very generic European names or very unique surnames that at least ten of my other peers shared, because they were all related. My upbringing was small. I knew every single person I went to high school with because there weren’t many people to know. It was a half-hour drive to get to any shopping center, and those shopping centers were always very lacking. My upbringing was cross-shaped. You didn’t have to crack open a Bible to be a theologian in my town, as verses were scattered everywhere: on our billboards, on the buildings of businesses, on the walls of my high school. Even a blind person couldn’t escape the opening prayer at our ceremonies and the various “godspeeds” spoken every time anybody at all passed away.

It was cross-shaped and made of steel, and it was essentially impossible to bend it forwards, backwards, or in any direction at all. This persistent mindset, fixated on the inerrancy of the Bible, framed everything. It framed the removal by my principal of an LGBTQ-inclusive campaign. It framed the passionate battle to keep an illegal portrait of (a white) Jesus hanging up in the office of our public school. It framed the sex education I was given. It framed the attitude that abstinence is the only option, and the stance that providing little to no information about our bodies was the best way to prevent sexual misconduct. No room among the nonsense for any instruction on how to use protection. No room for the word “consent.”

This is why, when I was being sexually abused by my high school boyfriend for three years, I had no idea what was happening.

My upbringing was cross-shaped, but I was the one who had to die and rise again.

My first kiss, the one that I had dreamed about since the hours in my basement in Omaha watching Disney movies, was done minutes after expressing my wishes to wait. In fact, most of my “firsts” happened this way. I knew I didn’t like it when it was happening, but I let it happen because I loved him, and I figured it was simply something wrong on my end. I had never even heard of the word “consent” until long after mine was violated, and when I did finally become familiar with the concept, I fought it. I thought it was ridiculous, but I was really in denial.

It wasn’t until I was in college, having broken up with him and being surrounded by more progressive minds in a North Carolina city not nearly so bigoted, that I fully welcomed the realization of what had happened to me. It was shocking and heartbreaking. I cried for hours. I was in a new relationship, and it took me months before I could tell my new boyfriend. In the year, we were together, he and I never had sex. How could we, when my body would naturally tense up at the mere thought of being touched? Whenever we tried, I would find myself restraining him from touching my body without even realizing I was doing it. He was mostly tolerant of my situation and desired to be of as much help as he could in my time of healing. But I felt pretty dreadful for depriving him of his needs. When that relationship ended, I was devastated. I thought I had lost the only person in the world who would be able to tolerate my past and how it affects my present.

I knew that I wanted, in the distant future, a relationship that lasted. Whether that be a number of long-term relationships throughout my life or one happy marriage, I knew I wanted it eventually, once I had a stable career and knew exactly what I was looking for in a partner. But I couldn’t shake the thought that I was damaged goods. That I would fall deeply in love only to have it end because I couldn’t provide something so important. That I would never be able to give someone what was taken away from me.

For months, I didn’t allow myself to be alone for very long if I could help it. If I was by myself, I would start thinking about it. I would fall deep into a depression until I could find a way to get my mind off of it. I would remember all the different ways he violated me. I would regret all the time I wasted on him. I would become repentant at the image of my past and hysterical at the thought of my future.

One night, this happened, and it was the last straw for me. There was no longer an issue of my well-being or safety. It was too late for that, and I just wanted my problems to go away. I texted a friend I trusted asking him how I, underage, could get access to alcohol, something I had never even tried before. I didn’t tell him the reason I wanted it. However, he saw right through me, and he offered his time if I needed to talk.

We met for coffee a few days later. What started out as a light-hearted catching-up session eventually turned into me dumping all of this information on him. I had told my parents, my closest girlfriends, and my therapist my story, but I had never told any of my male friends. Terrifying as it was, I found myself desperately wanting to know what a heterosexual male thought of my situation. It took a bit of explaining on my part, but he eventually had a good understanding of my experience and my fears and why it was so hard for me now to imagine getting close with anyone again, physically or intellectually.

At this point in my journey, I was seeing a therapist. I was spending hours talking about what had happened to me and reading up on processes to fix my problem. I was just beginning to come to terms with the idea that I had a long journey of healing ahead of me, and it was going to be awhile before I would see changes. But sometimes, it’s much simpler than all of that. Sometimes, all one needs to make strides is the helping hand of a loved one, or a simple phrase.

At one moment, with no warning of how this would affect me, my friend gave me exactly that. He told me precisely what I needed to hear. He said, “Caitlin, you should never feel like you owe somebody that.”

We were driving through downtown when he said that, but I couldn’t feel the car moving anymore. After years of suffering from its effects, I’m not spiritual in the slightest, but it was as if a guardian angel or God himself had a hand on my shoulder, putting me exactly where I had needed to be all this time.

My high school boyfriend had made me to believe that sex was a vital part of my identity as a woman, a vital part of a heterosexual relationship. He made me believe that a relationship needed sex like a pair of lungs needs air. He craved my body as a drug addict craves his substances, taking in momentary satisfaction with a complete lack of regard for what rights he had to do so, what damage he could cause, what lives could be ruined. I left that relationship with a scar, a frame of mind more concerned with the quality of my body and sexual performance than the content of my character or the level of my happiness in the relationships I pursue. I’ve become a narcissist, and I’ve not only tolerated abuse, but I’ve welcomed it.

But there I was, in that moment with my friend who, in the matter of just a few seconds, turned this perspective on its head.

When we were done, he dropped me off at my dorm. I stood in my room, took a long sigh, and looked around. I saw the movie posters of the films that had inspired me to become a filmmaker. I saw the Bohemian-style comforter my mother picked out just for me on my bed. I saw pictures of my loved ones hanging from the bookshelf, where thousands more comforting words sat. I looked around at this room, where I had spent so many hours sobbing over what had happened to me. Over the fear of how it would affect my future. Over the fact that none of it was even my fault. I looked at this room, hundreds of miles away from my home state of Ohio where the abuse had taken place. For the first time in months, I was living in the present.

I still struggle every day because of this. I still cry sometimes. I still experience anxiety. I still worry about my future. Truthfully, not much has changed. All I know for sure is that, because of one sentence, one reassuring, perfect sentence, the weight that was lifted from my shoulders that day has never returned.

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Caitlin Cook

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