When No One Believes

During your lowest point in life, when you have been beaten and battered, raped, molested, and thrown to the side the worst thing that can happen is to find your strength to tell and be called a liar. Our stories may be so unbelievable or outrageous or just too close to home for some people to accept. I learned quickly that telling was not always as safe as they tell you in the after school specials. As a child my mother did not believe although she had seen it with her own eyes. That taught me something and I learned it fast and it is anchored deep within me. It taught me that I am the only person that I can count on. Later on in life when the same man that abused me left me alone in his apartment in a very bad neighborhood, I was raped again. (I say again because I was raped 2 years before this, again under his watch). I was not only bloody but I was infected. I had no idea with what but I knew I was in pain. My mother called me names, "fast", "promiscuous", "hot in the pants" all the way to the doctor and all the way home even though I explained I was raped. I thought she would understand because she was raped as a child very close to the age I was that day. She did not believe me and I was punished.
Now people think that being raped multiple times in your life is unbelievable. I have been asked so many times what I think I did to bring on these rapes. Seriously? So what did I do? I started looking for reasons to blame myself. I started hearing the stories of rape victims and wondering what they did to bring it on. I started to call myself a liar. When no one believes you, it is hard to keep believing in yourself. I have had to rebuild myself, layer by layer, truth by truth.
I lost my innocence to the sodomy of my dad, I lost my virginity to rape and for a long time I lost my sanity at the hands of men. I have gone from one abusive relationship to another. I have repeatedly found male friends that mistreated me when they called themselves my big brothers. I stopped fighting. My "no" meant nothing. As loud as I screamed it, my "no" was silent to the men that raped me. I stopped fighting. I fought hard the first few times which left bruises and intense pain and a feeling of weakness. When I left my body and stopped fighting, as strange as it sounds, I felt I got my power back. They thought they were taking it, that they were controlling me, but what they didn't know was that my soul was already gone.
So here I am, speaking to the audience that believes, because they have been there. Here I am bringing up pains that I have pushed down for decades so I can heal them. I believe in my strength, although hard sometimes, I believe in my truth. So when no one else believes, I have to keep believing in me.