August is a month of anniversaries for me… anniversaries that I’d rather forget. The cycle started 29 years ago, on August 17, 1978, when I lost my virginity in a date rape. I was just 18 and living on my own. I’d started seeing this guy who picked me up in the sandwich shop that I worked in. He was 25, unbelievably good looking with long hair and a beard (I thought he looked like Jesus), and he drove a motorcycle! I had never really had a boyfriend before, and with him, I still didn’t, because as soon as he was sure that I had fallen for him, he broke it to me that he was living with someone.
That didn’t stop him from dropping by to see me from time to time, often in the middle of the night. In my naivety, I told myself that it couldn’t be helped. I was already in love, and he was my destiny. He wasn’t pushy, but I knew where he was trying to head. He even talked about wanting me to have his baby (something I already knew that I didn’t want). I made it clear to him that I intended to hang on to my virginity until I was married (more out of fear of the unknown than any convictions against premarital sex).
I guess it was foolish of me to be so trusting with him, but I was a pretty innocent girl. And one afternoon, what started out as innocent petting turned into a wrestling match, with me surprising myself with the loudness of my screams (unfortunately my downstairs neighbors were not at home), and how hard I pummeled his back, but he didn’t stop until I faked unconsciousness, and then he held me and comforted me while I sobbed in his arms.
He even took a peak at the sheet and said,
“See? No blood.”
I rolled over to take a look and we both saw the stain at the same time, but it was a watery pink instead of the red I would have expected. He told me that I was still a virgin, and that the blood was probably from the walls of my vagina. I didn’t know what to believe.
It took me eight years to match that event up with the word “rape.” He was in and out of my life for all of those eight years, even through my short lived marriage. It was during my separation that I met with him, defiant and determined not to get involved with him again (but why was I seeing him? Did I really believe that we could have a friendship?) During that meeting, which took place in my bedroom in a house that I shared with four other people, I confronted him about the event of eight years earlier. I put the name “rape” to it. He told me,
“That’s a terrible thing to say about someone.”
I said, “That’s a terrible thing to do to someone.”
And then, it happened again.
My struggle was even more frenetic than it had been eight years earlier, but I didn’t make a sound. How could I? All of my roommates were home… three of them men, who would have broken the door down if they’d had any clue what was happening. But how could I let them see me like this? Afterward, I just wept as he let himself out, more hurt by the abandonment than the rape, I think. And I didn’t have any more contact with him… until I was safely living in another state. But that’s another story.
It was the first rape, I believe, that set up a pattern for my life. Of course, it started even earlier than that, with the abuse that I suffered at the hands of my father, but the yearly cycle for the month of August began with that first rape, when I lost my virginity. The man who had taken my virginity… let’s call him R (for rapist), in case we need to refer to him again… took so much more than a piece of flesh in my vagina. He took what little self esteem I had at the time, and my sense of any right to my own body.
R disappeared out of my life for a long time after he raped me, and I saw other guys… lots of them, but always awaited R’s return, because in my mind, and because of what had happened, in my girlish dream world, I thought of him as my ‘natural husband.’ Many of the other guys I saw during that time were much older than me… much older even than R as a matter of fact. The two oldest ones were 32, and I was still 18. But however old they were, they mostly wanted one thing from me, and it was the seventies… AIDS wasn’t known yet, and it was easy for them to come up with “logical” arguments about why I should “do it.” The most common one was that there were no virgins my age left in the country. They would often ask,
“What, are you a virgin?”
I would answer that I didn’t know… I was so confused. They’d ask more questions and determine to their satisfaction that I was, indeed, not a virgin and the rest was a piece of cake for them, because I would feel worthless and that, if I wasn’t a virgin, I didn’t have a leg to stand on… nothing to defend. And so, I would allow it… just waiting for it to be over… and hoping it would lead to something, which of course, it never did.
Eventually, many, many years later, I was able to derive some pleasure out of intercourse, but one boyfriend noted, as recently as the early nineties, that I seemed to “brace” myself for penetration. I told him that was ridiculous, but I knew exactly what he meant. I did brace myself… in anticipation of the pain that usually came. The memory of that first time, and the intense physical pain that came with it, was still with me, and I couldn’t imagine that sex could really be pain free. And because of my tenseness, that became a self fulfilling prophecy.
So, you could say that that event had far reaching consequences, and as I’ve alluded before, it set up an annual pattern of behavior for me. I didn’t realize it until many years later, and I can’t remember all of the examples now that I used to remember, but it seems that, every August after that, I engaged in some sort of self sabotage. Among other things… on August 7, 1982, I married a man that I wasn’t in love with (he was the first to treat me like a human being, worthy of love and respect, but because of how I saw myself I couldn’t accept or respect that). On August 15, 1985, I divorced him, after first running away from home, which affected him so profoundly that he attempted suicide and only stopped himself, (fortunately not before it was too late) while he was waiting for the gas fumes to knock him unconscious, and he thought of how I would feel, and it was too sad for him to bear, so he got up and turned the car off and continued to face the pain of each day in order to spare me the same. In August of 1992, I got involved in the worst relationship of my life which sent me into a downward spiral of near financial ruin and all but destroyed my career. In many other Augusts, I simply acted out, in the worst ways, in my addiction to sex and romance, usually participating in alliances with men who were unavailable, by means of their primary relationship… yet another way to make myself feel unworthy.
I can’t say for sure what my sub-conscious was trying to do during those August setbacks. Maybe I was simply trying to find someone to make it all better. But recognizing the pattern didn’t cause it to immediately stop. In fact, a substantial change didn’t come until August of 1998, when I was reeling from the sting of yet another failed love affair.
This one had set up a physical reaction in my body. I felt the betrayal so intensely that I was unable to eat. My stomach simply would not accept food. And after a day or so of not eating, anorexia set in, and I really couldn’t eat. For two weeks, the only food I was able to get down was a few mouthfuls of ice cream or applesauce at a time. I tried feeding myself a thin oatmeal mixture, but it was no use. Now, even though I wanted to eat, to keep myself alive, I couldn’t do it. And I was getting weaker and weaker.
I knew I had to take some sort of drastic action to keep myself alive. And the thought of going to the doctor never even occurred to me. The only thing I could think of was liquid vitamins. There was a health food and vitamin store not far from my house, so I got in the car and drove down there. I parked in the parking lot of the strip mall in front of the store, and as I pulled up to the cement stopper at the end of the parking spot, the bottom of my car scraped the stopper and my tires bounced into it, and my car conked out. It was only then that I realized I was in no condition to drive.
I got my liquid vitamins and went home with them, and stayed away from the car for a few days. I was still teaching during most of the two weeks that I had stopped eating, but there had been a few days when I had cancelled classes, saying that there had been a death in the family. I just couldn’t seem to carry on with the tasks of daily life. Once the vitamins started coursing through my system, however, I was finally able to start reintroducing food, and eventually got over the physical disability, but there were long lasting effects, like night sweats that lasted for months, probably due to a hormonal imbalance that was brought on by my starvation.
To get my business back on track, I contacted a woman I’d met at a networking meeting, to help me with my marketing, and she ended up being a friend and confidant that I would call on many times in the future to help me with both the business and emotional sides of my life. But there was still something missing, and I was still devastated. I knew I needed something more. I needed a spiritual path.
Coincidentally (or not?) at that time, I was watching the movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” the life story of Tina Turner. It was the second time that I’d seen the movie, but one aspect of it grabbed my attention more strongly on the second go-round. After Tina lived a life full of abuse and degradation, she found solace in a form of Buddhist meditation. I had always been interested in Buddhist philosophy and meditation, but didn’t know much about it, and I certainly wasn’t looking for a religion. But I was motivated to find out more, so I called a friend who I knew was involved off and on with the local Buddhist community. She told me about a meditation teacher at the local Thai Buddhist temple, and I called to get information on their classes.
When I went for my first lesson, a private lesson with an interesting old man who would later become sort of an enigmatic spiritual guide for me, I was still in the emotional upheaval of the aftermath of my now defunct relationship. I couldn’t stop obsessing about it… my mind wouldn’t stay on anything else.
In a one hour lesson, my teacher taught me how to observe my own breathing and the movements of my hands, separating in my thoughts, the movement itself from the thing that was doing the movement. In other words, he taught me to live in the moment. And for that one hour, I was able to forget about my breakup. And I had peace. And when I went home, that peace stayed with me.
I had another private lesson and then attended two weekend retreats during that life-changing August. I was able to let go of my hold on that relationship, and the damage that I felt it had done to me, without the usual long-lingering pain. And I moved on. And my way of looking at life changed, especially with regard to romantic relationships, but also in terms of everything. I was just more able to let go of having to control the final outcome of everything. I never did become a regular practitioner of meditation, but those few experiences had a profound impact on me. I did a little bit more in the next year, and to tell the truth, my attempt since then have been half-hearted. But I’ve had, for the most part, greater peace within myself because of it, and I don’t really understand my resistance to continuing the practice. Can laziness be so strong?
But I bring this up now, because this summer, not exactly in August, but late July is close enough, I found myself back on that slippery slope of obsession with someone that I thought I was in love with. Those of you who have read my pirate series know what I’m talking about. It’s all well and good to fall in love, but when our sense of self worth depends on the outcome, that’s where we start heading for trouble. And I feel like I was heading in that direction again, perhaps for the first time since that liberating August of 1998. Thanks to being able to blog about it and get feedback from my friends here at SC, it didn’t take over my life the way it would have in the past, but it gives me pause to think… why don’t I just sit down and meditate? Or walk and meditate? If I have the answer to all of life’s problems, why do I choose to remain in this duality and this self-defeating way of life? It’s like someone who refuses to take their medicine. Oh well, maybe it’s just because it’s August, and self-defeat is how I do Augusts.
Just some thoughts for a Saturday afternoon.
