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Little Tina is no longer little. She is a 16-year-old young woman. She went to church regularly and was a devout Christian. She prayed all the time. She prayed a lot for the protection of her and her family.
Tina lived in a constant state of fear. Not knowing who to trust. She couldn’t figure out why people she thought she could trust betrayed her. She got mixed messages from her family. How do you know if someone is good or bad? Tina continued to struggle with that concept for many years to come.
She was interested in boys and all but it seemed that the boys were only after one thing. Sex. She had a date with a boy from church. He was an older boy about 18. She was nervous and was hoping things worked out.
She took her time to put on a nice dress, fixed up her hair, and put on makeup. The boy arrived to pick her up. They walked to the car. He jumped in the driver’s side and she helped herself into the passenger side. He wasn’t a gentleman at all.
The guy didn’t even drive away from the curb before he showed her his penis and tried coaxing her into having sex right there in front of her house. He had no intentions of taking her out anywhere. He just wanted to use her.
She got out of the car and went back into the house. He drove away without “getting his rocks off”. Tina was a virgin and planned to stay that way until she gets married like any good little Christian girl.
She found out that the guy from that night was dating a pretty girl in the same church Tina attended. He really had no honorable intentions toward Tina.
Tina had this one friend who went by the name of Liz. She was always getting herself into trouble but Tina couldn’t recognize that because it didn’t look any different than her family at home.
Liz called Tina one evening. On this evening she told Tina that there was going to be a party and she wanted Tina to meet her there. She told Tina that she was going to send someone to pick her up and bring her to the party.
Tina had never been to a “worldly Party” before. This was her friend, surely she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Tina.
Tina trusted Liz but Tina’s parents would never let her go to a party. Liz went to the Christian school with Tina. They were even classmates. Surely Tina could trust Liz. After all, she was a Christian too.
Tina got ready and again at midnight, she snuck out of the house. She waited out front until the guy showed up. He said his name was Joe. Tina got in the car. It was an ordinary ride. Nothing out of the norm.
They arrived at the house but the house was dark and quiet. Tina asked Joe where all the people were. He said they would be here soon. They went inside. Tina was nervous because something just didn’t feel right. She asked when her friend was going to show up. He said to give it time.
He made her a screwdriver. A screwdriver is an orange juice and vodka and Tina didn’t drink. She put it on the table and didn’t drink it. He “accidentally” spilled the drink all over Tina’s dress.
Tina was now wet and sticky. He offered her a sheet and told her she could take off her dress and covered up with the sheet. She just wanted to go home but he coaxed her into staying. She took off her dress and covered up with the sheet.
He did some mind tricks and Tina wasn’t impressed. He lit a joint and tried to get Tina to smoke it but she declined. He got close to her then he grabbed her and threw her on the bed. Tina protested but he continued.
He stole her virginity that night. After all that, this guy came in the door and told him they have another girl and they want him to come with them. She was a “sure thing“.
He got up and left and another older man drove Tina home. He threatened Tina that if she told on the guy who raped her and he goes to jail, this guy would come after her.
Tina went inside and took a shower to wash him off of her.
After the Trauma
When I came into the house and got in the shower, Robin asked me what happened. She thought it was my father but when she found out it wasn’t my father on that occasion she dismissed it and went back to bed.
I didn’t want to talk about it anyway. I blamed myself because I snuck out to go to this party. Granted, I hadn’t a clue as to what happens at a party. The only parties I’ve ever gone to at that point were Christian parties. There was food and Christian contemporary music, adult supervision, and lots of kids.
I was naive about the tricks of the tricksters who want to attack their prey. I had this overwhelming feeling of shame and guilt and I no longer had my virginity to protect. I was ruined and I had to cope with that.
I wasn’t the wild type. I was the curious type. I wanted to experience life. What I ended experiencing is being the victim of monsters. I couldn’t figure out why I was being targeted.
I was targeted when I was 7 and I was being targeted as a 16 year old.
Why do victims of child abuse become adult victims of crime?
This is one of the biggest questions I’ve carried with me for the longest time. Why am I such a target? I used to think I was on this earth simply to be tortured by people.
I used to say this physical existence was hell. I believed that this life was punishment for some crime I had no knowledge about. I figured everyone had a role in the world and my role was to be abused by “everyone”. It seemed like every human interaction I had turned out to be horrible.
I reflected back to the girl I thought was my best friend growing up who turned out to not really be a friend at all. I was her back pocket friend. Her actual friends weren’t my friends and neither was she.
Then there was Liz. Liz turned out to not be a very good friend either. Family and friends couldn’t be trusted. But I didn’t want to give up on finding that one person I could trust in this world.
I decided I would give everyone trust and I would take away that trust when they burned me. I had no clue as to how to tell someone was trustworthy or not. Obviously, it had nothing to do with race or religion or even money. It didn’t have anything to do with age either.
I had it backward. I shouldn’t have trusted anyone until they proved they were trustworthy. But how would I know?
In reading articles on this subject, I discovered that children who are victims of abuse grow up to be more susceptible to abuse in adulthood. Here is something I found on aifs.gov.au.
“Research suggests that adults, particularly women, who were victimised as children are at risk of re-victimisation in later life.”
(Cannon, Bonomi, Anderson, Rivara, & Thompson 2010; Mouzos & Makkai, 2004; Whiting, Simmons, Havens, Smith, & Oka, 2009; Widom, Czaja, & Dutton, 2008).
Making Sense Of It
The next question for me is “Why does this happen?“. The only way I can gain answers to my questions is to reflect back to make sense of what happened and why it happened. I didn’t want it to happen again but I couldn’t figure out why everyone I thought was nice was actually abusive people.
In hindsight, I can see that one of the biggest reasons I kept walking into landmines is because I was confused when I saw them. I couldn’t recognize the signs. The signs strongly reflected my family whom I was told by teachers and the police and firemen and all that to trust my family.
The Danger signs didn’t look any different than my everyday life. The people were no different from my family. Well, not different in the important ways. They may have had some cultural differences but each of them was abusive or violent all the same.
I used to blame myself for walking into all those situations. I was oblivious to what I was walking into until it was too late. The one thing that has helped the most has been talking about these things with a therapist.
I’m not sure how good I am at recognizing the danger signs today but I know I’m way better at it now than I was at 15 or 16. It was the abuse and crap in the background that set the tone for more traumatic events to just pile on the trauma.
I’ve been told that people with Complex PTSD are more susceptible to PTSD due to genetics. I think that’s true in the sense that some people are psychopaths or sociopaths who aren’t affected in the same way as an average human.
I’m someone who has a natural sense of compassion, sympathy, and empathy. That is what I think makes me more susceptible to PTSD. For me, this is a response to multiple events and these events became Traumatic because of the conditioning in the background. The little nasty comments, the small moments of rejection that happened repeatedly tearing down the individual’s self-esteem and destroying a child’s self-view.
But this is not the end of my story. This is just the middle. This is how life builds up to be a case of Complex PTSD.
As one can see, even though I’m just getting started in my story, it wasn’t caused by being overly sensitive. I don’t see myself as sensitive at all. I don’t have Complex PTSD because my mommy yelled at me or because I didn’t get my way. That is not what Complex PTSD is caused by.
I believe any normal human being who grew up the same as I did would end up with Complex PTSD. Well, Unless one has psychopathy or sociopathy like a couple of members of my family. Let’s be clear, being heard, validated, and accepted helps to prevent Complex PTSD.
As I heal, my goal is to rewire my brain to perceive events in more healthy ways. I Believe everyone could benefit from this sort of personal development.
