My Rape was Legitimate, Too.

My name is Katrina.  The second time I moved to Portland, I was homeless.  This was just before I met my husband, for my friends to understand the timing.  Actually, literally right before.  Anyway, I was a stranger in a strange city. My first night homeless, I was shown a place to sleep by a questionable character.  I woke up at 1 am to find him sitting up with his backpack dumped all over his lap.  I can't even guesstimate the amount of pill bottles and syringes he had.  I quietly laid back and stared up at the sky, and realized just how scary the world I am in really is.

I got about 4 hours of sleep that night.  Packed up my stuff, and I took off at 5 am. As soon as the sky showed signs of lightening.  I made a "Free hugs" sign because that freaked me out so badly I needed some form of comfort.  Later in the day, in my random wanderings, I ran into a guy.  He seemed really nice- he was very charming.  I don't remember his name.  He was taller than me, about 6' and didn't seem that threatening- as stupid as it sounds, he was wearing a polo shirt.  This was the day I'd learn looks can be deceiving.

He said he'd show me where I could get some dinner and asked if I wanted to go hang out and drink some "Four Loko's" later.  I grew up in Upstate New York.. I had never heard of them.  They sounded weird, but interesting, and though I don't drink I decided sure, I need a friend.. This guy seems nice enough, right?

Wrong.  He took me to the Rescue Mission for dinner, where there were people crowded at every table and it was served cafeteria style.  I saw people who had been homeless for years, it was almost entirely men.  It was unnerving, but I made it through.  We went across the river to "find the spot" to drink, and slipped into a crack in the fence by one of the Hotels on the East side of the river.  An alarm bell went off in my head, and I got a bit paranoid, but he got a little impatient so I went ahead.  We were sitting less than 5 feet from the freeway in these weird trimmed up bushes, and there was a giant building right next to us.  He opened one of the four loko's and offered some to me.  I don't drink, so I didn't drink much of either of the two, I drank maybe altogether half of one, probably not even that.  I started to feel really weird, like time was distorting and my head was heavy.

I don't think he drugged me, to be honest with you, I have a really nasty reaction to alcohol anyway.  I feel like, dead inside or something when I drink, like my body is just this puppet thing I'm attached to.  Freaking weird, to say the least.  Note, I don't drink enough that I realized that that'd happen to me.  Anyway after only a few drinks I started to feel weird then realized hey, shit, I am alone with this guy.  No one knows where I am. I know where I am.  Okay.  Stop drinking.  So I did.  I think I might have accidentally told him I was feeling weird.  He definitely noticed when it was time to stand up, I needed help standing.

He helped me get to the nearest Wendy's, but I don't remember how we got there. I apparently had already started blacking out.  (I hadn't eaten anything but that small dinner at the Mission)


When we got there the depression hit- there's a reason I never drink, I don't like it.  I just wanted to be social.  I was miserable, queasy, felt gross..  All I remember is him asking where I had money and I didn't want to tell him my wallet, where I had some twenties, so I told him about the change in the backpack, where I had about 10 bucks in quarters or something.  He went up to the counter and got me a drink and a small burger and made me eat.  Not like, angrily forced me, he was actually really nice about it.  Then he said something about asking if I had anywhere to sleep that night and I said no, so he said he'd let me "sleep it off on his couch".


****TRIGGER WARNING***
Right.  I remember very, very vaguely following him in the rain, just watching his feet in the dim light the streetlights emitted, and following him through puddles.  By the time we got there I was soaked, and miserable.  I don't remember most of it.  I only remember maybe 5 minutes of the trip.  He opened up the door to this old van thing, like the kind carpenters or people like that use who fix up houses?  Then he said I needed to get my wet pants off and get warm, so I did.  He still hadn't done anything threatening.  So I huddled there and I think he talked my ear off for about twenty minutes and I fell asleep.  That's when it began.

I woke up to him inside me.  This still makes me feel sick, though it happened in 2010.  I woke up to a big shape over me, and he was already having sex with me.  I don't know how long he had been, because I felt slimy down there, and had a vague memory of something to do with saliva to make me wetter or something. I don't know, it makes me want to puke.  It was terrifying. It was pitch black, so to my terrified half-awake mind he looked like a demon.  It seemed to go on and on and I felt like I was covered in slime (though I wasn't) and totally disgusted.  I asked "What... What's going on?"  "What are you doing"  "Please stop, I want to sleep.."

"Just one more minute.."  It lasted longer.  Finally with me crying and freaking out he sighed and laid down next to me.  I rolled over away from him.  It was too dark and I was too scared to even THINK about putting clothes on, it didn't even occur to me that I could have until the next day.  I stared at nothing in that dark cluttered van, eyes wide open, trying to calm down and go to sleep.  Then I felt his hand between my legs.  I kept saying for I don't even know how long "I just want to sleep.." "Please let me sleep"

The next day I definitely felt violated.  I felt like flames between my legs and NOT in a pleasant way.  I woke up and couldn't find my clothes because the alcohol had hit me so hard the night before. He grabbed them for me and when I would have taken off said he'd show me to the MAX.

MAX?  What the hell?  I got outside and was hit even harder by terror of how badly it could have gone. It was terrifying enough but apparently whatever the hell a "Four loko" was, I *hadn't even remembered a 45 minute train ride*.

I had no clue where I was. The city was nowhere in sight. I was tense, quiet as he led me past a college campus I didn't recognize, and to the max station.  He asked if I needed a ticket, I said I was fine, and he left.  That's when I remembered something he'd said while I was drunk the night before.  He'd talked about being an ex con and having an ex girlfriend and a kid.  It hadn't registered.  I shuddered all over, thinking about how much worse it could have been.

I met my husband that day.  I don't remember if it was that day or the next or a week later but I tentatively confided in him (He was just a friend at the time) about feeling like I was burning. I had a urinary tract infection.  When I went in to the Outside In clinic, they asked if I wanted to talk to someone about it.  I said sure, but it never happened.  They asked if I wanted to be tested for STD's and I said yes, and was terrified that I was.  Thankfully, it was just a nasty urinary tract infection that lasted 3 weeks.  This was a rape, too.  Even if you have a rape happen for you, you DO NOT and CAN NOT speak for other people who have.

Making decisions for people who've been raped amplifies that feeling.  You don't have the right.

The First Step..

The first step is always the hardest.  But first, let me backtrack and explain what I'm talking about, here.

I have an avoidance problem. And I don't mean a nice little oh I'm just going to avoid x situation.. I avoid REALITY.  I avoid LIFE.  Why? Because it's too much for me sometimes.  I don't know why.  I honestly wish I did. Or maybe I do know, and the answers hurt too much for me to want to face them yet.  But I do know that my methods have changed. When I was growing up you could always find my nose buried in a book.  Always.  During class, everything. Fun fact? I almost flunked out of high school because I was reading too much.  Not their books.  More interesting ones.

But that's not my point here.  I created worlds in my mind more fascinating to me than this one.  I lived in my own head when books no longer worked, and frankly I went a bit crazy.  Thankfully I snapped out of it with help but I had already found my newest obsession/secondary womb.  The internet. At first I roleplayed and then I went to writing.com to get the excess creativity out of my head. I just wanted some of it gone, you see, some of the noise in my mind from all the thoughts and stuff.

Well, that didn't work out.  I'm not going in chronological order here, I apologize.  I first met the internet probably in like 7th grade. It went from there.  I was on myspace for a while, and I updated my status and did the little bulletin surveys like a good little girl. I eventually made a new page, and I always blogged a lot.  But I wasn't really connecting to other people.  I only connected with a handful, who helped me through the nastiest phase in my mental transition.

When I say I went crazy, I won't go into details but it wasn't pretty. Not pretty at all.  One of those who was as bad off as me back then, he contacted me about a year ago.  I wasn't sure what to make of it, he was in a way my "enemy" for a short time.  But I came to discover that he was a calm, gentle young man now and very wise.  I became attached. He passed away in February, or early March (my sense of time is terrible) and it shook me. I never met him offline, but he had an impact on me.  He was a beacon of light during the time I was most stressed and worried.  He was a lovely gentlemen, gay, and his boyfriend added me as well I think after he passed..

I'm avoiding the subject at hand.  I have an internet addiction.  I'm aware of this.  It's my safety net. I don't know how to handle people in person.  People are scary, and you can never tell what they're going to do.  I have also noticed that for me at least it's easier to be totally honest in person because people don't care. It's just the internet, right? so I can be more honest and meet people who suit me better.  Unless they're lying, which has happened.

I have an addiction to those stupid little facebook games, and frankly it pisses me off. I don't really like them. I really don't.  I know they're empty fluff designed to keep you hungry for more of a false sense of achievement..  And that irritates me.  But I find myself going back to them time and again.  Just like I find myself staying up late at night checking on my facebook, because "What if something happened?"

-_-  Seriously, brain? It is a website.  It is the internet.  I care about the people on it.  I need to learn to communicate externally from a website whose sole point is to get people to be on it all day.  Facebook is not my life.

The first step is the hardest, right? Last night I didn't check my facebook before bed.  I'd left it alone for 2 hours and *didn't check it*.  This morning I wanted to post this as a status but changed my mind. Now, NOW I will check on those 28 notifications.