Now I get it

There is a responsibility that comes with being abused, and reporting that abuse to any kind of authority figure. I learned this yesterday when I was talking about the things I have been through, with a counselor whose helping me go through the process of applying for counselling.

I learned that, statistically speaking I should at the very least be dead, if not living on the streets with a serious addiction to drugs and alcohol. I am a very lucky, very blessed human being, with God on her side…I believe this in a very true way, but then there is the other half of the coin.

I don’t expect that God could have stopped what happened to me, but I am angry that it happened, not at God, but at the perpetrators. I am angry at Keith Rainier, and the men who wanted me to blame innocent people.

I don’t ever want any woman to go through what I went through, and so I reported as much information as I could many months ago, back in March, with as many details as I could possibly remember. I told my friends and family, and I made a catalog of informational packets that have been put away and handed out to those who need to know, in case someone tries to get revenge on me for sharing my stories.

I have written full journals – at least four of them – with the names of the innocent men I was supposed to blame for what happened to me, and as many names as the real culprits as I could. Grown ass men who tied me up, called me “Angel’s piece of ass” and raped me, in hopes I would blame innocent people. Yes, your known, and yes you will pay for what you did to me, but I will never forgive you.

I am over this expectation that I used to believe that in order to move forward I have to forgive you. I hate that, I never realized how much I hated it until I learned how much I don’t want to protect you.

Why should I after what you put me through? Why do I owe you loyalty after you raped me and made me promise to blame people I care about if anyone ever asked? What loyalty do I owe to men who would rather rape the women of their enemies, than stand up and fight like real men? What kind of man uses ten to twelve of his closest friends to beat a woman, just to hide his identity abuser X?

You are not owed my loyalty, because you beat me, raped me and told me that I didn’t matter to you, that I was nothing to you. You’re less than nothing to me.

What happened to me severely altered my life, it threw me off course. I quit a job I loved and was getting really good. I started seeing a counselor who I later realized was one of the men who beat me up that night. Yeah, I don’t owe this piece of shit any loyalty.

I get why so many women don’t retaliate by getting help, let alone reporting. I get why they are afraid, because I am afraid. I didn’t used to be. Before this happened this last time I felt safe and secure, I felt protected and loved. I felt pride in my life outside my home as a person who lived to help others and remained below the poverty line out of desire to continue life with blind mindlessness, not necessity.

I had a job I loved at a place that couldn’t afford to hire me, being on Disability allowed me the medicare I needed, and gave me the opportunity to volunteer at one of the greatest places on earth.

I worked hours each day to do my best to be a basically good human being. Being arrested last year really opened my mind to a lot of the things I blacked out to.

I was remembering things that I could have sworn happened to anyone but me.

I had legit forgotten whole days, months and years of my life, because it was easier to black it out and so I fucking get it. After I was arrested I started thinking about any and all reasons as to why I panicked so hard and what I could have done differently that day.

There’s a lot I would have done differently if I hadn’t been sexually abused most of my life. I would have been born the kind of person who could handle being on a plane, and far away from home for the first time. I might have gone to college and learned to relate to others, I may have done a ton of things differently if Keith Rainier had never come into my life.

If Abuser Y hadn’t raped me and used the boys of his own friends to do it, I probably would have had healthy relationships that might have led to me being in a healthy long term relationship today.

So I FUCKING GET WHY WOMEN DO NOT REPORT, and this post is dedicated to all of the women who haven’t reached that point yet. I fucking love you.

It’s both one of the most empowering and terrifying things that you’ll do reaching out to an outsider for help, largely because that’s the point where you realize you might not be an island, but the spotlight is on you, and people expect you to teach them to help you.

They let you talk a lot of it out, and that’s helpful, but it’s also a “holy shit how did I survive that?” reality that slaps you in the back of the head and takes your breath away and it’s overwhelming and scary.

Because you know what the darkness is about, and you know what could be waiting for you, if you actually step a toe out of line. The rape is just the beginning of the trauma, because I know these fears will now be with me for the rest of my life.

I will think about the cruel evil disgusting things said to me when I have my own children. These events will affect how I raise my daughters, and how I live with any future sons I might have.

These events have changed everything about me, and who I thought I would be at this age in time, and you want me to forgive you? Are you in fucking sane?

Are you nuts? I will never forgive you, because I will always have to be careful about the things I say and who I say them to. I will always question the new people who try to enter my life, and I will always lash out in the worst possible ways when I have an episode, in an attempt to rid myself of the negativity you have taught to live inside of me.

I will never be the person I could have been, the person I wanted to be, because you decided to try and destroy me and you fucking failed.

Because of you, I will be a new, stronger, more angry, scared-er version of myself, and for that I will never forgive you because I shouldn’t fucking have to be.

I am not who I want to be, and that is your fault, and I won’t forgive you because I don’t have the emotional capacity it takes to let go of the anger I feel all at once. I will have to work on forgiving you every day of my life, so if I have to think about it for the rest of my life, you shouldn’t be allowed to forget. So now I fucking get it.

It’s not all my fault that I act the way that I do, but there is a responsibility for me to question my behavior and correct myself whenever possible. I am working on that, I don’t like it because I’d love to pretend its never my fault – life is just easier that way. But there are things I could have done differently, and now that I know why I react the way I do it’s up to me to find ways to do things better.

Adjusting my behavior, and the way that my mind responds to episodes of memory re-creation, which is what I have been dealing with, is helping me to discover a new kind of person buried deep within and as excited as I am to meet her, I will not forgive the reasons she needs to exist.

It’s just not in me to be that kind of kind today.

I am not sorry.

Devon J Hall