The "R Word"

Trigger Warning: This post contains graphic detail and mature content that some may find distressing.

They say, write the thing you are most afraid to write...... well, here I go- this is the story I never wanted to tell, the story I still have such vivid nightmares about.

You would think with all I have already told, how could my heart hold still darker truths untold.  The reality is, very few people know the worst of my life story.  It doesn't even end with this heartbreaking tale.

  
I dare say there'll be a lot who will ask why, why now, after all these years, dredge up so much pain but me, I live with this affliction shackled to my very being, every day of my life.
This one night has haunted me for over 11 years but I rarely speak of it.  The shame is suffocating, though try as I might, I can never understand why I feel it.  I did nothing to deserve what they did to me.  

Other than my mother, brother and the doctors who treated me, until now, the only other person I've been brave enough to share this with, is my husband, whom I told a few years ago.

If by sharing what I am about to, I can help even just one person to feel a little less ashamed of their dark past, it will be worth it.  If I can convince a single teen to reconsider experimenting with narcotics or associating with unsavoury people, then maybe, just maybe the horror of it all wasn't in vain.

It's been a long time coming but I am finally ready to rip the tape from my mouth and take back the power they literally stripped from me.

The year was 2007 and I had barely turned 18.  My life should have been just beginning but it was about to end as I knew it, forever.  I was a drug addict.  I had been using since the age of 16 but the past year had seen me spiral harder and faster.  It had started off as recreational pill popping and party fun- an ecstasy here, a toke on the ice pipe there, a line of cocaine before clubbing.  Then came the needles.  I was 17 when I shot up speed for the first time.  Ice or as some may know it, the infamous crystal meth soon followed.  My downfall was imminent.

The more I used, the more I craved.  As my body built up tolerance, the highs lessened.  Still I chased that feeling, using greater and greater amounts.  That first high, it's never like that again.  But our crazed addict minds ever seek it, hunger for it.  We'd sell our very souls just to feel it one more time.  Thankfully I never got that far.  I began dealing to support my habit.  Every cent I could get my hands on went up my arm but never once did I resort to selling my body.  Although I can't help but wonder whether that may have been easier to live with than what was yet to come.

The drug world is a lawless society, filled with countless soulless beings.  Do whatever it takes to never enter into it.  Seek help in whatever way you can to avoid it, because getting in is easy, getting out is a battle like nothing you've ever fought, nor known.  You think it will numb your unfathomable pain.... but it only twists the knife in deeper.

I lived through my fair share of home invasions in that world.  This is how the first unfolded:  
It was a cold winter night and I was home alone when they came.  Four men of colour.  I won't divulge the heritage, it's irrelevant.  Monsters come from all races and corners of the globe.  They believed they'd been ripped off by a friend of mine but it was I who would pay the ultimate price.  I opened the door and was roughly shoved aside, greeted by maniacal laughter and smiles devoid of both humanity and sanity.  It was only four but the line of them seemed endless, as they filed one by one into my home, my safe space.

"Sit," the last one growled as he pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and pushed down on my shoulders.  He didn't remove his hands, holding me there.  His three accomplices were swarming throughout my house.  That laughter, the stuff of nightmares, came again and his breath was hot and acrid on my neck.  I bit my lip and closed my eyes.  His hands felt like they were searing the very flesh from my shoulders with their unwelcome touch.

I opened my eyes to the sound of my car keys being scooped up from the table.  The other three were there with arm loads of what little valuable things I had left and those same cruel smiles, revealing rotted and missing teeth under sunken, lifeless eyes.  They made a few more trips from the house to the car and I wondered fleetingly how they were fitting so much into the tiny boot of my two door hatchback.

I took a deep breath, praying this was it and they'd just leave.  It was just stuff.  Somehow I would find a way to move past this night.  I just needed these vile creatures out of my house.  I hadn't even realised I had closed my eyes again but they snapped open at the sound of the refrigerator door creaking open.  They had found my treasure trove of alcohol.  Drugs weren't always readily available when I needed them and grog was a Godsend for taking the edge off and keeping me numb throughout those times.

The other two must have stayed out there after packing the grog in.  It was only the ring leader who came back.  "Come on you two," he said.  I looked around me.  There was nobody else in the room but the one he'd called Bubba and I.
"NO!!" I screamed out involuntarily, shocked by my own boldness, "No...." I said more calmly upon checking myself.  "You have my things, you have my car, please!  Just GO!"

His hand moved so fast.  I doubt I could have trusted what I thought my eyes had seen, had it not been for the cold metal I now felt pressed against my temple.  How had I not noticed the bulge in the back of his pants until it was too late?!  This was it.  I was going to die for my big mouth and my own stupidity.

  
Tears streamed from my eyes but no sobs came.  I closed my eyes, resolved myself to what was about to happen.  What could I do to stop it???  There was no fight left in me.  I pictured my mother dressed in black, weeping for her only daughter.  "Sorry, Mum," I whispered, "You deserved better than me..."

I tilted my head up and looked my would-be murderer right in the eye, "Do it," I said softly, my voice full of conviction, "Kill me."

"Walk!"  He spat, wrenching me to my feet by my arm and propelling me along in front of him, the gun barrel still firmly in place.  It appeared my readiness to die had angered him.  He'd wanted me afraid and at his mercy.

I was manhandled into the drivers seat of my car and the leader climbed carelessly across me into the passenger seat, his gun trained on me the entire time.  After clicking his seat belt up, the now familiar coolness seeped into my temple once more.  "Drive..... straight!"

I reached for the key already in the ignition and turned it.

I drove as I was ordered to, through a maze of streets for what felt like half an hour before I was directed into the driveway of a house.  Who could really say for sure though.  Time passes differently in traumatic situations.

The leader then passed the gun to the one he'd called Bubba who replaced Leader's grip without the weapon ever losing contact with my skin.  Leader then climbed out of the passenger seat and slid it forward to let his cronies out.  "Pop the boot," he demanded of me, before slamming the door shut behind him.  I rolled my eyes but dutifully reached for the lever.

I strained my vision against the darkness.  I recall wishing I had thought to look at the names on the street signs we had passed.  Far in the distance I could see an old, Queenslander style, two storey house.  The lights were on but I couldn't see any sign of movement inside.  My line of sight was then filled by the men walking with arm loads of their hoard, towards the house.  I watched them climb the steps and enter.  They must have quickly deposited the items directly inside the door because they were soon coming back down the old, rickety staircase and in no time were back at the car grabbing more.  After the third and final trip, they closed the boot.

Suddenly I felt something brushing my arm.  I smacked at it, thinking it was a spider or an insect of some description but cried out when I realised it was a hand.  Momentarily, the same hand was clapped over my mouth, muting my screams.  

I turned and stared at my would-be rapist, my eyes wide with horror.  I had been so far away in my mind I had not even noticed that he had climbed from the back of the car into the front passenger seat, "Shhhh," he whispered.

I uncontrollably shook from my head to my toes and nausea roiled in my stomach as I felt his hand on my arm, brushing up and down again, the gun still firmly pressed into my face.
"Such beautiful skin...." he murmured.  My subconscious screamed at me to fight, to run but I was paralysed with terror.  This man wasn't a killer.  He was something far more sinister....

Hot, silent tears poured down my cheeks as he slid his free hand up my shirt.  Before I knew it, he was on top of me and his hand clamped over my mouth again, abruptly silencing my unchecked, strangled screams and pleas for help.

I tried as hard as I could to block out the burning pain and retreat into some far away place within my mind.  I desperately prayed I could somehow eject my soul from my body and come back when this was all over.

 
Raucous guffawing jerked me back to reality as the dead weight pinning me down climbed off of me.  The other men were back, just standing there watching, amused by what they had interrupted.  As hastily as I could, tugged my clothing back into place.  My shirt was torn and when I saw the blood, I scarcely got my door open before I started vomiting violently onto the grass.  I wrapped my arms around myself, whimpering and rocking, trying hopelessly to get my shit together.  I need not have bothered because rough hand soon pushed me down once more.  I kept my eyes scrunched tightly shut.  I didn't know which one it was and it didn't matter.  I didn't need or want to see.

Whether they all took part or not, I do not know.  I know it was more than the two but after them, my memory blurs and falters.  When they were finished with me, I lay motionless, empty and unfeeling.  I stared blankly at the barbarians crowded around me, staring down at my broken form, the ever-present gun still aimed at me.... only by that point, it was swaying.  In fact, all their faces were swaying and fuzzy.... I was so tired...I actually thought I was dying and felt intense relief at that thought.  Darkness and slumber clawing at my eyelids, whispering and beckoning to me.

"Kill me," I rasped with my last ounce of energy, "Just kill me."
"We will," the leader said, "You ever go to the police, and we'll find you.  We'll kill the ones ya love first.  Then you."

I said nothing.  I had nobody but myself to blame.  I'd willingly entered into that world.  If letting those beasts walk free was what it took to keep my innocent family safe, then I would do what they asked of me.

My eyes drooped shut.  I  couldn't open them again after that.  They felt weighted down.  My whole body felt like it was now made of lead.   I felt someone lift and toss me effortlessly into the passenger seat.  I didn't fight it; couldn't fight it.  I heard the car start and that was it- the darkness won.  I surrendered to it, too exhausted to resist its pull for another second.  It felt strangely peaceful... like sunshine being pumped into me.  I should have let it take me sooner.  

I awoke alone in my car, somehow back in the drivers seat, on the footpath outside my house, shivering at first light.  I prayed it had all just been a dreadful, horrifying nightmare.  But an intense, stabbing pain and a once over of my clothes shattered the illusion.  It had all been real...

I raced inside to the shower and scrubbed myself until my skin was red raw; scrubbed and scrubbed in a futile attempt to get the filth and shame off of me.  I cried and howled under the warm stream of water until no more tears came, before dressing and drying myself at lightning speed.  I couldn't stand the sight of my bare, tarnished frame.

I threw my tattered, bloody clothes in the wheelie bin and went out to the footpath to scrub the stains and muck from my car, leaving the windows down for the seats to dry.  It was mid-morning but I went to bed, trying helplessly to sleep and escape this unbearable reality.... but no sleep would come.

The next day I packed a bag of clothes and drove to Picnic Point.  I sat there for hours, just watching, thinking, trying to work out what to do with myself and my life.  How could I ever forget..... how could I live with those memories....

I went home to my mother's house, broke down and I told her what had happened to me.  She urged me to go to the police, to pay no mind to their scare tactics but I couldn't take that risk.  She hadn't seen the demonic look in their eyes.  Those men were capable of anything and felt no remorse for their actions.

"Carla, please," my brother said, "It's them that will get a bullet in their heads if they hurt any of us.  Go to the police.  You deserve justice."
I choked out a mirthless laugh, "Death would be a blessing for me at this point.  I wish they'd pulled the trigger.  I wish I were actually dead, than this dead inside.  But I won't be responsible the deaths of the people I love."

I sank into the worst depressive low I have ever experienced which resulted in my first involuntary admission into the high dependency section of the acute psychiatric unit, where I remained in bed for days at a time throughout most of my stay.  My nurses brought orange juice in to me with my medications.  Eating was out of the question.  I couldn't even bring myself to shower.  I didn't want to see my tainted naked body.  I needed the temporary reprieve that came only with sleep and so sleep I did, day in, day out.

With my consent, my doctors did a lot of testing and screened me for STI's, STD's, HIV, Hepatitis and pregnancy.  Somehow, by the grace of God, they were all negative.  What did show up as positive however, was heroin.... I'd never touched heroin or any opioids in my life at that point.  I was all about the uppers.  I'd obviously been drugged that fateful night.  It explained why I'd passed out and remained asleep in my car until morning.  It also explained my heavy eyelids and body and the peaceful "sunshine" feeling I'd experienced.  I've often wondered if their goal had been for that heroin dose to be lethal.  It would have been far easier to get away with than shooting me.  By placing me back in the drivers seat, the police probably would have assumed I was just another junkie, who'd sold her body for a hit and the despicable truth would never be at risk of coming to light.  As the saying goes, "Dead [wo]men tell no tales."

~

In the hospital, my psychiatrist attempted many times to get me to open up about that night to him but I couldn't.  I wasn't ready to relive it.  I needed to forget. 

In a meeting with my mother I begged to be allowed to go home.  My psychiatrist said, "Carla, you need to start getting out of bed before you can go home.  You need to start eating, showering and interacting with the other patients.  That's how you get out of here.  By showing me that you are well enough to take care of yourself.  You were gang raped.... at gunpoint.  It's triggered a severe depressive episode for you and the state you are in IS understandable.  But you are where you need to be for now."

"Don't," I said, "Don't use that word."

"What word?"

"The R word," I croaked out, "It makes my skin crawl... please don't say it."
Tears pooled in my eyes and cascaded to the floor.  He handed me a tissue.

"I'm not going to get better in here!  Look at this place!  You want me to get better?!"  I shrieked hysterically, "Then let me go home!  I can't get well in here, don't you SEE that?!"

The doctor turned to my mother without answering me, "Your daughter's mental illness is very complex.  The suicide statistics for the illness alone are staggering.  Coupled with the trauma she has just suffered, it is more than likely Carla will die by her own hand."

I was dumbfounded.  Had he actually just said that?!  What kind of doctor says that to a patient's mother at all, let alone in front of said patient?!

Still no words came.  Maybe he was right.  Or maybe this was some sick test to see how I would react.  Who knew but I know I hated him in that moment for hurting my mother with his blunt, harsh words and I hated myself for not being strong enough to fight this illness or to stand up for myself and tell him he was wrong, that I would never take my own life.  But I couldn't do that.  I knew how much I longed for the bliss of death.  The only thing holding me back was fear.  I was too afraid of the unknown to take that leap.  I was a coward.

I proved that bastard wrong though.  I did not become another statistic.  Another 2 years of drug abuse and several more psychiatric hospital admissions did follow.  But a saviour was coming in the shape of a precious little boy, the story of which I have previously penned under the title of Confessions of a Pro-Life Mother: there but for the grace of God, go I.

Here I am, 11 years later.  Happy, loved, a mother, a wife and most importantly, over 9 years completely clean from all illicit drugs.  No matter how high the odds were stacked against me, somehow I managed to forge a brighter future.  I may never forget that terrible night but I sure did rise from the ashes like a glorious phoenix, emboldened by the very flames that sought to bring about my destruction.

~

To all my fellow rape and sexual assault victims- you are not alone, you are not what they did to you, your body is not less because it has been touched by evil, rather it is incredible for having the strength to overcome such depravity.  

We are are warriors, mothers, wives, fathers, husbands, men, women, HUMAN and though the world has been an unkind and unfair place to us, we must never allow the darkness to win.  Let your love be stronger than their hatred could ever be. ❤

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