My name is Amber, I am a survivor. I have survived childhood sexual and emotional abuse, numerous adult rapes, traumas and a stroke. I am in my late thirties. I have also survived years of substance abuse and more pertinently to this article a suicide attempt. The only reason it was an attempt was because I was raped in the middle of it.
Let’s rewind a little. 12 years ago I lived in my own flat (rented), I worked full time and as a survivor I wasn’t comfortable with intimacy but give me a few glasses of wine and sex was fine, in fact I was amazed to discover that I was a highly sexual person, bisexual and very adventurous. I was a swinger, a happy one and most of the time it was good fun with friends and all consensual. Except for one night.
I had met someone online that worked with children, he was professional, attractive, intelligent and courteous, let’s call him Bob. We had spent four or five weekends together at this stage and he came over to my flat for dinner, wine and fucking. We had dinner, we had wine (a LOT of wine) and we fucked.
Bob left in the morning and I got on with my life. I was starting to become rather unhinged, dissociative and I was taking a LOT of medication such as lorazepam and benzodiazepines for severe anxiety and CPTSD at the time.
I was online about a week later drinking wine, in a swinging chatroom and following the thread of conversation wondering who I was going to fuck that night. The frisson of meeting someone new and having mad, unapologetic sex is thrilling and tantalizing.
At some point someone asked me if I had ‘recovered’ from the other night… I asked what they meant. They asked me about my night with Bob, I didn’t remember being online with Bob that particular night (I’ve done MANY things on cam and many things at parties and clubs but I’ve never had sex online). I asked them to explain and they asked me about getting ass fucked by Bob and if I was able to walk the next day…
Everything went WHITE, SILENT and DEATHLY still inside. I froze. I don’t know how long I sat there for it might have been hours. Not only had Bob raped me but he had done it online, on cam and for people I knew to watch. I was in FUCKING PIECES.
The next two weeks were a daze, I went to work, I took my tablets and I drank all the wine. Each day the silent white got stronger and the rest of the world started to fade. I couldn’t make sense of anything, I couldn’t feel anything and most of all I NEVER wanted to feel anything again.
I got up out of bed at 4am and got on a bus to my work office to ‘sort things’ in terms of work. I was taking time off. I went home and systematically went into different chemists for over an hour buying co-codamol and paracetamol to make sure I got enough of them to not have to come back out again. I bought three bottles of vodka. I had a plan, I wasn’t ever going to feel anything EVER again.
I felt submerged into the white, the vapid miasma of numbness that my existence had become. I went home to my flat and crushed up about 40 tablets and mixed them into neat vodka. I necked it. I remember wondering why it was pink. I started writing letters to my parents (the CSA was incest and I am an entirely estranged from my entire family). I really had no one. You are always told to call someone or reach out to someone. There was no one for me to fucking reach out to, and anyway I didn’t care, I was entering the white.
I kept drinking the vile mixture and still felt strangely calm. There were no hysterics, the night was mild and I sat outside.
About five hours later I woke up in clothes different to what I had been wearing. My flat door was open and I had a black eye… something was VERY wrong and it wasn’t the pills or the fact that I was killing myself.
I KNEW someone had raped me…. How? Because it has happened so many times to me (strangers, partners, friends etc). I sat on the floor unsure what to do and I started to feel. I felt POKER RED HOT FUCKING RAGE… I couldn’t believe what was going on.
I called a taxi, packed a bag and went to the ER. I remember it taking over three hours for the Doctors to listen to me that I had been raped, that I wanted the police. They tried to talk me out of it, they insisted it was a waste of time (to me that meant I was the waste of time) and all I could think was well I have delayed entering the white to fucking report this so get them here.
Several hours passed, the police arrived. I gave an initial statement. I had to stay in the same fucking grotty clothing for 24 hours until they had kicked all the toxins from my system and then I had to go and have a fucking rape forensic done. NO counselling, NO therapist. Meds for the overdose and police to poke around in my violated fucking vagina. Then I was sent home, alone, to the mess.
I went back to work two weeks later and lasted about three weeks on SERIOUS levels of benzos before I cracked. I took a day off work and got FUCKING HAMMERED. I tied a noose in the garden and realised that I intended to use it and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that any more, so I called my boss.
She came to my flat and was FUCKING shocked and then called an ambulance. I admitted myself to a psych ward for 72 hours until the suicide urges calmed down. STILL no therapy and off I went home under a crisis team.
There is much more but I wanted to give you a window into someone’s mind who has decided to take their own life. You are calm, determined and resolute. You feel nothing and that’s the point, you don’t WANT to fucking feel anything, EVER again.
Six months later I got Bob to admit online that he raped me. I called the police. They found him, interviewed him and no charges were brought, DESPITE evidence BECAUSE clearly I’m unstable, I tried to take my own life and I fuck strangers… right?
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