I repeatedly experienced violence and learn to live
Almost four months ago I read about the action of the creators of Everyday Sexism - #wheniwas and suddenly I realized that I wanted and was ready to tell you what happened to me. A month has passed, but I had only a couple of paragraphs. At the end of May, the world was shocked by the news of the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl from a favela in Rio de Janeiro: there was her boyfriend among the rapists, they were armed, videotaped and later posted on the Internet. This monstrous case caused a wave of protests in Brazil. Full of indignation, I sat down and wrote the text entirely - in one evening.
A week later, a 23-year-old girl was appealing to BuzzFeed to Stanford's freshman Brock Turner - a man who was tried for her rape: she was drunk before unconsciousness and could not even resist, the incident had witnesses. Turner was threatened with up to 14 years in prison, but he was sentenced to six months. Protests, petitions with a million signatures, hundreds of letters in support of the victim, including an open letter from US Vice President Joe Biden, stories about his experience - I could hardly believe that such a reaction was possible in Russian society. Nevertheless, I wanted to take a chance and start this discussion.
The month after that I edited, re-read, discussed my text with my relatives and the psychotherapist. Morally prepared for the publication and to comments "is guilty". Preparing to be mixed with shit. That many will turn away from me. I was scared. I shared my plan with two girls I hardly know. Each of them told about her sad experience and its consequences, and both supported my idea. I understood that I was not alone, that many things I had told would be understandable or even familiar. Yesterday, dozens of my friends and acquaintances shared their stories under the tag # ЯНЕЯ`She say. My timid hopes suddenly became a reality.
I am convinced that it is important to raise this topic, we need a public discussion. It is important not to hush up, but to talk about it. But to talk about it is difficult and very embarrassing. All the stories I want to share are very mundane. And this is the worst.
MATERIAL not intended for persons under 18 years old.
992 year. I am 7 years old. The USSR is no more, Boris N. Yeltsin became the President of the Russian Federation. In our apartment on Leninsky Prospekt, a huge portrait of Mikhail S. Gorbachev stands on the fridge. Later in his forehead, he will have a hole - Dad says he shot from pneumatics
fly from the couch. Why did we have a portrait of the former president of the USSR in our apartment, and also an air gun, I did not ask.
I just went to the first class of an expensive private school. This is one of the very first private schools in Russia. Actually, exactly this school after ten years will be finished by both granddaughters of Gorbachev. So far, my relationship with classmates do not get along. I did not go to kindergarten, I was not friends with anyone in the yard, I had little contact with my peers before school, except for my younger sister, so now it’s not easy for me to find a common language with the other children.
Parents are engaged in small and medium business. Our guest is our “business partner” from Istanbul - Osman. My favorite bright crimson dress in black velvet polka dots. I am asked to sit "uncle on my knees." I hesitate, the first time I see this man. I'm generally extremely shy. At the same time, I want to please my parents and please my uncle. I sit on Osman's lap. He tells me that I'm beautiful, kisses on the lips, penetrating the tongue into the mouth. I do not fully understand what is happening. I understand that this is something "adult" and so no one has kissed me before. This is the first adult kiss in my life. Why did he do that? Is it customary in Turkey? How do I respond?
I feel that something is wrong, and I am confused. Now I can not say for sure whether the parents were in the room at that moment and whether they saw what was happening. Did they pretend not to notice anything, or were they really not there. In my memories, dad stands two meters away from me. In any case, I pretended that everything is in order. This is an important person. And who knows, maybe this is true custom in Turkey, and the customs of other countries must be respected. Later I learned that one of my parents' Turkish partners was in prison. I hope it was not Osman. However, what's the difference: I’m passionate about me, seven-year-old, whether the criminal was kissing or not.
Money was the key word in our family. All quarrels were about money. All the time and attention of parents was spent on making money. My sister and I practically did not see them, the governess were busy with us: they took us out of school, did our homework and put us to bed. The housekeeper fed us, who came every day to clean and cook. I told myself that parents are trying for my sister and I, that all this in order to provide us with a good education and a decent life.
A year has passed since that kiss. We go with our governess to the trolleybus on the Universitet metro station. Here I was born and spent the first ten years of life. Winter is cold. I have a warm elongated jacket. In the trolley bus. Through the stop, I feel someone's hand between my legs. This is a big hand, and it slowly and surely strokes the inner surfaces of my thighs. I'm numb. My governess stands slightly behind and to my right. I look at her and try to understand what is happening. Maybe she checks if I am warmly dressed? In her face, I can not understand whether she is involved in what is happening. She is silent and looks back at me. I'm afraid to say, I'm afraid to ask, I'm afraid to turn around. I’m afraid to confirm my hunch that it really was. I go home silently.
At 9 years old, my chest began to grow. Mom refused to believe in it and explained this "phenomenon" by an excess of male hormones. I didn’t really understand what it was and how it affected me, but I decided that something was wrong with me, since I’m a girl, and I’m having male hormones and some kind of "lumps" grow. At the age of 11, thanks to the passion of the Nirvana group, I finally had friends among my classmates. Also, I got pubic and armpit hair and started menstruating. Fortunately, a friend managed to tell me what it is. There were no such conversations with my mother. I feel more grown up and I dream to leave home. The main question is where to get money for rental housing, food and schooling.
I am 12 years old. My friend and I are going to a pioneer camp. Most of the time we spend on campaigns for the territory for cigarettes and beer, listening to the songs of Nirvana and Mumiy Troll. In our squad there is a scumbag Pasha. He frankly solicits all girls. One day he caught me in the corridor, pressed me to the wall, spread my legs, lifted one of them, began to twitch and breathe intermittently. I broke loose. I did not tell any of the adults about this.
Next year I spend in a private boarding school in Germany. This is a castle on a mountain, almost all students from rich families. My classmates don't accept me again, and I'm friends with a girl from Berlin. She, too, is not very welcome, as she is from East Germany and from a poor family, and she got to school by a special quota. We, as usual, run to the supermarket, buy products prohibited at school: coke, sweets, chewing gum, energy and, of course, cigarettes. At school is an illustrated book for children about sexual education. She makes a strong impression on me, I haven’t seen anything like this before. At first I was shocked by her frankness, then I realized that it was so accepted here, this is normal and there is nothing forbidden in this book. Relationships of the sexes were not very interesting for me, but I studied in detail how to introduce a tampon so that it would not hurt.
I'm afraid to say, I'm afraid to ask, I'm afraid to turn around. I’m afraid to confirm my hunch that it really was. I go home silently
1998 Parents lose a significant part of the money, and my sister and I return to Russia. I go to my class again, but it becomes difficult to learn. Year of missed knowledge makes itself felt. Most of my free time I spend on the Internet. Mainly in chat rooms: first the magazine "OM", then the group "Mumiy Troll". Here I can be anyone, more adult people communicate with me and take me for my own. The Internet has helped find like-minded people. Teenagers, 20 and 30 year olds - all communicated on an equal footing. We discussed literature, movies, concerts, music. Although, of course, I understand that the 13-year-old child will not be taken seriously, and therefore I lie, that I am 17.
I have a serious virtual love affair with the coolest guy in the chat. He is 20, he has an amazing imagination, a wonderful sense of humor and appearance of Ilya Lagutenko. The chat participants decide to get together in Moscow and get acquainted "in real life". The day before the meeting, I inform my virtual lover that "I am small." He laughs off, apparently thinking about growth, rather than age. When he meets, he is speechless, immediately steps aside, sits on the floor and sits, his arms wrapped around his head, for about ten minutes. Then I was terribly hurt, but now I think that this is the best reaction possible. I really was still quite small.
At the next chat, I agreed to spend the night at the 19-year-old Katie, in order to stay for a longer time at a party. Mom said that I would stay overnight with a classmate. Katya and I hesitated and lost sight of our company - we only knew that everyone had gone to Arbat. How to get there, we did not know. We wander around the Manege Square, street musicians finish playing some song of Chizh. I can hear how one of them asks the other: "Well, now on the Arbat?" I happily rush to them and ask: "Guys, can I come with you?" We go to the subway together. At the subway, they offer us a drink. By that moment I had already drunk at least a liter of beer. I stretch a bottle of vodka. This is my first vodka in my life. I drink from the throat. I want to seem adult and cool. In recent years, and especially now, when my new friends are 20-30 years old, I really want to be an adult. Then I remember badly.
I remember that we go to the subway, but do not go out on the "Arbat". I decide that the guys know the road better than me. It is probably more convenient to get off at the next stop. A few stations later, I still understand that we are not going to the Arbat. I'm nervous, I get anxious, but I pretend that everything is in order. One of them starts kissing me. Katya kisses the second. We come to some garages. Sit in some kind of car. Everything happens pretty quickly. The blood on his stomach, I'm trying to wipe or lick unnoticed. I was ashamed at that moment that I was a virgin, I was desperate to hide it. Later we find ourselves in some apartment. How I got into it, I do not remember. Already some other guy takes me to a separate room, lays on the bed and undresses. When he finishes, another one enters the room. He takes off his pants and says: "I will join the army tomorrow, respect the soldier." I'm starting to rebound. I ask: "Do you even know how old I am?" He thinks I'm 17. I do not answer. I suspect that what is happening is wrong and illegal, but I’m not sure. I'm trying to crawl out of bed, he pulls me back.
An hour later, we are going with Katya to her house, it seems that I was already completely sober. I utter one single phrase: "Actually, I am thirteen, and it was my first time." Katya says that she tried to pull me out of there, but she was not allowed in. On the way home we stumble upon a classic exhibitionist in a raincoat. He flings it open and starts jerking off. We hide in the yard behind the cars. I do not understand whether he is dangerous or not. This is the first exhibitionist in my life. We come to her house. I wash the bloody pants, take a shower for a long time. Katya puts me to bed.
In the morning my classmate in the chat informs me that my mom called her. I go down to the subway, get confused in these damn two "Arbat" and come home too late. Mom had already called my friend again, but this time the parents took the call. So mom found out that I didn’t spend the night there. When I walked into the apartment, my mother pounced on me and began to shout: "Do you know what could have happened to you?" She threw herself at me with her fists, I huddled into a corner, squatted down and closed my hands. She started kicking me. My younger sister screamed: "Mom, stop it, what are you doing ?!" - and began to pull it away. It helped, and I went to my room. Later, I told my mother that something really terrible had happened - I lost my wallet that night, maybe it was stolen from me. Money was the most important in our family. I wanted to say that I lost something very important.
After that, my life changed. It is now I can say that she has changed. It is now I understand what led me to these events and what were the consequences. Then it seemed to me that everything is in order. I chose to think that what happened is normal, in the order of things. I chose not to talk to adults. The school sprawled
rumors about what happened, and the attitude towards me has changed. I was rejected again - not directly, but I felt it. But the girls began to ask me advice about sex. I began to skip school, which led to a severe failure. After Germany, I became a good girl with a pair of threes from an almost round honors pupil. Now even fours have become a rarity. The class teacher took me to a school psychologist. She gave me to read books like "Psychology of Losers". This, of course, did not help. The class teacher asked: "What's the matter with you? You're the most adult girl in the class. What's going on with you?" I was silent. It is even funny. Adults often thought I was more mature. I wanted to live alone, I wanted to become an adult as soon as possible. Sex was one of the attributes of adulthood. I told myself that what happened to me is part of adult life, it’s normal. Now I'm an adult.
Now, I understand that it is not. The fact that at the age of 13 puberty is in full swing and the child is interested in sex does not make him an adult. At 13, you are not able to make informed decisions. At 13, you are not aware of the consequences of your decisions, especially if you have liters of alcohol in you. And everything terrible that you have to go through does not make you more mature.
When I was just 14, I began to "meet" with an adult man, every Saturday we went to his home. I did not know his age, most likely 30-35 years. My friends from the chat called him a pedophile - as a joke. I remember winter, we go to him in a minibus. There is not enough space, and he sits me on his lap. I am ashamed in front of the other passengers, I do not want them to think that we are together. Drops of sweat stream down his face. What is he thinking at this moment? He chews apple "orbits" and smiles. Since then, I hate that taste. We are in his room. He still lives with his parents on the outskirts of Moscow. He turns on the camcorder and strips me. Five hours of sex without a single break, with toys from the sex shop, ice, hot wax and ice cucumbers.
A few months later, I screamed into the telephone heart-rendingly: "Don't you understand that you are a freak?" I broke up with him. At the meeting, he insistently asked for the "last time" or at least about a kiss. I felt the strongest disgust. Six months later, I was iron, as far as the 14-year-old girl was capable of, with a voice demanding to remove these videos. Ten years later, he found me in ICQ, offered to meet. About two years ago I found it again - this time on Facebook - and again I tried to talk as if nothing had happened. I abruptly ended the conversation. In his mind, what happened almost twenty years ago is absolutely normal. In my - no longer. In the process of long-term psychotherapy, I had an overestimation of many events.
I told my mother that something terrible happened - I lost my wallet that night. Money was the most important in our family. I wanted to say that I lost something very important.
I'm still 14. My mom takes me to school. She does not like the fact that I put on her lips and they look swollen: "I sucked yesterday? Are you trying to hide?" Furious, she tries to throw me out of the car at full speed and tells me that she doesn’t love me or my sister for a long time: “When you were little, you were pretty, and now I’m waiting for you to finally be 18 will not provide you. " I think she suspected what was going on, but she felt helpless and didn’t know what to do. This helplessness spilled over into aggression. In any case, she did not have to wait long.
I am in a children's hospital with suspected inflammation of the kidneys. It soon turns out that I actually have HPV and condyloma. I am discharged from the hospital and offered to solve the problem itself. Mom picks me up from the hospital. In the car, she reports that they called from the school and offered to either leave or stay for the second year. Since my mother has more and more problems with money, I decide not to burden her existence even more and choose to deduct. I myself have found a clinic to remove condylomas. Mom was ashamed of me, so she participated in this process only financially. After the procedure, I moved to live with the then boyfriend.
With that guy, I lived a little more than six months. More than once he locked me in an apartment, hid a modem, a telephone and favorite books. I had to wait for him at home with a ready dinner. Then it all seemed to me absolutely normal. This relationship was clearly better than all my previous experiences with men.
In the fall of 2000, I decided that I needed to finish school after all, and went to extern. In the external section, the troika in the year cost 600 rubles. Можно было не ходить на занятия, но иногда я их посещала. После школы дети часто шли пить водку в соседних подъездах. Мне это казалось чем-то низким, я с 13-14 лет ходила по клубам и пила в барах, но всё-таки пару раз я к ним присоединилась. Однажды, когда одноклассники пили водку, я была на спидах и отказалась пить с ними, сказала, что не хочу мешать. Через полчаса всё-таки выпила. Наступил блэкаут. Один из одноклассников воспользовался этим, отведя меня на этаж ниже. Я этого не помню. Я знаю только, что нашёл меня другой одноклассник на полу, без сознания и без трусов.The next day, the one who raped me, greeted me at school with jokes and hooting. Apparently, he told all the other classmates. I did not do anything, I did not tell anyone. Nothing at all. It also seemed normal to me. I just barked: "Go check on the sores now."
History repeated. Classmates rejected me, I closed even more. I left this school too. Shortly before that, I was at my parents ’meeting among the moms and grandmothers of my classmates. The class teacher again told me that I was very adult.
Next was a lot of stories. Many of them were sad. For example, my mom's boyfriend, coming home drunk, began to rub against me and say that he likes me just like my mom. This, by the way, is the only time when I decided to tell my mother. She did not believe it, and then I once again left home. Or, for example, acquaintance with a famous expat in 2003, whose wife soon gave birth, which I learned only from the Exile newspaper. He brought me home, I felt bad, I lost consciousness and hit my head on the floor. Waking up, I asked for ice. He just laughed and took me to the bedroom. I lost consciousness several times during sex, but that did not stop him. There have also been years of life with a heroin addict. He repeatedly beat me with his head against the wall, threw things at me, including a vacuum cleaner, beat his mother in front of me, beat me on my knees with a leg swing over my face, smashed my bridge of nose, throwing the phone at the wall. Flushing blood from my face, he mocked laughed.
Why did I endure all this? It all seemed normal to me - and certainly part of adulthood. I was 19, and he was 29, and he was a serious guy with serious intentions. I also tolerated this, as he and his mother convinced me that I was to blame for his addiction and that I needed to fix it. I believed. I generally believed with pleasure if they told me that I was to blame. Chronic guilt feelings are typical of victims of violence.
all my life I have heard that I myself was to blame. When I told about what happened to me at the age of 13, to my ex-boyfriend, he immediately responded: "I am guilty myself! There was nothing to get drunk. This is not rape at all, do not invent it." When a child is 13 years old and he gets drunk before
unconsciousness is a problem, and it is the responsibility of the parents as well as the community. When a group of guys takes advantage of a teenager's weakness, this is rape, and there is no excuse for that. Later, that ex-boyfriend admitted that he used my story several times for masturbation, imagining that he was one of my rapists. This is also a problem of society and modern culture, I think. We live in a world of rape culture. Rape is cool, it excites, especially massive. Fucking teenage schoolgirls is honorable.
For 12 years I have been working with psychotherapists. When I told my first psychotherapist what had happened, she told me that it was rape. I laughed. I denied. I said that I myself was guilty and asked for it myself. I said: "There were no bruises, so this is not rape."
Years later, now, I still can not fully believe it. I still find excuses. For example, that this is just a sign of the times, Moscow is the end of the 90s. The generation of children who grew up on the "Bachelor Party" or Russian rock. I still often think that I myself am to blame. Chronic guilt leads to the conclusion that something is really wrong with me and I do not deserve a normal life. I do not deserve happiness and success. I'm dirty and broken. I spend half the energy to refute this installation, and half to maintain it. The way I interpreted the facts in childhood and adolescence shaped my current beliefs. Many interpretations were incorrect and biased. As a child, I could not see a more complete picture and had a more egocentric perception of the world. With subsequent sex with many different short-term partners, I justified what happened and defended my interpretation: "This is normal, this is adult life, I am now adult." When they humiliated me, another interpretation worked: “I’m bad, I’m dirty, I deserve it”.
Fortunately, working with a psychotherapist is bearing fruit.
More recently, in the fall of 2014, when I was 29, in the very center of Moscow in broad daylight, with a difference of two months, two episodes occurred. Two men, aged 40-45, came to meet me, having reached me, one of them tried to grab me between my legs. I managed to stop the attempt by hitting him on the arm. I shouted after something about the police and that you can’t do that. They laughed together and walked away, as if nothing had happened. Two months passed. I was returning home, it was still light. A hefty Russian peasant of about forty years old, obviously drunk, came up behind me and grabbed my neck. He said in my ear: "What does such a girl do on the street alone?" I began to demand to remove my hands and let me go. People walked by. I asked for the help of one of the men, but he said: "Understand yourself", - and went on. I managed to escape. I stood in front of the offender and shouted in anger: “What do you allow yourself? I will call the police!” He called me a bitch and left.
Previously, I would be embarrassed, I would be ashamed, and I would quietly go further, hoping that no one noticed, and still would have thought: "What's wrong with me?" Now I feel angry and start screaming at the offenders. I think this is a healthier assessment of the situation and a normal reaction. Years of psychotherapy were not in vain. Unrecognized aggression in the past justifies the current. If we recognize aggression, it becomes more likely to prevent its recurrence.
I would like to then find at least one person who listened to me, hugged and explained that this is a rape, that millions of women go through this, but this is not the end of life and does not make me worse than others.
About the consequences. I fear men, do not trust people and hardly enter into long-term relationships, avoiding affection. I do not believe that you can love me, and even more I am afraid that I myself am not capable of loving either myself or others. I do not like to look at my body in the mirror. I do not have an orgasm. Doctors told me all my life that I would not be able to have children: polycystic, obstruction of the fallopian tubes, unmatched eggs, the devil knows what else. I went through a lot of diseases. I could not cope with this injury on my own and could not even get a school education. I accepted the position of the victim as the norm: my perceptions of the permissible were greatly distorted and I allowed to treat me as you please. Low self-esteem. Chronic guilt and shame. It is often difficult for me to determine when I am being manipulated. I find it difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood, because throughout my life I have received very contradictory signals. And, probably, the saddest thing is deep loneliness and a frequent desire to isolate themselves.
Much of this could have been avoided. According to my current psychotherapist, the psychological consequences are minimized if the family has a trusting relationship and the child tells the story to the parents, who in turn support it. Parents help the child to interpret events, avoiding the formation of false beliefs and the displacement of norms.
I wish I was more confident in my childhood. So I turned around and screamed then in the trolley bus. So I was indignant and asked Osman: "What are you doing?" I would like for me not to feel like a burden and a stranger in my family and therefore did not seek to leave home as soon as possible. I would like those guys, seeing a drunken teenager, to send me home, and not give them some vodka and drag them to the garages and take turns taking me home for my own satisfaction. I would like my mother to rush at me with a hug at home, cry, and ask me to tell everything that happened that night. I would like to be taken to a doctor and a psychologist specializing in early rape.
I would like my mother not to let me leave school and home at the age of 14, explaining the consequences of this decision. I would like to not know what it is like when a beloved man hits you. I would like to be able to stand up for myself. I would like my parents to show more love and care, spend more time on my sister and me, not on business, and not send me in infancy to live in Khabarovsk with my grandmother and foster grandparent. I would like my parents to give me more confidence, as well as tell me about sexual relationships and how important it is to take care of yourself and love your body. I would like to then find at least one person who listened to me, hugged and explained that this is a rape, that millions of women go through this, but this is not the end of life, it does not make me worse than others, that I have the right to full life, like everyone else.
The past cannot be corrected, but I have already done a great job to learn how to live and see the world differently. What I can do now is to continue to work with a psychotherapist, find false attitudes that hinder my development and change them. And I can share this story. I hope this will help someone.
