Triggered...

I can't remember the last time I felt triggered, not about this anyways... I've recently begun reading again, 6 books in a week (they average 6 hours read time each).. I'm on my 7 book, and the character is drugged, and her inevitable rape is described to her in great detail.... The way he assaults her before it happens, as he drives... The feelings she expressed, the forceful touch...I know that touch. He never did rape her, the car was hit and he was killed, but the damage was done to her and to me. The character, I have to remind myself is fictional, is lucky..she remembers nothing...I'm haunted by it. 

I was assaulted as a child, again as a teen, and again as a young adult. The best sex of my life was consensual, but I later found out the guy I had sex with had raped many of my friends...conscious and unconscious (drunk).

I'm engaged, getting married in less than 3 months, madly in love, yet somewhere deep inside of me is this terrible feeling, this guilt and hatred, knowing that the best sex I had was with a rapist. 

The day it happened, we had arranged to hang out, we discussed catching up and he was going to show me his new Warhammer figurines (he was a friend of my long term ex, and I was on a binder - my ex left me for my best friend). Well...I got there, and it wasn't long after the hellos that he pressed against me and started undoing my button up plaid shirt...I cringe at the thought of what would have happened had I pushed him away, had I said no... Would he have accepted it? I think not, but maybe? 

My stagette is being held at a bar that my fiance and I used to frequent, in fact it's where we were when we expressed interest in one another (we'd met a couple times 6 years prior through friends)... I used to go to that bar a lot, before him.. so much so I knew the bouncers by name, and most of the waitresses and bussers.... The bouncers, they're there to protect women from gross guys... They make women feel safe and secure.... But what I found out after is, they do that at work, but not on their own time. On their own time, that can be just like the guys they push off of you, forceful, non-compliant, rapists. 

For a long time I couldn't go back, my friends didn't understand my sudden change in heart, my loss in desire to go out...to go there... After a while I forced myself to go back, I retraumatized myself repeatedly. I escaped his looks, I darted around the bar avoiding him... His usual post was near our usual spot, but as we moved, so did he... I don't know if he's still there...I fear what I'll feel, going back, being triggered as I am now.

I haven't slept properly in days...I'm exhausted all day, in desperate need of caffeine and naps, which I deny for the most part (coffee in the morning only)... Yet, it's 12:30am and here I am, wide awake again. I'm usually out cold by 10pm, even with multiple cups of coffee and naps... 

I can feel what happened to me, from those three different "men".... I feel disgusted. I haven't felt this in so long. I didn't know it was possible to be triggered, I've done everything to make sure I don't get triggered... I never expected it this time, and I was so deep into my book, feeling what she felt, that I refelt it for myself.