>I have never met anyone that has been raped and brushed it off like it was the same as eating cereal that morning instead of toast. So I have no perspective on this.
I think you might be misunderstanding the perspective quoted there. It's not about the rape being trivial so much as being no more a salient feature in their life than breaking a leg or some other traumatic but ultimately temporary pain. I'm sure somebody who felt the way you described exists but they're an extreme outlier.
I know that for me, the thing that feels most like reliving the experience is going through the calculus of whether I've suffered enough to be able to accept my own experience as legitimate. Retelling the story triggers that feeling rather than the feeling of the actual events.
I tried for several minutes to write you advice, but couldn't be confident that anything I might say would help. I hope your inner life gets better and you find peace.
I can understand the first paragraph perspective as being a valid one, but I can not understand how that would prompt a rape victim to complain about rape victims who want to shed light on rape as a crime. I know some people are immature and think that it's a grab for attention, but I think that these are immature and / or unresolved coping methods.
I had a therapist suggest to me that that was what I was doing to myself, re-traumatizing myself every time I remembered it. I do not think so. I think having a parent scream at me that what I experienced was not rape, was traumatic. I think having a parent prod and poke until I described my rape in detail was traumatic. I think my rape was traumatic, I felt violated. I think it continues to affect me sexually, to the point that I am almost hopeless in having a normal sexual life.
I do not desire living a life of suffering, but I allow myself to feel the sadness and the emotions that trauma caused. I have had people mock me and call me cruel names and say very cruel things, some people I was very close to, over the incident. I was convinced that I hated myself because of it, because of the whole thing. It was painful to accept that I had been raped, but it was not as painful being raped. I had almost been brought to believe that remembering being raped was suffering that I willfully brought onto myself. For me, beginning with that premise was mental hell. I could never resolve the feelings I had, I couldn't explain why I was crying all the time for what seemed like no reason. Everyone around me wanted a reason, but the reasons I gave when I had them weren't enough.
For me, talking about my rape when it is relevant helps me. Feeling like I have firm position and understanding of what happened to me helps me. Feeling like I am emotionally and intellectually strong despite my past (and how my past has affected me) helps me. I am genuinely sorry for what you experienced. In a similar light, I can not be confident with anything I can say to you to help, because maybe you have already found inner peace and balance. I'm just okay. I'm sad, but I'm okay with being sad, because there are lots of things that happen in life that are valid things to feel sad about.
Yes, I have. There's a certain resentment that comes with this question. Because it means that to comment on this issue my rape must in turn be deemed legitimate for my words to be legitimate. To be short on details for reasons that I hope a compassionate person might understand, it first started with things that probably don't fall under the category of 'rape' so much as molestation. Sexual assault is the legal term. But I was a child and had to live with this person for years, one half of the family knew and the other half denied everything.
I spent years locking my door every night, because if I didn't I had to worry about them coming into my room, waking up with their leer hovering over me. I've definitely been traumatized by this aspect. To this day I'm afraid to sleep with the door open. I rationalize it to myself as a fear of malevolent spirits but it's fairly obvious what the true fear is.
That's probably not good enough for you, and for that I resent you further.
Ultimately upon reflection I find that it wasn't so much the molestation itself that was particularly bad, at one point in high school I noted to myself that I'd rather re-experience it once every three days than experience three days of school. (I wasn't particularly bullied, I just despised school itself that much.) What was absolutely traumatizing was what happened after. The denial, living with this person that's not being held accountable for their actions.
Having to deal with the fact that you're not allowed to talk about what happened or you're a dirty liar, or you'll start a huge argument, or this or that will happen. The one thing you want most is validation, and validation is in short supply. Even for the victim of a more 'traditional' rape we can see this in action. How your friends are forced to take sides because of the huge weight of what a big deal this is. (http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/370ayh/ever...)
I didn't want things to be a big deal, I just wanted them to acknowledge what happened and take steps to make sure it didn't happen again.
(As a final note of pedantry, that's not what benevolent means.)
I think you might be misunderstanding the perspective quoted there. It's not about the rape being trivial so much as being no more a salient feature in their life than breaking a leg or some other traumatic but ultimately temporary pain. I'm sure somebody who felt the way you described exists but they're an extreme outlier.
I know that for me, the thing that feels most like reliving the experience is going through the calculus of whether I've suffered enough to be able to accept my own experience as legitimate. Retelling the story triggers that feeling rather than the feeling of the actual events.
I tried for several minutes to write you advice, but couldn't be confident that anything I might say would help. I hope your inner life gets better and you find peace.