IGD Day 08
Sep. 10th, 2010 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sereneDay 08 – A moment, in great detail
A couple notes first:
1) I have often said I'd rather die than kill someone. That's mostly true, I think, though I'm not sure what I'll do if that's ever my actual choice, so I don't judge other people who kill in self-defense, etc.
2) Being stabbed and raped was not my fault AND surviving it doesn't mean I did anything right. I got lucky, but I could have died that day, and I won't be all that impressed with comments that try to make out that I was so awesome that I was spared. When people say shit like that, I want to shake them and ask what the women who died while being attacked ever did to deserve being dissed that way.
I've talked a bit about the time when I was stabbed and raped while I was working the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven. If you want to know more about it, you can go here and read an essay I wrote about it a long time ago.
The moment I am thinking of is this one:
During the time he stabbed me, quietly told me to get onto the floor, and raped me, my attacker (that's weird -- why is he MINE? I don't want him. Let's back up) -- the person who attacked me seemed like he was in a daze. He spoke very little and very quietly; he stared "through" me rather than at me; and it didn't seem to me like the lights were on, y'know?
Suddenly, though, he became aware, or so it seemed to me. The best way I have found to describe the change that came over his demeanor is to say that he seemed as though he had just awoken in the middle of doing this terrible thing, with me under him and my blood all over him.
And he seemed TERRIFIED.
I would be terrified, too, if that happened to me.
That moment is the moment I found compassion for this person. It's also the moment he decided to kill me. He went from being a kind of automaton who was quietly raping me to a frightened person who raised his arm with a hunting knife and had a clear intention of stabbing me to death.
So I fought. Until that moment, I had yielded, and done everything he told me to do without argument. When he changed demeanor, I started kicking. And screaming. And begging. And lying. (I told him I had three kids with no dad and he would leave them alone if he killed me, etc. Munchkin The Elder hadn't been born yet.)
After a couple of minutes of that, he shook it off, agreed not to kill me, and took his time getting out of the shop. But I lived.
I'm not sure I would have if it hadn't been for that moment, and to this day, I don't know what made it happen, or what the hell motivated him to do what he was doing in the first place.
There. That's cheery, huh?
A couple notes first:
1) I have often said I'd rather die than kill someone. That's mostly true, I think, though I'm not sure what I'll do if that's ever my actual choice, so I don't judge other people who kill in self-defense, etc.
2) Being stabbed and raped was not my fault AND surviving it doesn't mean I did anything right. I got lucky, but I could have died that day, and I won't be all that impressed with comments that try to make out that I was so awesome that I was spared. When people say shit like that, I want to shake them and ask what the women who died while being attacked ever did to deserve being dissed that way.
I've talked a bit about the time when I was stabbed and raped while I was working the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven. If you want to know more about it, you can go here and read an essay I wrote about it a long time ago.
The moment I am thinking of is this one:
During the time he stabbed me, quietly told me to get onto the floor, and raped me, my attacker (that's weird -- why is he MINE? I don't want him. Let's back up) -- the person who attacked me seemed like he was in a daze. He spoke very little and very quietly; he stared "through" me rather than at me; and it didn't seem to me like the lights were on, y'know?
Suddenly, though, he became aware, or so it seemed to me. The best way I have found to describe the change that came over his demeanor is to say that he seemed as though he had just awoken in the middle of doing this terrible thing, with me under him and my blood all over him.
And he seemed TERRIFIED.
I would be terrified, too, if that happened to me.
That moment is the moment I found compassion for this person. It's also the moment he decided to kill me. He went from being a kind of automaton who was quietly raping me to a frightened person who raised his arm with a hunting knife and had a clear intention of stabbing me to death.
So I fought. Until that moment, I had yielded, and done everything he told me to do without argument. When he changed demeanor, I started kicking. And screaming. And begging. And lying. (I told him I had three kids with no dad and he would leave them alone if he killed me, etc. Munchkin The Elder hadn't been born yet.)
After a couple of minutes of that, he shook it off, agreed not to kill me, and took his time getting out of the shop. But I lived.
I'm not sure I would have if it hadn't been for that moment, and to this day, I don't know what made it happen, or what the hell motivated him to do what he was doing in the first place.
There. That's cheery, huh?
no subject
Date: 2010-09-10 08:39 pm (UTC)Anyway, he's probably not alive anymore, I would guess, but if he is, I wonder whether he remembers that moment, too.
-J
no subject
Date: 2010-09-10 08:50 pm (UTC)No reason he wouldn't be alive any more, I suppose; he wasn't much older than I was.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-10 08:51 pm (UTC)-J
no subject
Date: 2010-09-11 04:27 am (UTC)