I Was Raped and I'm Not Ashamed.

PTSD, 2015: 

Delegate Brian Kurcaba (R-WV) was quoted by multiple news sources today as having said, "Obviously, rape is awful. [But] What is beautiful is the child who could come from this." This is on the heels of West Virginia GOP leaders attempting to revive and repeal a woman's right to choose an abortion in cases of rape or incest.

As the result of these articles, which I posted to Twitter, I angrily replied that perhaps Kurcaba's parents should've aborted him, (Because what a stupid, insensitive asshole this guy is!) I have been besieged with violently angry Tweets from conservative religious extremists who are intent on lambasting my character, my beliefs, and my choices. These individuals maintain that I only read the headline and not the article, which is untrue. I read the article from several different news sources. In brief, I was called a "knee-jerk liberal" who "hates kids and wants to kill them," and a "baby killer," among other sickening insults, such as "It's not raping if you're willing."

I responded to each of the hateful Tweets by attempting to redirect their anger into compassion by telling them that I was a repeated survivor of a violent rape. It's impossible, in 140 characters, to tell my story as to why I would have an impassioned retort towards Kurcaba's statement. I said what I could in a Twitter-span and promptly blocked those users who came after me. They're still coming after me.

I parted company with the man who raped me this day, August 5, 2010, 

This updated entry, August 5, 2019:

"You're lucky I love you, because who else would, given everything that's wrong with you?" I was told.

Already having been assaulted by my boyfriend, and him doing a massive amount of bullshit no woman should allow into any kind of romantic relationship, I told him I "wouldn't know a healthy relationship if it bit me in the ass," he told me, "This is. This is normal. This is healthy. This is a healthy relationship." Well, ok. Then thank heavens I told more than one of my physicians on record to add that health to my chart, even though I didn't want to pursue his arrest at the time. It was too much to bear. I know my doctors would realistically secure me safely, and he would get carted to prison, at least for some time. Turns out, there is still time in 2019, just getting in, to have him questioned and then some...but I told them, "He has money and he has power. I have nothing." But I would have. I just didn't ask. 

We were together for a total of about 3 years. (He has since remarried the woman he began seeing when I was making my final exit. He hates children. He didn't want to have the first daughter he had with his first wife. He told me that Leslie "tricked him" into having a baby when they'd "agreed" not to have children. Now he's adopted the young daughter of his current wife? Ok. If that puts food on the table and satisfies her with enough money to not have to get on hand and knee to clean his home for $200 a month like I did. I was never asked kindly or lovingly if I wouldn't mind if I had the day off, to clean the house and he would help me out with a few monthly bills. Poking at my nationality and the stereotype of what clean-freaks we are...and how many women clean houses...he would say "Can the Polish cleaning lady come on...day...?" He has lost so many jobs in the last decade alone in Chicago, no wonder he set up camp with the girlfriend, who owned her own house in the northwest suburbs.)

Still, it's difficult for a 120 lb woman to fight against a 300 lb man holding her down, forcing sexual intercourse (oral, vaginal and anal) upon her, penetrating her with kitchen cleaning brushes, and urinating on her. All of this happened to me during our relationship. The chokehold had to be the most frightening of the specific times my life was actually flashing before my eyes and ready to meet my maker. One hand held the back of my head; the other, monstrously larger than my tiny neck, I was honestly seeing stars when I heard him say, "I could kill you right now and no one would ever know..." 

I'm not exaggerating.

I was emotionally and verbally abused as well, obviously. I tolerated infidelity he was pulling with a 19-year-old French college student (so he said she was). He was so stupid even changing his iPhone lock code almost every day. Like I wasn't looking over side-eyed at it. The texts between them sickened me. He thought that the child was his soulmate. He asked "Taylor Bounds" (the French? girl) to dress up like a little girl and send him pictures. I found pictures on his desktop computer of this young blond teenager with her hair in pigtails and very red rouge. She was holding a stuffed animal with another girl in the photo doing the same. That was just over a few months from being child pornography. The texts made me sick. One, in particular, he and I were out to dinner at a nice trattoria near me in Chicago...and he said he was going to go outside for a few minutes and have his nightly condescending phone call to his unwanted bio-daughter. ("Quarantine is a fancy word for staying alone so you don't get anyone else sick.") Our children were both 2000 babies. Except my son is really intelligent and already knew what the f'ing word meant when he was 9 or so. And I wanted my son. I was blessed beyond measure. My son never liked my boyfriend. He didn't think he was a good man. My son has always had a very good barometer when it comes to my dating. Say what you will. Anyway, regarding the child porn girl-she texted him laughing "You're out to dinner with HER but you're texting ME." 

That was as much as I could piece together spying around, while I was continually criminally sexually assaulted. The healthy part of the relationship ended long before that. "Healthy" when it came to my boyfriend was quizzical after I found a lengthy lawsuit in which he was named a defendant and listed 17 counts against him personally of sexual harassment while he was at the job he briefly held at a casino in Kansas City, towards a subordinate female co-worker. It was a civil matter by the time of the lawsuit, but as I read each count against him, I could imagine each one and verify in my mind that he was guilty. (The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount of money.)

The question on everyone's mind is always, "Why didn't you just leave him?" That answer is impossible if one hasn't been in such a situation. "Why didn't you report him to the police?" Because knowing his neck choke-hold, he would've killed me. And if anyone could call into question was I being "raped" or not...Also, he was a very high-profile business executive in Chicago who had a good chunk of dough. I was a perfect target for this relationship. I am a struggling single mother who would get crushed in court. I didn't even have enough money to GET divorced. I finally did leave him, but it took a long time.

Before I left my ex-boyfriend, I did tell my ex-husband that this man had slapped me across the face more than once. My husband was a very even-tempered man, but even this, he knew was messed up.  My psychotherapist diagnosed me with PTSD and severe anxiety disorder. I was literally petrified of men being near me or touching me (even a hug), except for a very select few with whom I was still vaguely comfortable. Certainly, I was in no realm of shape to be intimate with a man, and haven't been in a sexual relationship since I went through that experience.

Fortunately, after I had my only son, I experienced secondary infertility, so it was literally impossible for me to get pregnant. Still, I am vehemently pro-choice and believe it is solely my decision, not the government's, not my church's, not my family's, not my doctor's as to whether or not HAD I gotten pregnant as a result of these rapes if I were to choose to have an abortion. There's a difference in being pro-choice and pro-abortion. I'm not pro-abortion. God doesn't get to decide this one. I do.

My personal opinion is that there is nothing "beautiful" about being governmentally forced to carry a pregnancy and have a child as the result of rape or in the cases of incest. It's unthinkably horrible. To have a baby you resent with a man you detest, who should be in jail, does not make for a happy family situation. I wouldn't put myself or an innocent child through life like that. "Andrea hates kids." What bollocks. I love my son with every shred of my being.

I'm not a "baby killer" or a "fetus murderer." I didn't have a freakin' abortion! All I said was that if I was placed in that awful situation, I probably would have had one. Most of the people I know, never mind a few dozen complete Twitter strangers, do not know the extent of my medical and mental health issues with medications and disorders which need to be managed, which would endanger and possibly terminate the gestation of a zygote or fetus without me even having to go through an abortion. Call me selfish, but I would put my own life and well-being ahead of an unwanted zygote's. I already have a child to raise, who was planned and wanted and was a blessing.

Am I a liberal? Oh, most definitely. A bleeding-heart liberal. I'm also a practicing leftist Christian.

Here's an idea! Let's HAVE all the rape/incest babies, gather them together, and have the GOP raise them during sessions of Congress. You know, diaper bags with their respective state seals embroidered on them. More crying and crabbing than Congress s on their own. Having all of this "beauty" around the GOP in the form of rape and incest babies would cause the Capitol to glow in rainbows of miracles sent by the Good Lord, who, of course, founded our great country.

Oh! Update! I've just been called bigoted, gullible and someone wished my parents had aborted me.

Thanks.

Wait! I have an even better idea than Congressional babysitting. Why don't you all spread your legs while you're held down, have a kitchen scrub brush with a long handle penetrate you (as you scream for your attacker to stop and say no, and he doesn't stop) and then wonder if that's better or worse than having a cluster of cells removed from your uterus. (Moot point for me. I don't even HAVE a uterus anymore.)

I am a survivor of rape. I didn't die. I am deeply scarred, deeply angry and unforgiving towards the man who assaulted me, He took years off of my life, which I'm fighting to get back in my own way and on my own terms. 

My story is not told out of courage. It is not told out of personal defense. It is the story of how a woman who is repeatedly assaulted responds to incredibly insensitive and erroneous comments made by men in positions of political power who mistakenly think they have a stake in what they deem a beautiful miracle, which is actually an unthinkable horror. Guess what? Neither politicians nor conservative extremist right-wing evangelical whackjobs get a vote in what happens to the body of a woman who is raped or assaulted.

That said, those of you assassinating me on social media? I'm laughing at your ignorance and I feel deeply sorry that you are so misguided in your patterns of thinking. It is my wish that should bills once vetoed re-emerge and are passed into law, and that women lose their right to choose, Mr. Kurcaba is chased down with a tire iron shoved up his anus, because it'd be a nice taste of the medicine doled out to me over the course of the relationship with my rapist.

Now, Ye Olde Conservatives, tend to your own youngins, don't forget to leave your loaded guns where the kids can get a hold of them (because YOU get to exercise your Second Amendment rights), read your Bibles (especially Leviticus!) and, if you have any compassion or brains, maybe visit a domestic violence shelter and have a talk with the folks here. Talk to women who have had to make difficult choices in their lives concerning unwanted pregnancies and find out how they're feeling instead of grandstanding either from Washington DC or the sanctity of your Twitterverse.

There's very little you can say which would insult or hurt me any more than I have already been hurt in my life and I do not take your comments seriously, certainly not in 140 character nibbles (though that's probably the extent of your intellectual capabilities in the first place).

I know I'm not the only survivor of rape and assault who feels this way. My wish is that my written testimony helps those who feel they have no voice HAVE a voice vis-a-vis. 

The man who raped me will be visited by the authorities. Finally.