Anonymous Story: Validation of Worth

I had just graduated high school & got a job traveling with a carnival. Traveling with the carnival meant a lot of long trips in different towns where we would stay overnight. All the rumors your hear about carnies are true, we like to drink, we can be trouble and we certainly know how to have a good time when the rides closed down for the night.

Most carnies don’t like newbies, but I was very close to a girl there that got me the job and she had been there forever, so the others seemed to warm up very fast, and that made me feel special, being a part of the real crew.

On one trip out of town we brought the trailers to camp in and the bosses and “real carnies” spent the night drinking & playing games. One man in particular took a liking to me and I was flattered by his attention. When it started to get late and the others were crawling into their bed for the night, we grabbed another beer and sat in the tilt a whirl, laughing and talking and he asked if he could kiss me, I said yes. We made out for a while and I was drunk and tired so I decided to go lie down and he decided to join me in the camper. There were three other people sleeping in the camper so I quietly got in and went to my bed, he fallowed me in and lied down next to me. I didn’t mind him laying there and having him put his arms around me but then he started getting more handsy which made me uncomfortable. Before I knew it he was on top of me, I could feel him position himself inside me and I didn’t want to have sex I tried to push him up, there were other people in there for goodness sake, but he kept thrusting into me and finally i said no, stop, no and it took a couple minutes of me whispering no and trying to push his heavy body off of me before he finally rolled over and then fell asleep. I didn’t really know what to make of what had happened.

In the morning one of the other workers in the camper came up to me all smug saying “soo I know what you two were up to last night” and I was so embarrassed the first thing that just exploded from my mouth was “than did you hear me saying no?” And his look snapped. Looking back at this he knew what happened to me the second I said those words, it took me a long time to understand & still am trying to.

The next day at work of course I would have to face who I had spent the night pushing off of me, and I tried to play it cool and he just shrugged me off, as if since I said no and pushed him off and it wasn’t “good sex” I had lost all credibility to him as both a Carnie and a person. That really detroyed me, to feel guilty for sayin no. When I left the carnival a month later credibility didn’t matter and I started to think about what happend, and if it was my fault, I had been drinking I let him kiss me, I led him on, was it really rape? I was drunk. But then I think about how heavy he was and trying to push him off of me and not being able to budge him, how I said no, was this rape? The way I felt guilty still blurs the lines to me, was I raped?

I’ve never said anything it just was suppressed, unconsciously ruining my relationships and damaging my view on myself. I shrugged it off at first, just moving on from it, but it would creep back and I felt really dirty, I had let him stay in my bed after all. I still feel like I am to blame, I could have prevented it completely but what happened happened. I am so confused about the situation and when I think about it I get a flashback of squirming under him pushing him away but him not stopping. So here I am three years later and the trauma and damage this caused has caught up and now I need to deal with it.
What’s interesting most people who have been raped refuse sex afterwords, for me it was validation, because he had discredited me I felt like I needed to do that to be accepted, that has damaged me as a person which has led to unhealthy, abusive relationships. My self worth crumbles that day, and being able to maintain healthy relationships with people was also hard for me, did I have to prove something to them too? Was I so disposable that if I didn’t put out I had to get out?

I was lucky to find a solid relationship after that but never explained why I would act the way I did and because of this and other complications it ended. after this I moved and way too suddenly started seeing someone because I was lonely, I had met him and because I didn’t know anyone I started seeing him because he gave me attention and so I put out.

It turns out he wasn’t into gentle things I found out about two month into our relationship. He used to pin me down and cut me just to watch me bleed and when it came to sex he would hold my head to the floor and make me kneel, he would call me names and slap me, pin me to the ground and hold my arms down. I felt like this was my worth, I was a slut and I started to feel this is what I deserved.
One night he was being extra forceful to the point I was crying, I wanted it to stop and he started having sex with me I was sobbing and just waiting for it to be over I don’t remember if I said anything, maybe moaned a no through the crying & I was squirming away but he didn’t stop. It can’t be rape if I didn’t say stop(can it?), but my body language screamed no. And I don’t know what to make of that, my validation and worth deminished after that, I sincerely believe that’s all I was good for, I was just “a slut, a little whore, cunt, bitch” and so on. The relationship didn’t last much longer.

And now months and months later I am trying to heal myself, heal the scars on my body, and the torment and flashbacks that haunt my thought. I am trying to feel peace, because I will kill myself believing my worth is only In sexually pleasing a man. I feel really small sometimes, and do feel worthless still sometimes, mostly I am ashamed that this has happened, embarrassed, and broken. But this is a first step, and now I am letting strength back into my life, and proving those thoughts I have wrong. I don’t want to be depressed all the time, I want to lead a normal healthy life & me writing this is me taking the first step of that journey