HBH 2012 (free write)

when i think about 2012 i get this overwhelming sense of sadness. at the start of the year i was blissfully in love with a black jewish woman who i was most satisfied and happy with. i was instantly in love with her in a way i cannot explain in words. i can only give an image. starburst shooting from my chest at the simplest thought of her. she had me soaring. i felt so safe in that relationship with her that i was not looking to go anywhere else. but there was something telling me i should go elsewhere because she was not being truthful. she was a liar and a cheat, a wolf in sheeps clothing, which then lead me to give myself permission to be that way with her. i am so disappointed that i allowed myself to go to that level rather than get out of the relationship. if i had known then what i know now, i would have ran away from her then. i would not have waited and picked her apart in order to allow myself to break her heart. i should have just gone. but as usual i held on. giving her my shoulders to cry on even when those tears were due to my decision of breaking up. there was one night when i was there for her and i was reluctant to go there and comfort her but she needed someone and i did not know what else to do but to go to her. so i went. i held her and as i did i felt her soul enter back into her body. i brought her back into herself. we went to sleep. i woke up the next morning not being able to breathe and my face was pressed down in a pillow, my arms restrained, my pants at my ankles and my soul leaving my body. i remember her fucking me so hard and aggressively that i felt like my four year old self. powerless, scared, alone. she took something from me that i never expected to be taken from a woman. from her. the sexually abused, gang raped lover of mine was nothing more than a perpetrator to me. the skeletons in her closet were just a mirror image of herself. i laid there in a ball, frozen. she had to redress me because i could not move. i was in shock. i could not speak. i felt lifeless, my soul stripped from my spirit. the days to come were more empty than i could have ever imagined. being in love with someone who had just done something so volatile to me was something my mind would not allow me to grasp. i couldn't grasp it because i would not let myself. instead i welcomed this lover in my bed over and over again so she could strip me bare of all that was left. one year and two months later i am still not whole again. not trying to rebuild the old self but really trying to grow into someone new. someone who has the lived experiences of a survivor but can separate the trauma from the self. i have been in this place before, targeted, victimized, raped. i often wonder if this lover used this act of violence and power to punish me for not submitting to her. i am saddened that during the rape i did not scream. i submitted. i let my trauma drown me. the feelings of powerlessness and fear took over and paralyzed me. i thought i would be stronger this time. i thought i could fight for myself. there is something really mentally wrong with the fact that i just laid there. i let it happen. part of me blames myself for not following my gut and not going over there in the first place and the other part of me hates her for making herself seem so safe and then doing this to me. what makes it even worse for me is that she denied that it happened at all. as with anything else that is too painful for me, i put this beast of an event into a box. i continued to have this person in my life allowing her to convince me that her mere apology would hide the scars i would now carry with me forever. i do not wish to hold hate in my heart for her but today i do. i hate her for hurting me. i hate her for making me feel empty. i hate her for being that wolf in sheeps clothing and appearing to be this perfectly awesome person when she raped me. she denied the rape. she played the victim. i finally realized that this person was not aiding me in my path of healing and was only causing more trauma and cut her out of my life. i must admit that my scars still hurt. i will never forget what she did to me.