Thursday, September 15, 2011

I have two things to write about today.

First, I had a nightmare again. I have Post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. It is very difficult to live with, but thankfully, my symptoms are much less than what they used to be, and I think I am getting closer to some day no longer being diagnosed with PTSD. Nightmares are something I used to live with nightly, and in the recent months, have been very occasional, which I think is very good. I have noticed that I get streaks of nightmares and they then will go away for a while again. Well, I had a bad dream yesterday, and a nightmare today. I'll keep monitoring my anxiety and how I'm feeling, and try to sort out stressors that I have in my life, in order to hopefully avoid having more nightmares. But for now, I'm just going to write about my nightmare.

I don't remember the plot of the nightmare, other than that the Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO) whom I first called the morning after surviving rape, was in the nightmare. Just her appearance in my nightmare is traumatic to me. Traumatic because she is inextricably linked to trauma for me, and because her actions caused a second trauma for me, after the excruciating trauma which is rape.

I was so upset the morning I called her. My mind knew I had been violated, but at the same time, it refused to call what happened to me rape. My thought process was, "If what just happened to me wasn't rape, everything will be okay, and I will deal with it, but if what just happened to me was rape, everything will not be okay, and I won't be able to deal with it." Just assigning the word "rape" to my experience made everything a million times worse than it was. I thought, "Rape happens to other people. It does not happen to me." I thought, "I can get through the pain of this experience. But I cannot get through rape." It was with that mindset that I called the PCMO, a person, who, it turns out, had already violated me in overstepping the doctor-patient boundaries, but whom I trusted very deeply and considered a good friend.

I said something along the lines of, "I had sex last night, and then he finished. The second time, I told him to stop, and he wouldn't, and... he hurt me." The PCMO, whom I will call B from this point forward, did not respond in a manner that was validating to me as a survivor of rape, at a time when I needed validation more than anything in the world. Invalidation coming from a person I trusted so deeply was excruciatingly painful, and embarked me on a tumultuous second trauma, which I now have to heal from in addition to the trauma of rape. NOT something minor, and not something that any survivor should have to survive; the ignorance of a medical professional about how to compassionately respond to rape.

B asked me a series of questions. Then she said, in reference to the man, whom I had been dating and whom I had told her about previously, "Maybe it got to his head. Maybe he didn't mean it. He sounded like a nice guy." I sobbed on the other end of the phone. He didn't mean to hurt me like this. He was still a "nice guy." He wasn't a man who would do something like rape a woman. He was nice. Yeah. And--- because he didn't mean to hurt me, then I would be okay, I would pick myself up and move through this excruciating pain, whatever it was called. Just don't call it rape.

I cannot even begin to explain here how that conversation haunted me for months. I cannot even begin to explain how I had to effectually extract myself from a friendship which was unhealthy, inappropriate, and to take myself away from another situation in which I, as the patient and PCV, was vulnerable, and which was definitely a factor in the second trauma. B was a person I loved. B was kind to me. B also hurt me so so much, second only to the rapist, in telling me that he really didn't mean to hurt me in my most vulnerable moment, when I most needed validation of my feelings.

I will probably write more on this topic later. Having a nightmare with B in it is always unnerving. Unnerving because I no longer think about B every waking moment, and because when I do think about her, it is unpleasant, traumatic, and angering. Angering because B still works for the Peace Corps. B still works with PCV survivors. And I would not wish a second trauma because of what B said upon any PCV survivor. No one deserves to be raped, and no one deserves a second trauma. Secondary trauma is completely preventable if the medical person is PROPERLY TRAINED to respond to the trauma of sexual assault.

The second thing I want to write about today is that the Peace Corps finally responded to my FOIA request that I submitted in March 2011, after surviving rape. I wanted to know about policies that were in place. This FOIA request was auspiciously responded to by the Peace Corps right after Two Former PCV's sue the Peace Corps under FOIA. Hmm. I wonder if that was a coincidence.

Anyway, I will talk more about what I received in my FOIA request at a later date. Signing off for now.

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