It’s difficult, sometimes impossible, to cum without thinking about it. I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones; some women can’t cum at all after they’ve been raped.

The flashbacks get to be too much. Everything is going fine, and then—

It’s
like
tripping
from high in
a movie playing
backward.

You’re falling to your death one minute. The next, you’re peering down the side of the building, thinking, “This is going to be awful.”

The movie lurches forward again. Again and again, I just keeping tripping and looking down, tripping and looking down. The impact will never kill me, but the fear from falling feels like it might.

I suddenly remember my boyfriend’s inside me, and I freak out. “Get out. Get out.” I’m screaming it. I’m shaking. I’m falling now.

Forever?

No. Eventually, the attack passes. Eventually, I’m back in real time.

But this is only what happens when the panic attacks and depression haven’t taken over. This is sometimes.

When the fear and the falling feeling play inside me constantly, I can’t fathom sex. Like today. The idea of a hand on my breast, a penis inside me, even a woman’s naked body, makes me feel—robbed, somehow. Assaulted. I don’t want to be touched.

But I still get turned on.

So I turn to porn. Despite my higher functions, I turn to rape porn, in particular.

I think I’ve told you before that I need Sam to degrade me during sex. He refuses to do that beyond holding me down or covering my mouth—and sometimes not even that, as he often feels too disturbed by my desire. So, I do a lot of imagining during sex. I imagine a son raping his mother. I imagine a father raping his daughter. That last is probably the most common one.

God, I can’t believe I’m admitting this to you. It’s so sick. I understand it’s because my sexuality was awakened by these monsters and then repeatedly pocked, but that doesn’t make me feel less dirty every time I touch myself. It only makes me try harder to banish them from my bed and mind. I don’t want them linked to my sexuality anymore. I don’t want them to keep hurting me. Every time I can’t orgasm, they take my body from me again. I just want my body back. I want my sexuality to myself. I used to think it was possible. I would just keep trying. Denying, denying.

A few months ago, I finally gave in to it. I told Sam my dirty little secret, and he said, “So what? If it turns you on and makes you cum, why not do it? You’re not hurting anybody.”

I hadn’t thought about it like that before.

“But myself,” I argued.

He had an answer for that, too. “Not even yourself. It seems the only damage this is causing is the immense amount of guilt you’re putting on yourself because of something that was done to you. It’s just another way for you to blame yourself.”

I hadn’t thought about that before, either. I had found a new reason to blame myself. I had proof that I was fucked up: I like rape.

In reality, I only like the fantasy. I can trace it back to 1999, when I was twelve and writing lengthy fiction stories about exactly the type of thing being augmented and glamorized in the sex stories that now turn me on. I can safely say I don’t really want to be raped. I’ve really been raped. I didn’t like it.

Sure, when I’m really sick, really down, I say I’m to blame, that I enjoyed it. Or, at least, I try to argue Andy didn’t know I wasn’t enjoying it: I sent mixed signals, confused him—confused all of them with my “promiscuity.” But that’s my guilt talking. I know that’s not true. Just because I came while Andy forced himself on me doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.

I have to keep telling myself that—until I believe it.