How to be a Survivor Instead of a Victim

Yesterday as I was getting my hair done, I heard a story on the news about sexual child abuse. The reporter said some studies showed that "as many as 25 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys are sexually assaulted by the time they reach 18". This doesn't surprise me in the least bit; as someone who has multiple friends who were assaulted as children, I feel like if anything, this number is misleadingly low. I, too, am a survivor of sexual child abuse. As a survivor, I feel like I am qualified to present my insights on this subject. So without further adieu, I'd like to jump right in to this week's topic: How to be a survivor instead of a victim.

More often than not, child abuse happens in places people think are safe. They let their guard down because they think that nothing like this could ever happen in such a safe environment. It could be under the protection of parents, under the protection a public place can bring, in the sanctity of your own home. For me, it happened  when we lived on a military base in Maryland.

I was around seven at the time. Down the cul-de-sac from us lived a woman who was in the military and her son, who was in his mid to late teens or possibly his early twenties. Whatever his age, my parents determined him to be harmless enough. He used to hang around with my friends and I at times. One day, he approached me holding a red ball that he had apparently found in the woods. I asked if I could play with it, to which he responded that I could, if I gave him something in return. When I asked what, he pointed to my shirt, and told me all I had to do was raise my shirt for just a moment.

And I think the next part is what made me so ashamed for years that I didn't tell a soul; I did what he asked. I was so young that I don't think I really had a concept of what sexuality was at all, and therefore no concept of what was wrong or right in that sort of situation. I knew that instinctively it didn't seem right, but after a bit of coercing I decided there would be no harm in it. And to some degree I'm still ashamed of that to this day, even though I don't think I could've known better. Which brings me to my second insight about sexual abuse. The number one reason I think that "25 percent of girls and 17 percent of boys" is actually a lower number than the truth - A lot of sexual abuse victims feel too ashamed to say anything. They're scared of how society will view them. They're scared that somehow, ultimately, this is their fault. Sometimes their abuser will make sure they think this, or sometimes it's just the scared imagination of an abuse victim running rampant.

As time moved on, things became more violent. Looking evolved to touching, to ignoring my more and more frequent cries of "no", to threats and knives held against my thin, trembling throat. There were legitimately times that I thought I was going to die by the hand of this man; he wanted me to know he would do it in a heartbeat. That was the other reason I didn't tell anyone; he drilled it into my head that not only would no one believe me, but that he would kill me if I told a soul. In the fragile psyche of a child, I began to feel like no matter where I hid or who I thought would protect me, he could find me, and he would slit my throat.

The fear in that sort of situation is indescribable; every moment, waking or asleep, was a nightmare for me. I would come home from a session with him and pretend to not feel well; I would change my clothes and bury my bloody undergarments in the woods near the house. I would not tell a soul about anything that would happened. I thought that the rest of my life would be this way.

But one day, I finally told someone. A male friend of mine, about 3 years older than me. I told him about the session with the red ball, still at that moment not realizing that it was anything bad or in any way associated with the other bad stuff that had been done to me. I told someone, but only because I didn't realize I was telling them. I can't imagine what it was like for him to hear me tell that story without any emotion or indication that I thought what had transpired was wrong. It must have been disturbing. I remember he became upset and said he was going to tell his mother. I cried, begged him not to, but he went to do just that. I ran to my house and locked myself in my room and cried, scared I was going to be in so much trouble.

Even as my parents were asking me concerned questions, I was so afraid of being in trouble with both him and them that I tried to minimize the damage that had been done by my slip up. I swore he had never touched me, just looked. And after awhile, they had no choice but to relent their questioning. It was clear they didn't believe me, but they had no proof to the contrary.

Although he was never charged with anything, he moved away almost right after my slip up. I didn't sleep well for months; I spent most of my nights either awake and frightened at every little creak in the house, or dreaming that he had come back to kill me like he had promised. It took me about a year to realize he probably wasn't coming back. After that, I blocked the entire thing out of my memory for years. My parents never spoke of it, I never spoke of it, and soon, it was as if it had never happened.

You can't just block something like this out of your memory for good; no matter how hard you try, the memories start to creep up on you. It might just be a feeling of unease, but it could also manifest as irritability or in the form of dreams. For me, it began with unease and then evolved into nightmares. I began to dream about the man with the red ball. I began to dream about the things he said and did to me. Bit by bit, I began to realize that these weren't just dreams. These things had actually happened to me. I'm not sure what I felt when I first truly realized the weight of this revelation. I think I was numb. In shock. How could I have forgotten this? It just didn't seem possible. Yet, it was.

I was already on a steady descent into teen depression, and this pushed me over the edge. I was a victim of sexual abuse; this was the first time I ever attempted to kill myself. I tried to hang myself from the door knob in my room. I could feel my life slipping away from me right before the rope I was using broke. And as I lay there, neck bruised, gasping for air, I realized that this was the lowest point of my entire life.

The thing is that in your lowest moment, things can only start to look up. Every moment from that point forward is higher than the last. It has to be. Slowly, you can begin to recover. Slowly, you can become a survivor instead of a victim. A victim is who I was in my lowest moment; abused to the point where I wanted nothing more than to die, to not remember anymore. A victim is someone who is still mourning their losses. A victim is someone who cannot move on.

A survivor is who I am now; who I became when I decided that if I couldn't kill myself, I would have to learn to move on. A survivor is someone who won't let their past slow them down or make them less than they could have been otherwise. A survivor is someone who uses their past to motivate them and help them become more than they ever imagined.

It's an incredible struggle to overcome the obstacles of your past. There are some low points along the way; some nights where you wonder what you're trying to accomplish and what all the hardship is worth. But there are also high points where you in no way have to question if it was worth the struggle. I live in those high points almost every single day of my life.

My name is Erin. I was raped at the age of seven. I am a survivor, not a victim.

Insights into Living with a Life Long Illness

Last night, I woke up with a feeling of discomfort and pain in my back. Groggily, I rolled from one side to the other, and sighed in relief. This was not the first time or the last time I would wake up to change positions and alleviate my growing discomfort. Why? I have been diagnosed with a life long condition called Degenerative Disc Disease - which is, as it might sound like, degenerative arthritis of the spine.

It's a scary experience to be told that something is going to be "wrong" with you for the rest of your life; it doesn't matter if it's a life long diagnosis of depression or of physical pain, it's still life changing to hear that you will never be in a "normal" state of health again.

As a recent high school graduate, I wanted to get as far away from my family as I could. I applied and was accepted to the University at Buffalo. About halfway through the year, I stood up from my computer chair and started to cross the room. I was suddenly hit with waves of extreme pain that radiated from my back to my torso and down my legs; it felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly. I fell to the ground in pain and could barely bring myself to breathe, the pain was so bad. In about 30 minutes to an hour the pain receded but was still present. I called the health hotline on campus and was instructed to see a doctor immediately. I did. I was told I had sciatica, a fairly common occurrence.  They prescribed me muscle relaxers and Vicodin and told me that it would go away "in time", but to see a doctor again if it did not subside.


I waited patiently for over a month in pain. It in no way got less painful or intense, and I was still occasionally hit with waves of extreme pain that would leave me crippled and stuck in place for hours at a time. I saw a different doctor and was told the same thing, and given refills of the same medication. When the school year ended, I was still in pain. It had subsided from sharp pain into a deep, burning pain in my left leg and lower back. I returned home to take care of my sick mother, feeling extremely miserable. I finally asked my mother to take me to our family physician. I had high hopes -- surely my physician would be able to figure out what was going on. She wasn't some random doctor I had managed to make an appointment with, she had worked with me for years. She came into the room and we discussed my symptoms and she said the same exact thing doctors had been saying all along.


This kind of brings me to my first point about having a chronic illness - sometimes the most frightening part is not knowing what's wrong with you. You start trying to self diagnose, which does absolutely no good. You're always going to assume it's the worst thing possible because you're scared. I had seen three doctors and none of them had any idea what was going on, or, more importantly, any interest in figuring out what was causing my pain.

That doctor eventually stopped accepting our insurance, and I found myself in yet another doctor's office, not having any real hope that he would show any more initiative than the others. He came in and we discussed my symptoms. He started out by saying he would refill my prescriptions, and my heart began to sink just a little. Then he told me he also wanted to schedule me for an MRI. He wanted to take a look at my back and see if there was anything there. This was the first time a doctor had even discussed doing any sort of test on me or my back, and I was ecstatic, but also quite scared. Suddenly it would no longer be an unknown source of pain; I would know one way or another what was wrong with me.


Tests are a pretty frightening aspect of being diagnosed with a chronic illness. Whether it's taking blood or scanning your body, your mind tends to exaggerate things around you. The people performing the test are too nice - was that a look of pity you just saw them shoot you? Every noise is overly loud. The hum of the MRI machine was the least of my worries; in such an enclosed space I could hear my own breath and feel it on my face. I had to focus hard to keep it together and not move.


I had scheduled a follow up appointment with my doctor in two weeks. When I finally saw him, he pinned up my MRIs and he told me what we were looking at. He hesitantly said "I hate to say this to someone so young, but these are indicators of degenerative disc disease". What I remember most about our conversation with that is how much he seemed to emphasize how young I was - 19 years old with degenerative arthritis of the spine. He repeated that he hated diagnosing me with this, and especially hated prescribing me arthritis medication.

This actually brings me to another point about having a chronic illness - if it's chronic, those pills aren't to cure what's wrong with you. They're to alleviate the symptoms, and they will need to be taken for the rest of your life. On top of this, I'm going to tell you right now, sometimes the medication itself has negative effects on your health. When I take my arthritis medication daily as prescribed, there is a noticeable drop in my short term memory. I will take my medication, and in a few hours, not remember if I took it. The Vicodin makes me extremely sick at times; sometimes I will spend 24+ hours in the bathroom, dry heaving into the toilet and crying. It's absolutely awful.

Although I didn't realize it when I was diagnosed, having a chronic illness would impact the way I lived drastically. I have to be sure to keep up my core strength with stretches or I risk seriously throwing my spine out of place. I am not supposed to lift heavy things for the same reason. I can never join the military because of this diagnosis. There is a very real possibility that sometime in the future I will require surgery to my back, and even with surgery, there is still a possibility that as I grow older, I may become crippled. However, I think hands down the most difficult fact for me to come to terms with is the risk I would be taking with becoming pregnant. Not only can the added weight put me into extreme pain for months of the pregnancy, there is also a chance that my spine will simply not be able to support the weight of a child at all, and that I will become paralyzed.

The thing about chronic illness is that you either learn to live with the pain, or you don't. The ones that don't destroy themselves; my sister had an extreme case of bipolar disorder that nothing helped and she drank and overdosed herself into the grave at the age of 24.

The ones that do can still go on to lead a life full of adventure and happiness - I have a career in Quality Assurance, own a house and a car, have many loving friends and have managed to capture the eye of an extremely kind and amazing man, at least for the moment.

Something my abusive ex once told me is that no one else would be willing to take care of me when I grew older and crippled; but I think that even if I were crippled, that wouldn't be true. If I can endure years of relentless pain, then I can accomplish anything, and that includes taking care of myself when I grow older and crippled. In the words of Homer,

Be strong saith my heart; 

I am a solider; 

I have seen worse sights than this.