dear lydia

((DEAR LYDIA))
5/09/2018, 11.38 PM


How is another human being capable of being able to validate the act of rape? The act in itself is such an act of perverted violence to the point of being torture. Your body feels sensation, but your mind is aware that you aren't willing, and the overwhelming feeling of being a victim who processes two polar opposite emotions makes you hate the ability to even feel anything altogether.
I feel like as a rape victim, you'd try to leave your own body as it happened. Wish that your soul could fly away and then return after it was over so you could never remember the painful memories and bitter sensations that it came with.
I've known rape victims before, and I've seen their lives fall apart for a number of years and their complete loss of identity. Obviously, in the broader sense there would be strong survivors who inspire and overcome their abuse almost full circle and are an inspiration, worth notable congratulation. But in a smaller community of the people that I have come across, I've noticed a similar pattern that makes my curiosity wander to dark places about the topic.
I wonder what it would be like, for the victim and for the abuser in the moment. I feel no remorse for the suffering of the abuser that may have lead to their capability of attacking others. Because the type of suffering a victim of sexual assault has to bear is a far greater cross, and impacts their life path.

A girl I knew from church began as a bubbly twelve year old who was one of those girls who go through the horse obsession phase and watch the Saddle Club with their friends. I remember her original state prior to her rape as having olive skin, being tall for her age and the most perfect amount of tiny pin-sized freckles around her nose with blue and green eyes. She had a great smile.
After her attack only a few years later, her whole life seemed to do a full 180.
She never left her house, and then one day she did - to the mental hospital for attempting suicide.
There she stayed for a while, she was too unstable to return back home and on her eventual discharge from the hospital, she was sent back to school, where she was bullied.
I can't imagine what goes on inside the mind of predators like that, both the rapist and the bullies. How can another human being prey on someone who has been through one of the worst traumas psychologically and physically? The lack of empathy and restraint makes my heart ache for the people who shut themselves down after encountering such a trauma, who barely remember themselves and become a human shadow in the world.

The first time I saw her was in 2013 or 2014 when she'd left school and completed her education through home-schooling. She was a completely different person with a completely altered identity. She had chalky black dyed hair, exaggerated eyeliner and fish-netted sleeves that wrapped around her knuckles, tattoos and lip piercings. She had drawn a tear in eyeliner coming out of one of her eyes and she wore black lipstick.
This would be one of the first of many of her extreme changes in appearance.
(To avoid calling the girl "she" I will refer to her as "Lydia", a fake name to avoid giving away her identity as she has a unique name that could be found quite easily if searched and I want her privacy maintained).
Lydia had a number of boyfriends which she brought along with her to the church before she stopped going altogether, but most of them fluctuated depending on her appearance. During her more Gothic phase, with fish nets and black lips she dated boys who wore eyeliner and seemed to be a part of the same "scene" as her.
I'd heard that she had been trying to get pregnant, however each pregnancy ended prematurely.

A little while later, I saw Lydia again, this time with red hair and red lipstick, cut out earlobe piercings, eyebrow piercings, nose piercings and more tattoos. Instead of the black she wore animal print, usually cheetah.
This, I think, was her best presentable phase, that at least made you think she was in a much more improved state of mind. She was bubblier, just like I'd known her prior to the attack, but in a tattooed body. Her hair then evolved into dredlocks.

I was highly cautioned by my mother to not go near Lydia, as she feared that it would lead to me doing the same radical changes to my appearance as her. In a way, I was kind of fascinated with Lydia, how she seemed to be the life and soul around people my age while she told us about why she'd gotten what tattooed on her and how it was always something to do with uplifting.
She had a rainbow butterfly tattooed on her back the day of a bad incident, where she was crying on the cement and a butterfly landed on her, and didn't leave her side until she stopped crying.
"I think it was a sign from God," She told us after church. "He wanted to cheer me up, butterflies are my favourite thing. They're so happy and pretty. I booked a tattoo and got it done, so when I look at it, it makes me happy. They're all a collection of reminders on my body to keep going."

Lydia disappeared from the church for a while. She had, from what I was told, a terrible breakdown which involved her having to be hospitalised again. The hospitalisations eventually became a recurring incident, and her appearance became darker and darker.
I'd missed seeing Lydia around and the curiosity of her ever-changing look was something oddly intriguing - odd, because I knew it had been born from a dark climate and not out of spontaneity.
Through social media I saw the progress of her life from the time which I had last seen her in 2014. She'd been through two or three partners, all that appeared to be serious relationships as there were announcements of pregnancies, and then grief stricken updates of miscarriage.
Her tattoos had snaked their way from just the regular places like her back, feet, arms and legs to around her neck and eventually her face.

I don't think that because a person expresses themselves with tattoos, piercings or a constantly changing look that they have personal issues which need resolving or anything of the sort. This particular case is just an example of the severe effects of rape onto the psyche of a person who displayed zero characteristics of mental illness or desire to constantly be aspiring to do something new with themselves. Her actions were, and still are driven by handling her trauma. Lydia herself has admitted that in many online posts, where she describes her feeling of loneliness and emptiness as a human being.

The theory of creating a persona seems valid, if you feel as though you aren't a person at all and try to make yourself known to your own brain. And that is where toxic coping mechanisms such as self harm began, and then transformed into a new method of the drastic change in appearance.
The scars Lydia had were the ones that form a permanent scab that lifts above the skin, on both of her arms and legs. I saw the scars on her Facebook page, where she modelled as an "inked girl" in lingerie. The lingerie was the BDSM type, with the halter-esque bra and whip in the hand.

It made sense that she would prefer something reflective of BDSM even just for a lingerie photoshoot. The sexuality of BDSM is to be in control, and to be in control seemed to be a big battle Lydia was trying to win with herself and her haunting memories. When I saw this, I tried to imagine her constant flashback to the rape must cross her mind constantly.
Must be in control.
Must be in control.
Whether it was self harm, marking her body in a more acceptable way with piercings and tattoos. Creating an identity for herself that she chose, which had to be radical to suit the intensity of her trauma in an effort to overpower it.

I understood this could be what was driving her, but it never seemed to heal. Just the same cycle kept repeating itself too often, with her being hospitalised for being a potential harm to herself. Lydia, although she had various Pagan symbols tattooed on her, was raised in a very religious household and I think she still carried the same belief that God allowed things to happen for a reason.
Understandably, I think about the questions she'd ask to God in her prayers - about why it was in her fate to be raped and be left mentally shattered and stranded in an emotional minefield.
But the loss of the babies during her failed pregnancies explained to me that God knew she needed to heal herself before she could bring a child into her stranded world.

I was just thinking about her tonight. I hope Lydia is doing well, wherever she is. And more than anything I hope that she will heal, and overcome this tragedy that has happened and that she can use this trauma to empower herself, and find a healthy identity.

I will never understand the human beings in this world who justify rape as being a woman's fault (I am aware of male rapes, I mean this exclusively for females who are told they deserved it due to what they were wearing). No rape or sexual assault is excusable and the culture of victim blaming must be shut down immediately. I wish there were larger campaigns for this, to teach boys specifically the signs and the damage of unwanted sexual interaction. I wish the justice system did more for the victims of such traumatising abuse. I wish the perpetrators got harsher sentences. I wish more people in the world could see past the pettiness of "what a woman wore" and see the PREDATOR for the evil person they are who clearly needs rehabilitation and HELP to not prey on innocent people.

- Desdemona