Crash and burn

I sit alone one night watching TV, my son is sleeping peacefully in the next room. I have no fear and don't lock the door until its time to go to sleep. I feel perfectly safe and perfectly secure and I didn't even hear the front door open.

I just suddenly feel hands grabbing me from behind and throwing me on the floor. Once again I feel helpless and exposed but this time its worse. I cant scream for help, the baby would be terrified and this is happening in my home, in the one place where I´m supposed to be safe.
I cry, I beg them to stop but they just laugh. One of them hits me and tell me to be quiet as the other one rips my clothes with the knife he holds in his hand.

As I lay there naked on the floor he puts the knife to my throat and tells me to open my mouth. I´m scared. I have never been so scared in my life.

Its not only the situation that scares me, its the fact that I have my 11 month old baby in the next room. What if he wakes? What if they hear him? Would they hurt him?
I do what they ask. I open my mouth and let them use it. I spread my legs, I make no resistance when they force themselves into me. I just lay there, much like if I had been a doll.

I´m not sure how long they stayed. I know that they had left at 3 in the morning when my baby woke up. I know I was bruised and that I had blood running down my thighs.

Later that afternoon my son is to go stay with his dad for the weekend. After he left I was feeling so empty and dirty. I used every drug I could find that weekend to push the nightmares away.

No drug I tried worked. The nightmares was still there and now I started having them in the daytime to. I could relive every second of the first rape if I went through a park or saw a guy with the same kind of hair as he did. A smell could bring me back to any of my horrible moments. I was so sure I was going crazy. The worse I felt, the worse I treated myself. I felt fat and ugly and stopped eating. That didn't make me feel better.

I danced, the only thing that ever took me away from the real world. Now instead of going a few times a month I went dancing 3-4 nights a week. It was a few moments of relief, but as soon as the music stopped hell started all over again.

I couldn't be where there was people. I had panic attacks in the checkout line at the store. I had to be there when they opened so I didn't have anyone standing behind me. I couldn't walk over an area with lots of people and most definitely not an area without people. I didn't feel safe anywhere.

I started cutting myself, when I did it as a young teen it was mainly cause everyone did and as a cry for help. Now it was more serious. Every cut sent signals to my brain releasing endorphins and other substances that made my pain go away. I ended up at the hospital one night after cutting a bit to deep.

That night I met someone who would make things even worse.