(An excerpt from I Am Just A Woman, a Kindle book by Lucy, who has just started to follow our blog; published with her permission.)
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
Sometimes things happen to you that, even at the time, you wonder if they are actually real.
Even now, 28 years after it happened, I still ask myself if it really, truly did.
But I know the answer. All these hours, days, months, years, decades later, it’s still difficult for me to think about the event that occurred in the early morning hours of Oct. 23, 1983.
Because you just don’t expect the man you married just hours earlier to rape you.
That’s a tough sentence to think, let alone type and see in print. And the thing is, few people believe it’s possible. After all, how could you be raped by your husband on your wedding night? Doesn’t that go against everything we’ve come to believe about what’s supposed to happen on a wedding night?
The answer is, yes, it goes against everything we believe. And yes, it did really happen. That moment changed my life.
Changed me.
I am not, nor will I ever be — as much as I’ve tried to fight it — the person I was before I was raped by my husband. That woman is gone and will never come back.
All these years later, I am working to accept the new person who lives inside me. She seems like a foreigner much of the time. Every day since Oct. 23, 1983, I’ve looked in the mirror and not recognized the person staring back at me. Her eyes have a blue, icy emptiness. Now that the lines are creeping in, she looks even sadder to me, despite the dimples that still show when she smiles.
I keep wondering if, one day, I will become whole again. I’ve worked and continue to work on repairing what I can and trying to accept the rest. Maybe this is the best I can do. Maybe I need to stop chastising myself for not being more….whatever it is. More me?
I’m not there yet. And the memory of that early morning event is still with me in the most starkly realistic way a memory can present itself in the mind and body.
Lucy’s blog homepage: I Am Just A Woman.
[April 10, 2023: Editors’ notes:
—For some comments made prior to April 10, 2023 that quoted from the post, the text in the comment that was quoted from the post might no longer be an exact match.
—For some comments made prior to April 10, 2023 that quoted from the post, the text in the comment that was quoted from the post might no longer be found in the post.
If you would like to compare the text in the comments made prior to April 10, 2023 that quoted from the post to the post as it is now (April 10, 2023), click here [Internet Archive link] for the most recent Internet Archive copy of the post.]
A Cry For Justice 
It’s so hard….they took the most intimate part of us, a part we were willing to share, and devastated us, our hearts, by their actions. How can a wife reconcile these things, try to do, to be better, try to save the marriage, all the while the devastation from the obliteration of trust rages on inside? Sister, I empathize with you.
And one day, we will be whole. But you know, I just can’t believe that the only day we can know that wholeness is when Jesus Christ comes….even though I know we will be whole then. But the promise of God is over-coming power in the here and now, and I hold on to that. “What can separate us from the love of God?” A long list of misery follows, with the promise that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. Notice, the list doesn’t have one good situation in it, it is all devastation. I believe it is because we are most tempted to doubt God’s love in the midst of trial than in the good times….more in danger of losing faith when times are hard. And it is in the hard times that two promises are given: 1) God’s unending love and 2) us being more than conquerors through Jesus.
Laurie, I know that God kept me in His arms the whole time I was being tortured by my ex-husband. He’s still taking care of me today, as I continue to struggle with the after-effects of trauma.
I’m sorry you can empathize with me — I don’t want anyone, ever, to understand how it feels to be hurt this way.