Fanfiction: Survivor
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I don’t like to hide. I don’t like to play superficial phony games. I want to stop playing them. I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to hold out your hand, even when it seems its the last thing I want. Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
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567 Western Ave
The Peacock Building
Rape Survivors Anonymous World Services (RSA)
Rape Support Group
Friday, July 9, 2004 10:00 PM
Sunnydale, Ca
It’s hot in here.
They need donuts.
I need to buy some new socks before I go home tonight.
These chairs are so fucking hard. It’s like sitting on concrete. Do they really expect someone to want to spill their guts about the worst thing to ever happen to them after having sat in one of this hard suckers for an hour or so?
Yeah, I’m in a bad mood.
This is the third meeting I’ve gone to in the past three weeks. Xander’s sitting next to me, taking notes, almost ignoring me, but touching me every so often. He really feels listening to the counselors and the other victims, their experiences and how they have all gotten their lives back together will help me.
Fat fucking chance.
Okay, I’ll give them this. I’ve heard some truly fucked up stories since I’ve been coming here. Girls getting raped before the age of ten by their fathers. Girls raped by their boyfriends, strangers, other relatives. Horrible rapes they led to beatings, with their attackers leaving them for dead. Sad tales told by sadder women. I guess I’m supposed to relate and take something from their survival and apply it to my own shitty life.
Whatever.
I hate these women went through what I went through. Don’t nobody deserve that. But your life experience ain’t my life experience. Sitting here, hurting my ass while listening to one hard luck story after another just doesn’t seem to be helping me. I had a hard days work and Slayed tonight. What I need is a bubble bath, dinner, and a foot massage by my man. What I don’t need is to sit in The Depression Room, hungry as hell, feeling my ass go flat in this uncomfortable chair.
I still can’t get a good nights sleep.
Xander and I still haven’t banged the Gong. And I still can’t even remotely get aroused.
I’m broken and I wonder how long before Xander realizes it and decides I’m not worth the trouble. Almost two full months of sleeping next to your nude girlfriend and he can’t even get a BJ out of the deal. Bringing your girlfriend to a rape victims support group on a Friday night is far from living it up.
And yet here he is.
So I’m here as well.
The first time we came I was only able to stay about thirty minutes. I just couldn’t keep hearing the stories. Some were vastly worse than mine, especially since my body healed within 48 hours. Unfortunately, some of these girls needed surgery, were in the hospital for weeks, and were terrified about pregnancy and diseases. Yeah, I had to concede I didn’t have it as bad as some.
The second time I came Xander and I stayed about ninety minutes. We listened to one woman talk about being raped over and over throughout her marriage for several years. Even sometimes in front of her small children. For a pack of cheap smokes I would have killed the motherfucker myself. She is now a hot shot investment banker after having gotten the courage to get away from the bastard, who was eventually killed in a drunken driving accident. She talked specifically about the months after she left her husband, and how she began setting goals that led her back to where she wanted to be.
She is one hell of a survivor, but then so was I. My first sexual experience involved rape. So was my second. I was scared, hurt, bleeding, and worried that my mom wouldn’t even believe me when I told her about what happened.
She didn’t.
She loved Heroin more than she loved me.
Whatever. I’m grown now. Can’t change shit.
That second time going to the support group meeting, I can’t say I really got anything out of it. I mean, if talking helps some people cope, cool. That’s them. But for me, seeing how well you’re doing after your attack isn’t helping me deal with mine. All this mumbo jumbo about getting on with your life, trusting yourself again, trusting your body and your heart. Whatever. As long as I had Xander, he was all the support I needed.
Then, well, it kinda struck me. What they were saying to do, was what I was doing. Everything isn’t about sex. For me, it is, but not really in life. I constantly focused on my nightmares and the fact that I hadn’t taken Xander to paradise. I didn’t focus on how when it rained I didn’t feel sick anymore after a month. Or how I’ve had a few drinks in the past two weeks and thought nothing of it. Or how easily I can tell Xander that I love him. Even did it in front of B and Willow the other day.
Still, these meetings are wasting my time.
So here I am, another Friday night, listening to some black chick discuss her gang rape and how she can’t have children now because of it. Despite all that she managed to find love again, and with a man who was cool with her not being able to have kids.
Now she’s talking about how she broke the news to her friends and family about the rape. It happened at a bar. She had lost her job, had one to many drinks, and danced with one to many guys that night. Four guys all took turns on her on a dirty bathroom floor. Afterwards, they took her purse and told her if she called the cops they would find her and slit her throat from ear to ear. She went straight to her parents house, called her brothers, told them everything. They took her to the hospital, gathered evidence, and sent all four of those guys away for twenty years. She even said that if they all survive and one day get out of jail she wouldn’t even change her phone number. They were welcome to come find her. She wasn’t afraid and wasn’t gonna live like it.
Good!
Good for her.
Telling people about what happened to me isn’t something I am comfortable with. Xander figured things out on his own. He told Buffy. No one else knows. I’d know if they did. They don’t.
I actually have a few people I count as good friends now. Angel, Buffy, and Xander are givens. But Willow, because of how close Xander and her are, being a package deal as Kennedy put it, has honestly turned out to be pretty damn cool. She even stops by my place unannounced sometimes. We chit-chat about Xander and gossip and shit. She cares about me and I can tell.
Dawn is my kid sister. That’s really all there is too it. I fucked up so much in my teen years that I refuse to let her fuck up. I give her hardcore advice about school, sex, and men. No sugar coating shit. And she loves me for it. Even if it’s scary sometimes.
Giles treats me like an adult and a equal. He talks to me, not down, but to me and I need that. He also genuinely gives a damn about me. He asks about work, me and Xander, even if I even need help balancing my bills and stuff like that. He’s a good guy. Stuffy as hell at times, but a good guy.
I could tell them.
I….
Fuck, haven’t I looked stupid enough for one lifetime? Haven’t I fucked up enough and should be allowed hide all further fuck ups? I’m so sick of pity I want to strangle someone.
Good thing I can think that and not say it. Xander and I would get into another huge argument about me blaming myself for the rape. He’d yell. I’d punch a whole in the wall, throw him out my apartment, then cry in the shower like I did last week. I don’t need that right now, thank you very much.
Xander doesn’t think it was my fault.
Apparently none of the women in this support group feel it was their fault. Well that’s them. I fucked up and I got… I was… I could have been smarter… Faster… I could have called the others… Fucking stupid ass Faith and her fucking ego… Now I can’t sleep, can’t fuck my guy… Probably can’t keep him…
“I love you, baby.”
Fresh outta my self-depreciating tirade comes Xander. He does that sometimes, telling me how he feels out of the blue. Calling me his baby. I’ve never been anyone’s baby before. I hate endearments, but I love his. I love him. He deserves better, but I just can’t let him go. Everyone here is with someone, but I wonder how many are here with the person they are in love with, much less the very first person they have ever been in love with.
I admit I kinda crushed on B a bit back in the old days. I might of fingered her if we had ever got that far, just to be doing it and shit. I’m Bi-curious, but haven’t munched the carpet. Angel was a hottie, but he was a means to get to Buffy. Xander though, Xander’s all ice cream and money to me. Nothing but the good stuff.
He believes in me when I don’t believe in myself. He’s told me time and again that nothing Rainman did was my fault, and that nothing that happened that night would ever hold me back from experiencing everything life had to offer. I don’t believe these poeple here because I don’t know them. But I believe Xander and he believes in what they are saying.
Vocally, I have not even told Xander about the rape in any real detail. In the pamphlets I’ve read they speak about the sheer empowerment of confessing what happened to you out loud. About not hiding it, or being ashamed. And I am so ashamed at what I allo… at what Rainman did to me.
I take chances every day. With my life, and now my heart with Xander. Maybe it’s time I kick started my life by doing something I am afraid to do. Doing something I absolutely do not want to do. Something I’m not even sure I 100% believe in.
Xander is surprised when I rise to my feet, step past him in the aisle, and make my way toward the podium. My knees are shaking and I know my voice will follow. But I can do this. And maybe…just maybe…
I need to do this.
“Uhm, hi. I’m not to good at this, so bear with me. My name is Faith, and I was raped two months ago…..”
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Each time your kind and gentle and encouraging. Each time you try to understand because you really care. My heart begins to grow wings. Very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings. With your power to touch me, you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that. I want you to know how important you are to me, and the person I choose to be. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble. And you alone can help remove the masks. Please do not pass me by. It will not be easy. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands…but gentle hands. For the child is very sensitive and very much in need…very much in need.
Author Unknown
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1700 South 14th Ave.
Xander’s apartment
Thursday, July 25, 2004 11:30 PM
Sunnydale, Ca
Fresh from the shower, I walk barefoot out of Xander’s bathroom and into his living room. My steps are light, as if a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel cleaner, and if it makes any sense, saner than I have in quiet some time.
That’s saying a lot for me, cause I ain’t the poster girl for sanity.
Just over an hour ago, after my nightly patrol, I strolled into B’s house. I told her, Willow, Dawn, Giles, and Kennedy about my rape. I didn’t decide on tonight for any special reason, nor had I been planning on telling them. What I did in the rape support group a few weeks ago stayed there. I don’t feel obligated to do anything, and I didn’t feel obligated to tell the Scoobies what happened.
I did anyway.
Why?
Cause it was time. It was as simple as that. I’m sick and tired of secrets. They don’t cause anything but trouble, always come out eventually anyway, and you can never control things after that.
Control, you see. That’s what I wanted. That is what I have. I sat down with my friends tonight. No, my family. And I told them everything. And I mean everything that happened in stark detail. Yeah, there was some crying, though not by me. I held my shit, answered questions, took the hugs and well wishes, bit my tongue when I wanted to yell for them to suck it up already, and accepted the love they were offering me.
So now they know.
Rainman raping me is not going to rule my life. Everything I do, say, feel, express, enjoy, begin, and end will not be affected by what happened to me that night.
I got rid of some baggage this evening. I still carry…will always carry with me what happened, but it’s not going to rule my life. I’m gonna file it under Truly-Fucked-Up-Experience, learn from it, accept it for what it was, and move on.
I spot Xander on the couch watching ESPN, catching up on the days MLB baseball scores. He’s got a bottle of wine and two glasses already set out on the inn table. “You trying to get me drunk, Xander?”
He smiles as soon as he sees me and I am entirely to used to the way that makes me feel. I love the way he looks at me. I feel like I’m his and that he is proud of that fact. I’ll never be able to express what that means to me. “It’s called celebrating, honey.”
I’m kissing him before we say another word. I’ve got him down on the couch, I’m on top of him, and his tongue is being sucked by a tongue sucking expert. He’s got his hands squeezing the booty I know he wants so bad.
We still haven’t done the deed. I’m getting there, though. Slowly, but surely I’m feeling Faith come back. I’m getting that good down low tingle again, and one of these days, and soon, I’m gonna rock my boyfriends world.
Until then, I’m gonna enjoy some things I should have when I was younger. Instead of always hopping in and out of beds with guys for no reason other than I was bored, or they bought the drinks, or I just needed the release, I find myself enjoying the simple pleasure of kissing a man who loves me.
Who sincerely loves me.
I finally went to the doctor two weeks ago and was prescribed some sleeping pills. Nothing too strong, but they’ve been helping me a great deal. I have actually told Xander to go home a few nights so that I stop using him as a crutch when I can’t sleep. I need to be the master of my own comfort. He knew that and did as he was told.
That boy has so many long slow swallowing-at-the-end blow jobs coming for all the shit he’s put up with concerning me it ain’t even funny. He’s been my rock on so many bad nights I couldn’t begin to count them all. His patience with me boggles the mind. I guess he just loves me that much to stay through all he has.
Our make out session lasts long enough for me to feel Xander’s most important ‘Construction Tool’ throb against my stomach. He shifts away from me, embarrassed and hoping to not make me feel pressured. I crawl up his body and cover him completely. “Got a hard-on, huh?”
“Uhm yeah.”
“Sucks huh?”
“Do you have to use the word sucks?”
“Blows?”
“You’re not helping, Faith.”
“Would me fucking you help?”
He just smiles, looking away, and throbbing more. Men and their dicks….funniest duo ever!
“I still got issues, baby.” Yeah, I call him that sometimes. Only in private, but I do.
His eyes tell me he understands. “I’m in no rush.”
“You are horny as hell,” I laugh in his face, then rock back on his lap. Hey, I like torturing guys. That shit cracks me up. “I don’t know when I’m going to be ready.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He can read my mind at times. My insecurities are not hidden to him. I wish that wasn’t the case. “You know I love you, right?”
“Of course.”
Pulling away from the sexual talk, I sit up, pulling him with me. “I cannot ever thank you enough for all you’ve done for me in the last three months.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Faith. And you also can’t give me all the credit. You pulled yourself back up. And you’ll continue to do that.”
“Your dick’s still hard.” He looks down, shrugs, smiles, then pulls a throw pillow in his lap. “Sorry, I notice that stuff.”
“How are you doing?”
“I’m here. I’m breathing. I’m fighting. And I’m not gonna stop.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“The rape wasn’t my fault. Not in any way.” I say it finally, and believe it for myself. It’s not just because I know he wanted to hear those words from my mouth.
“Are you sure?”
I was right on the money. “Yeah, I am.”
“You’re a strong woman, Faith. And I love you with all my heart.”
“All that sweet talk isn’t gonna get you any pussy tonight.”
“You’re killing me tonight, baby.”
“No, I’m loving you. And I’m loving me.”
Wine is poured and consumed. All of it, till he’s stumbling a bit and we’re laughing for no good reason at all. At some point he’s dancing around with the lamp shade on his head, singing some old Prince song. I know I’m topless, just shaking my Pom-Poms all over the place.
No, we didn’t finish the night making slow sweet love.
We got drunk. Good and drunk, and fuck, I needed that. So did he.
I fell asleep on the floor, while he fell asleep sitting up in his recliner. We both had to drag ourselves to work the next morning. It was fun though. No complaints from this Slayer. I had a blast.
I have never loved anything in the world as much as I love Alexander Harris. I told him that while standing next to him at a food cart on our lunch break. It’s no often we get assigned to the same site at work. But we were today. He looked around, making sure we had a little privacy, then kissed me right there. Yeah, we were both kinda dusty, and not exactly April Fresh. Nonetheless, that kiss rocked me down to my boots. Tonight could be the night….
I survived nine rapes, almost three years in prison, and numerous attempts on my life. I’ve done all of that with a drug addicted mother and a father who wasn’t ever around. I have made so many mistakes. Horrible mistakes in fact. I’m a murderer. I know that. Live with it. Will die with it one day.
But not today.
No matter what has been thrown at me, no matter how bad things have gotten, or will get someday, I know I’ll be okay. I kick ass, I don’t take shit, and I deal with whatever comes head on.
How?
Because I am a survivor.
The End