How Can Your Boyfriend Rape You?

"Is LITERALLY one of the least intelligent questions anyone can ask... "
Abigail Breslin

Sorry that my blog has taken on another light, Followers. For years and years my life has had another light, and now I must change the light bulb.

When I shared with my family and friends, and about a week later with my blog followers, my "story" (as some called it), that proverbial light bulb began to flicker. It was as if someone kept switching my thought process on and off. The "on" moments were as they had been for the last 47 years. The "off" moments were as dark as a burned out lamp bulb. My thoughts and remembrances were like bits of tiny bulb wire sizzling and burning to mere dust.

To complicate matters of light and dark, there were questions. Oh, very few questions from me, since I remember the date rape incident and the following handling of the pregnancy and adoption situation. But my dear friends and family had many questions. Most questions I can answer,  unbelievably void of much regret or emotion. The questions that bother me the most are the ones that doubt my honesty and sincerity.

That doubt is not new to me. Even during the four months that I was a resident at the home for unwed mothers in New Orleans in 1970, other residents and staff members doubted that I had been sexually attacked by my boyfriend. When I shared my "story" back then in a therapy session at the Home, many girls laughed. "Date rape? You must be crazy! That doesn't happen," they said. I do not even remember the therapist defending or standing up for me.

Research shows that most rapes are not committed by someone jumping out of the bushes. The
perpetrator is most of the time someone you know and even trust. Also, the Internet is cram packed with lists of Myths and Facts of Sexual Violence. (For Example)

I have hid my light under a bushel for long enough. My lamp may not be the same as the one in the religious song for children, but I will not keep quiet about sexual violence any longer. For years I would not utter the word Rape, since I had been taught that was a bad word. I heard it used for the first time at school when I was in the sixth grade. A girl in our class had been raped by her father. When I asked my mother what "rape" was, she blanched and told me to look it up in the dictionary.
What sixth grader in the early 1960's or even in 2017 would understand this definition?
"unlawful sexual intercourse or any othersexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim."

Well, I was the victim. But that will not shut me up.