Does significant trauma bring permanent changes?

This is…a hard one for me to talk about. I thought about writing it, but I know I’d be less…calculated, and more raw…and while normally that’s a good thing, that’s not what I want when it comes to this topic. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to hit the publish button once this is all said and done, but…here goes nothing.

When I was 15, I met my first boyfriend. I stayed with him for 3 years, and he was…well, he was something. He was the first (and only) person I’d been with during that time, and he pretty much taught me what I thought was a “normal” experience. You know, your average guy wants sex, girl says no, pushes him away, guy has sex with her anyway type of situation.

That went on for 3 years. It got to a point where he began keeping alcohol in his car (a white hummer. I fucking hate hummers now) for me because he knew that even then, at 16 years old, I’d be less resistant to him if I had alcohol in me.

Again…learning what “normal” is here.

When that “relationship” ended, I was never really…okay again.

The next person I was with was my birth sons father, we’ll call him S. I met S when I was 17. He was 23 at the time…so we didn’t start “dating” until I was 18. I was with him for over 3 years as well. And while S never added in any significant way to my sexual trauma, he sure did encourage the “drinking makes this easier for me, so please, have as many shots as you want” mentality that I existed in.

At the beginning of my relationship with S, I was, again, sexually assaulted by an acquaintance I had known briefly. He was high and I wasn’t. I know he tried to get me high, but at that time in my life, I was already pretty vulnerable and drugs weren’t my thing. I was emotionally fucked up, but sober. There is a nasty cigarette burn in my arm to remember that night by. One of my scars that has the most meaning attached to it.

After S, and I do mean immediately after S…I met my husband. I’m talking…S moved out in June, and I met my husband in July 2015. Literally like 3 weeks later. It was great.

At this point, I know I’m rambling with backstory to avoid the most pressing point that I don’t want to get into. So maybe I just need to…jump in head first here.

My husband is great. We’ve had our ups and downs, some seriously bad months, and some scary times…but we’ve put in the work. Both of us. Together and separately, and right now we are stronger than we have ever been.

He is, and was, however, another member of the “drinking makes it easier for me to have sex with her, so let me encourage her to get drunk and do nothing to stop her” club. I fell the hardest into my alcohol addiction with him, during this time in my life.

And it had…a significant amount to do with sex.

I was struggling. All the trauma from my past was still in my present and it wasn’t going anywhere. So I drank, every night, to be “prepared”. If he needed anything from me sexually, I was “prepared”. That worked, until it didn’t. I needed more and more alcohol to reach the same level of “okayness”, and I would still panic every single time it would happen.

That went on until I was drinking so much I was passing out nearly every night. Then, I didn’t give a shit who was doing what to me. I could escape from it.

2 years ago, the sex thing and the drinking thing were….bad. Like, all time low bad. I drank more and more to force the issue and try to “get used to it” or something, I don’t even know. And I think it was getting better? I did have, maybe somewhat of a …lack of intense hatred for it? Maybe I was into it? Or maybe that was the alcohol…I don’t fucking know.

But less than a year ago, in the early summer, shit hit the fan. And, once again, I found myself in the position of being raped and assaulted by a (non blood related) family member. More than once. With increasing levels of severity.

It fucked.me.up.

Oh, you thought the drinking couldn’t get worse? Spoiler alert, it did. Everything got worse. I can’t be with my husband without seeing it. Feeling him. The flashbacks are…unrelenting.

But, now I’m pregnant. Which means I’m sober. And things are…bad.

I want to physically harm myself when my husband, who I love very much so, touches me. I want to crawl out of my fucking skin and die.

If I thought it was bad before? Shit. I have literally ZERO desire for anything sexual to happen to me. At all.

And it makes me feel really fucking awful. Being forced to confront this sober reality of mine has been…eye opening to how bad the situation really is.

It has me questioning everything. If I’ll ever be “normal”, constantly wondering what’s wrong with me…it goes deeper than that, but I’m clearly struggling to get to the depths of it here.

If I can’t get past this, I’ll never be sober. And being sober, for real, not just because I’m pregnant, has to be a priority. Which, unfortunately for me, means this has to be a priority.

Addressing my massively fucking traumatic and horrific sex life has to happen. And I fucking hate it. This is not something I talk about. At all. With anyone. Ever. So this basically feels like torture.

And trust me, this is the PG version. The concerning thoughts in my head are much…worse.. than this.

I just feel so bad for my husband. He deserves a functional wife. He doesn’t deserve the piece of shit that I am.

I wish I was better. I wish I was normal.

This isn’t something I know how to fix. Shit, I don’t even know what the problem is, or if it’s something that’s fixable. I just know that’s it’s causing me a lot of problems and a lot of hurt. And I don’t know what to do about it.

Like I said…it goes deeper than this in my head and the level to which I’m questioning things, but I just have no idea how to put it into words.
I just know that I love my husband, and I want to be better for him.

I just want to know if I’m permanently fucked up from this, or if there’s any hope that this can get better. Even just a little.