Medusa: The Monster Within

How does a woman deal with being Medusa? It isn't easy. It is not a choice made lightly. Actually, it wasn't so much a choice as it was an epiphany. Medusa was transformed from an innocent, beautiful girl into a beastly monster following a rape. I feel much the same way, fighting the monster inside me.

Confusion was the first monster. I didn't know, didn't understand. I was unconscious, waking during the violation of my body and soul. My brain failed to understand the "R" word for more than a year, almost two years. All I knew was a sorrow so painful that I cried most of the time. I put on a happy face around other people, but the ache never subsided. At any point I was alone, I was in tears, but I didn't understand why. I turned to alcohol to numb the pain, another deceitful monster. I drank away my sophomore year at a fantastic college. I don't remember much from that year.

Then I relived the experience, yet another monster. Nightmares flooded my nights. Triggers made me panic without warning. I began to have a "nervous stomach" which I am convinced is a body memory. I began gaining weight, and my chronic headaches grew more severe. I had also begun a promising relationship with a promising man, and I was terrified, not of him, just of him learning my dirty secret and hating me for it. Monsters were everywhere!

Anger and depression followed. If I wasn't too angry to breathe, I was too depressed to get out of bed. I walked, talked, and exuded anger and hostility from every pore. The slightest inconvenience or disruption would send me into a fury. Much like my sad and confused state, I internalized most of my anger, but it was there, seething just under the surface. It is difficult to be angry and depressed at the same time, but I am proof it can exist. I reached a point where I first quit eating, under the guise of dieting. I was receiving positive feedback for my depressive anorexia. Then, I stopped sleeping. Bathing was next to go, which sounds disgusting, but if one is sedentary and not eating (thus not using the restroom), a person can go for quite a long time neglecting personal hygiene without notice. My depression became unable to hide when I stopped getting out of bed. My promising boyfriend had become my awesome husband by now, and he probably saved my life. I reached the point of not wanting to live. Anger and depression, monsters indeed.

I got antidepressants, and my outlook improved greatly. I had a dream during this time where I literally and figuratively killed HIM and buried it all in a safe place. Perhaps this monster was suppression, or maybe it was denial. Every therapist I have seen has marveled at the power of this dream and how I lived with zero post rape trauma symptoms. I thought I'd conquered my problems...

Unfortunately, this state of illusion did not last. I relived my rape a second time, a most insidious monster. That was when I first went to therapy for the rape. I'd been before to deal with my issues with my father and previous depression. This round of therapy helped considerably. I do not wish a sex crime on any person. For those who have endured gender violence, I hate the thought of reliving these experiences. To relive the trauma multiple times is a torture I would not wish on anyone, not even HIM!

Thus began the cycle of healing again, accompanied by the sadness, the anxiety, the anger and depression, each a foul monster residing in me. I also went through a period of dealing with the illnesses and deaths of my father and grandfather in a short period of time. Therapy was calling my name! This time, therapy was different because I addressed the pain of my father's emotional and verbal abuse, as well as the rape. Understanding one helped me understand the other. I began to see how, although I internalized the trauma and blamed myself for all of it, none of it was my fault. I had to let go of the guilt, release my culpability. I began to see that my father was the product of his abusive father, and that HE was just a bad guy who hurt me.

I watched a show about Perseus, the Greek mythological figure, demi-god, son of Zeus, who defeated the gorgon Medusa. The program also explained the origin of Medusa, the virgin priestess in the cult of Athena in the Parthenon who was renowned for her beauty and blonde curls. She had many would-be suitors, all of whom she rejected due to her loyalty to her goddess. Poseidon, unable to resist her beauty, according to myth, raped Medusa in the Parthenon, which derives from the Greek word for virgin. Athena, outraged by the defiling of her virginal temple, turned Medusa into the snake-haired, stone-turning gazed monster we are all familiar with. At that point, something clicked, and I thought I'm just like Medusa. I've been turned into something I wasn't because HE raped me. I'm not that innocent girl, just like priestess Medusa. I've been monstrous feeling with all the internalization of my sorrow, my pain, my guilt, and my fury.

Subsequently, I discovered HE did rape others, so I released Medusa onto the world. I still have anger, sorrow, and pain, but with direction now. I am focused. I know where to release the monster within myself. I cannot say I am completely healed. Is any survivor of a sex crime ever completely healed? I don't know; Medusa cannot answer that question. However, Medusa will continue to fight a system that perpetuates the hatred and objectification of women, to speak for those gripped by the monster of silence, and to fight for a better world, a world safe for man, woman, and child.