These issues are too extensive to write about in one post, so I want to split it up into a four part series: Rape, Murder/Suicide, Poverty/Starvation, Children/Creating.

Today I want to discuss Rape. It is human nature that we associate and give credit to ourselves for the good things but the bad things we disassociate from and say we did not create it. If you are religious then it is giving credit to God for the good things and blaming the bad things on the Devil. A person winning the lotto automatically says yeah I attracted this to myself but they meet in a car accident and instantly – they didn’t attract it, they wouldn’t have attracted such a horrible event into their lives.

People who look in on your life find it hard to believe that anyone would cause themselves such pain and heartache because conciously they wouldn’t do it to themselves- but the word here is CONCIOUSLY

How can you possibly say a rape victim would want to be raped?

Shauna asked me that question yesterday. Would I at the point when I was raped, have said ‘I created this’? The answer is No – I would have said No I didn’t create this; No I wouldn’t have wished such pain on myself; No one deserves this.

I was raped at 17; I was raped again at 19. Looking back more than ten years later, I realized the thoughts that used to cross my mind at that time. I can hear them clear as if it was today – I hated everything Ophelia. I felt unloved, unwanted, undeserving and I felt life was the most miserable place.

After my first rape, I felt dirty, alone, more unloved than before, hated by my parents who never said it was my fault but sometimes actions say a lot more than words. Years later I realize that they were going through their own private pain, but during this time I wanted to kill myself. However I was way too much of a coward – I had thoughts about slitting my wrists, using rope – I would think of my parents finding me dead and I couldn’t do it. But my depression grew so much that I wanted to die – dying to me seemed better than living.

No one knew that I was depressed. I wanted to die without having the pesky detail of actually killing myself, so I devised a plan – I would walk down the street at 3am wishing and hoping a drunk driver would help me out of my misery and hit me. It never happened.

But let’s just walk down that road for a quick second…what if it had happened? My parents and everyone who knew me would blame the DRIVER!! They would say she never wanted to die, she had so much ahead of her, she had her life taken away from her. It is unfair and the driver had a problem, she would have never created her death. No one would have known that deep down I wanted it for myself. But that is part of blaming and judgement isn’t it – to point the finger on the person you feel is to blame the most. In this case it would have been the unfortunate driver.

My pain and my wanting to stop that pain continued till I was raped a second time. I would do everything to get rid of the pain, living my life without much care. By the time I was raped the second time, I felt I cannot live like this – something has to change – I cannot continue to live like this. I made a conscious choice to change my life. Prior to that my life was running on unconscious feelings and thoughts without any direction attracting whatever incidents to it.

Playing the role of victim

When people are playing victim they feel that they play no part in the things happening around them. They are just passengers in their lives instead of drivers; just sitting back and watching. So the question remains – if you are playing victim, who is doing the driving? Is it on autopilot – just bringing random events to your life that you immediately dismiss as not being created by you, so you can blame someone else? Or is it that we learn as kids to only take credit for the good things that we do, bad things are outside of ourselves?…

The meaning in events

I wrote a post called the Meaning of Events in Your Life a few months ago about the fact that events in themselves mean nothing. It is about the meaning we as indivuals attach to those events. What is rape? An act. What are the meanings we attach to rape or the feelings we attach to them? When I was raped for the first time, I attached meanings that I had been taught, which were feeling violated. Once I got home, I now had several more feelings to attach to it. My mom made me feel the feeling of guilt, which was probably how she felt and my grandmother made me feel the feelings of shame – not wanting anyone to know as this would embarass the family. It is no wonder when I was raped for the second time that I told no one in my family.

Changing the meaning of events and changing your life

Most people when they experience negative things find it hard to put a positive spin on it. How do you put something positive on something obviously negative? For me, I started to think maybe it was for a reason…maybe I’m supposed to help people realize that life doesn’t end because you have negative experiences.

SPECIAL NOTE:  These events are private and although I no longer feel any pain or hurt when I think about them, they are mentioned to show that even though someone can create negative situations in their lives that they can change the meaning of these situations from one of negative feelings and emotions to one of postive feelings and emotions.

Editor’s note from Shauna: I just wanted to add my quick comments here. Even knowing and caring about Ophelia as I do, I am amazed and impressed by her willingness to put herself out there in this post. Her journey from feeling like a victim under these circumstances to triumphing by using all of the personal development and LOA steps we talk about and use, is testament to not only her strength of character and will, but also the power of the techniques and tools we talk about. If something is painful to you, it is all about perception. You can believe this or not, but as you can see from Ophelia’s story, there is freedom and gain to be enjoyed by pursuing this line of thinking – by changing your thoughts.