Today, Saturday April 4th, marks 13 years since that fateful day when I was attacked and brutalized in my own home. I survived attempted murder and was given a new lease on life.A lot of it seems blurry to me when viewed through the lens of one’s memory. Other moments seem like yesterday. Saran Wrap. The Rape Crisis Center (The Safe Place.) Interviews with the police. Running down a street half naked. My son’s life threatened.It’s 13 years later and I must take inventory. I don’t want this incident to define my life, and yet, it was a defining moment. In many ways, it was a continuation of what happened to me at other times earlier in my life. I’ve been victimized several times, and yet I don’t want to be a victim. At what point in your life do you decide you’ve had enough and that it’s time to break the cycles of victimization? I started Crime Survivors to break those cycles and so that I could help others. I don’t know if others realize it, but they have helped me! Yes, helping others has helped me.Perhaps I have thrived in the public arena with Crime Survivors and Orange County Crime Stoppers and all that, but what about my personal life? What about Patricia Wenskunas? I still have trust issues and the fear of being hurt again. I still have intimacy problems to this day. And I still have moments of anger, sadness, loneliness, shame, and regret to this day. If I’m honest, I have run away from a part of myself.I didn’t even go to a doctor for 10 years for fear of getting back on the table again. The Rape Exam is/was a most intimate invasion of your space, and your personal self and leaves a lasting impression. I can still see the forensic nurses who are there to help but the exam itself is numbing.The realization comes over me: I am still in the process of healing.The survivor part of me gave me the strength and courage to fight back and helped me live. The survivor part of me gave me the courage to fight the judge in my case and have her removed from the bench. The survivor in me helped me start up the 501c3 and move forward. But the experience/experiences are still very much a part of me. I realize that I am just human – a human who was victimized throughout her life and is still in the process of surviving. So I must share it and talk about it.
The victim reflexes are still part of my muscle memory. Victim residue is still in my memory banks. There are still occasional triggers and flashbacks. I now accept this and am willing to deal with it. Talking about it is good, and maybe even therapeutic. Just as important, I have come to realize over the years that it is helpful to others who share the same painful experience.
I have to deal with the victimization part openly and honestly in furtherance of hopeful healing.
Grown men have come forward with sexual abuses that happened to them when they were young kids. They were afraid to talk about it for all those years. Maybe they are seeking closure, but something inside won’t leave them alone. They need an outlet so they talk about it. Adult women, the same thing: they are sharing their molestation, sexual assaults and domestic violence as a way to come to grips with the emotional turmoil that these events can have. It is liberating and the beginning of a long path towards hopeful healing. I am on that same path.
So today, April 4, 2015, on this Easter weekend, I will spend the day providing hopeful healing to survivors of crime. It will be a time for self-reflection and assessment, acceptance and validation, and even celebration.
A special acknowledgement and thank you to all who have listened, believed, supported, and have accepted and loved me with all my faults and for standing side by side with me. I want you to know that we’re in this together. We all share unique experiences and it’s up to us to turn those experiences into positive lessons. Together we will prevail. Together we have survived and together we will thrive.
With Faith there is Hope . . . Muah!!
PW
Patricia Wenskunas
“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.”
