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I wrote another post, and now I can´t find it. It was about rape crisis team training. Rape crisis team training, two weeks of studying rape for several hours a day. Everyone needs a hobby?

Maybe I´ll post it later, but for now I will say this. Here is the nightmare part: After more than forty hours of intensive training on child abuse and nearly two years as a CASA, I didn't make it through rape crisis team training. For a month and a half I couldn't sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. I made plans to lay out sheets of plastic in the back yard to contain the blood splatter, and thought about buying a gun. I spent my mornings alone in the bright sunlight, crying uncontrollably and trying to keep the nausea from swallowing me whole.

Maybe it takes me, or someone similarly fucked up, to have drama associated with rape crisis training, but drama there was. I was fragile as hell, abrasive, moving my car each day after training got out so that no one could see me when I broke down immediately after class. They agreed I shouldn´t be on the team and I couldn´t argue with that, but I did want to talk about it, wanted to understand. They asked me not to talk or ask questions in training. They said I wasn´t right for the team at this time. Later they said I wasn´t right for it at all.

And here is the not-nightmare part: Rape crisis training woke me up. It made me realize how much my past was still effecting me, but it also made me realize something could be done. It made me realize that maybe, maybe my life could be different.


So the third time I seriously considered buying a gun, I put myself on check-ins with family, let them know what was going on.