It's become more personal to me. My girlfriend is a rape survivor -- two years this April.

She felt it every night; a familiar pain in her loin, a gasp of air, the numbness and the nauseousness, the rapid heartbeat, but he was never physically there. He was there only for the first time, only for 238 seconds; not for the rest of her life but it didn't feel any different.

Do you know that most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death?" Rachel raised a skeptical brow as she spoke. "Let's just say, I've lost interest." -Being Brave Again

She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.

Here, from her ashes you lay. A broken girl so lost in despondency that you know that even if she does find her way out of this labyrinth in hell, that she will never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same again.

She doesn't seem deranged to me?