5/10
Yesterday marked one year since it happened; since I was raped. In some ways it's hard to believe that so much time has passed, but when I look back and really allow myself to think about it, it has easily been the longest year of my life.
A year ago I didn't think that I would make it to this point. I didn't think I would make it past an hour, or two. I didn't think that I would be able to make my way through an entire day. This time last year I was in denial, I thought I had imagined it all. I thought I had simply experienced a horrible nightmare that I just needed to wake up from.
I remember feeling separate from my body, like a switch in my brain had initiated cruise control and when my exit came I would somehow snap out of it and then everything would be fine again...but it never did. For days it went on, all I could do was cry until I was too weak to do even that. I remember only being able to rest for maybe 15 or 20 minutes at a time before waking up terrified for a few minutes before realizing where I was.
It didn't seem to matter whether I was in my own room, or if I was with my partner. I remember thinking that the pain was all I would ever feel again, that the guilt I never understood before was the only thing that seemed to make sense, and even though I struggled to form together even the simplest of words, inside my mind all I could do was scream.
I had felt my heart break in more ways then one, by more than one person. I had experienced devastation and wondered how I long it would be until I felt better again. But not this time. I had been transported to the darkest place I had ever been in, a place that I didn't have know existed until I found myself there. And there was no getting out, at least, as far as I could see.
It was slow going; every day was a challenge with ever hour filled with sense of hopelessness, of utter loneliness, of rage and anger and confusion, constant nausea and dizzy spells that would seemingly come out of nowhere.
5/17
When I set out to write this, I didn't have trouble finding the words; in fact they flowed so easily that I found myself wondering if it had actually been as long as the calendar says. I doubted that the justice which had been served was legitimate or whether I had imagined it all.
In my own way I became lost trying to navigate how the rest of my life is supposed to be, what I'm supposed to do next. So much of that year was simply trying to figure out how to get my life back, so much of last year was desperately clinging onto the hope and the indispensable belief that justice would be served, if for no other reason than because I couldn't picture what it would look like otherwise.
It's been a few months now simply just trying to get back to it all, and in some ways I feel lost without that desperation and that light at the end of the tunnel that I couldn't seem to erase from my mind's eye. It took weeks for it to really sink in that my legal fight was over, and not only that, but that I had won. I was victorious, and I could breath a little easier knowing that my attacker was behind bars.
In this past year, I have wondered several times what I would feel once I got to this point, one year past.
5/23
When I set out to write this I didn't expect it to take two weeks, potentially being the longest amount of time that I have spent working on a single posting.
When I made the decision to fight back, to fight for justice and ultimately decided that I wanted my life back; I didn't realize that the journey back to myself would be just as if not more difficult as the journey to justice.
No one speaks about how being a survivor is in itself a way of life. No one tells you that once the fight is over that a new one begins. No one mentions that every day can be its own battle to maintain what has already been so hard fought for.
I had hoped that once I had won my case that I wouldn't think about my attack or my attacker as often as I do. I didn't think I would see him in the features of strangers, I didn't think that I would have to regularly remind myself that he is in jail. I didn't think I would doubt my safety as often as I catch myself doing. I didn't think that I would be able to understand why victims some times choose to end their lives than to continue as intimately as I do even after so much time has passed.
But that's when I stop and I ask myself to look deeply at how much my life has improved in the last year; not because of what happened to be but in spite of it all.
I have a wonderful job where I am surrounded by amazingly supportive and compassionate people, I have a beautiful home where I feel safe and secure where I can practice my belief and my skills freely, I have a growing relationship with my siblings that I lacked this time last year, and I have a deeply loving relationship with a partner that I fall in love with every time I see them.
I may have been unaware that this next step was just that, it is simply the next chapter of my story, the next leg of my ultimate journey. I don't want to put some sort of illusion out there that this journey of healing will or will not ever have an ending, but I hope that it does.
~Thealynn
©2013-2017 Thealynn Oceanna Rosewolf
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