Content Warning: This post discusses sexual violence, trauma, and the emotional aftermath of assault. Please take care while reading. 💙
The Ruin
A couple months after my assault I was at the gym, walking on the treadmill and reading. When something in my book felt slightly triggering I put it down, but it was too late to stop the pounding heartbeat and encroaching intrusive imagery that felt all too familiar. I remember I started crying and just couldn’t stop.
In this moment, I was face to face with a sudden realization: there was no area of my life that was safe from what happened-no part unaffected or untouched.
In a mere 2.5 hours, my rapist had wreaked mass devastation upon every single part of my life.
In the wake of his destruction, my life had become a warzone of wreckage and rubble. I had developed a crippling eating disorder, isolated from family and friends, and on days I didn’t have to, I struggled to even get out of bed.
It was a battle to survive, much less heal.
Unanswered Questions
Faced with this realization, I wondered for the first time: if he had even an ounce of understanding of the complete and utter devastation this would cause on my life, would he still have done it? Would it still have been worth it?
This question haunted me, and I moved forward plagued with the knowledge that he would never know the enormity of his damage. He would never face a single consequence for his actions. He would never have any idea of how this had destroyed me, how his actions had shattered me into a thousand pieces that I was hopelessly failing to fit back together.
I understand now, that the question was never really about him. I was never really searching for the answer, and I’m not even sure I would have taken it if I could. At the time, I think my brain was just trying to make sense of a severely immoral and unjust world.
The Weight of the World
And for a long time, I was devastated by the evil I saw in the world. In the wake of political unrest, crippling inequality, and catastrophic immorality and cruelty, it was all I could see.
In fact, I no longer felt there was any good at all; that lurking in every shadow and behind every corner was horror, corruptness, and perversion. I wondered how I could ever trust another person’s intentions.
I felt an overwhelming and all-encompassing sense that I simply did not belong here, that I could not exist alongside the depravity. My eyes had been opened to the weight of the world, and I was fracturing under its heaviness.
The Trap of Perspective
Certainly, the dangerous thing about perspective is that you will rarely see anything you’re not looking for. Narrow thinking can imprison you long before you ever realize it.
I have to assume that this is somewhat common. That with a shattered sense of safety, many, if not most, people struggle with a suffocating perspective shift, a newfound understanding of the darkness of the world.
My therapist helped me to work through this. She told me that I create the life I live, that I allow what exists in the bubble that is my world. And it took effort and time, but eventually I widened my perspective.
I stopped letting myself be suffocated by the evil, and I turned my focus towards finding good, joy, and peace. I let myself feel overwhelmed by every small moment of goodness and the longer I looked, the more of it I saw. I stopped examining the depravity and found comfort in my circle of family and friends.
But even in this moment, if I let myself think too much about him, or about the fact that he will never face a single repercussion for his actions, I feel overcome with a deep guttural anger and hopelessness. It is profoundly unjust that, while I have suffered so much for his decision, he will never see a single consequence.
The Reclamation
It’s a difficult thing, healing from trauma without closure. To let go of anger in the absence of any reckoning. It can feel like an impossible task when there is nothing you can do to change your situation.
And still, if that is what I’m looking at, that’s all I will see. So in order to heal this part of my hurt, eventually I learned to stop inspecting it from this angle.
Instead, I commit my energy and attention towards how proud I am of the way I have transcended what he did to me. How amazed I am at how far I have come from the place I was before, or how thankful I am for how much I have healed.
If I can’t absolve the anger, can’t forgive him for the harm he’s caused, maybe all I can do is shift my energy away from him. I don’t deserve to carry hate, disgust, and fear in my heart.
This is not about feeling any less, just shifting what it is that I feel.
And while I can’t change what happened to me, I can change what I look for in the world, what I focus on, and what I carry in my heart.
I will not spend my life holding what isn’t mine to carry-I will choose myself over the pain, because my life is worth more than the anger that tries to consume it.
Thank you for being here. If this post resonated with you, I’d love for you to share your thoughts or connect with me-your voice matters too.
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