A Purely Healing Piece
I realized last night at 3:00am – when I often wake up – that I have to write this piece. As much as I don’t want to. As messy and unstructured and as hard as it’s going to be.
The literary equivalent of abstract art. My most raw and vulnerable work to date.
Even if no one reads it. Even if it helps no one in particular; other than myself; I have to write it. Writing is how I heal myself. Writing is how I feel heard. And I need to feel heard, because others have taken this story and told it for me. I’ve never had the chance to tell it for myself.
When I was twenty, I trusted someone that I shouldn’t have. I was young – so young – in university, and just coming into a kind of delusional confidence with who I was. Or had the potential to become.
My life at home when I was growing up was tumultuous. I had an alcoholic father, an absent mother that lived on the other side of the country, and a verbally abusive stepmother who made me feel unwelcomed and out of place in my own home. When I graduated from high school, my sister was just turning sixteen, and things with my father were getting worse. We knew it wouldn’t be long before we’d be forced to leave home. So, we did. Whisked away by those who loved us. Gifted a new home, where we were cared for and accepted. And I’m grateful for that. Eternally. I really am.
But only later did I learn that, for me, it would come with a different kind of price.
From seventeen to twenty, I built on a relationship that already had a strong foundation. It wasn’t a romantic relationship – in any fucking way – but a relationship with someone that I enjoyed spending time with. Someone who I spent a lot of quality time with. Someone who could guide me in the absence of my reverse-role-model parents. Someone who I thought would keep me safe. Someone who I trusted.
I was truly mortified and heartbroken the night that betrayal came.
Young. Twenty. Barely a woman, but with all the parts to support that now. I was just having fun with life and living in the relief that everything was good, for once. So the night of my sexual assault completely blindsided me. It came out of left-field. Ran me down like a Mack truck.
I don’t remember much about that night. My brain has shielded me from the trauma by pixilating it like a censorship box. But I remember it being late at night. I remember alcohol being involved – because, when is it fucking not in the traumatic times of my life. I remember that person throwing themselves on top of me. Touching places that I didn’t want them to touch. Making motions that they shouldn’t have been making.
The free ride’s up now, and it’s time for you to pay.
There was a flurry of limbs and struggle and adamant suggestion. And if I can remember anything, it was the fear. Being startled. Taken off guard. My flight-or-flight response kicked in, and I chose both. First, I fought. Then, I ran.
I sought refuge in the bathroom; my back to the door and my feet braced on the wall opposite to it. That door didn’t have a lock, and it was the only way I could stop my assailant from bursting in. They tried several times. Knocking and calling my name. Tone severely apologetic. I must have been flooded with adrenaline, because somehow, I was strong enough to keep them out.
After a while, they left. I curled up against the door and cried. I wondered why this had happened to me, and what I’d done wrong. Where, in the lines of the construction of that relationship, it had ever been hinted at that something like this could ever happen. I couldn’t find the answer, so I cried some more. Beat myself up for being so stupid and not seeing it. Thought about how my life had become an episode of Skins in mere minutes.
Then, a letter was slid under the door. I don’t remember what it said, other than it was very remorseful, and included the line, “I just want you to feel safe.” Yeah. Right. I’ve been searching for safety my whole life, and every time I find it, I’m proven a fool. My west coast town is my refuge these days, and I’m hoping that doesn’t come back to bite me.
After that, things were very hard. Something inside me snapped from that blatant violation, and I’ve been trying to fix it since.
My assailant and I didn’t speak for a long time. Then, the opportunity arose at school to go off to Australia for a year. I was adamant on taking it. They were adamant that convincing me not to go was a good enough reason to start speaking again. I let them, because I didn’t know what else to do. Being discouraged from your dreams was a common occurrence back then.
Fast forward and I fell in love with a wonderful Englishman. We dated for a year, and then decided we wanted to move in together. This created tension between my assailant and me, and it wasn’t long until I found myself unwelcomed in my second home. I got kicked out for loving my boyfriend, and had no choice but to move in with him and his roommate until we could find a place together in Guelph.
Meanwhile, the sexual assault was eating me up inside. I told no one for a long time – years – because I was hellbent on protecting my family. I wouldn’t let the information out, as long as it posed a risk to them. And I’m not trying to be a martyr for that. But I love my family and I’ll do anything to protect them.
Still, the dissolve occurred, and knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it, I decided to trust a family member with my story. Just one. There were other members of my family that I never wanted to know about it, and I told that story in confidence. But again, I was proven a fool. It spread, and I worried that those who heard about it through familial-telephone-tag would blame me for it. I was never brave enough to go to them and tell my own story.
Then, I told my two best friends and my boyfriend. My boyfriend was very angry about it, because he was one of the few people in my life who genuinely protected my heart. My best friends were mortified and suggested I get professional help. I didn’t know how to do that, so I didn’t. I let it sit inside. A noxious pit that still remains today.
Fourteen Years Go By
I’m thirty-four. My Englishman and I broke up long ago. My two best friends are absent from my life. I’ve sought refuge from my birth province on the west coast. I have three fucking badass novels written and pro-edited that will be published next year. Good for me.
Then comes a wedding. A wedding that is revered and lovely and highly anticipated and wonderful. A wedding that should serve as a time of joy and celebration and laughter and love. And it was all of those things. But for me, that wedding also came with a figurative knife to the throat. I was going to be in the same room with my assailant for the first time in over a decade, and I had to be emotionally prepared for that.
Upon descending into Toronto, I didn’t realize that I was in tears until the flight attendant touched my knee and asked me if I was okay. Going back to Ontario somehow always feels wrong for me. I always leave half my heart in Vancouver, and it feels like I’m moving backwards. Like all the work I’ve done to get my life to an amazing place is going to be reversed.
Bisexual, Vancouverite, black sheep. There are places were I still feel like don’t belong.
I’m never myself when I’m in Ontario, and I hate that. There are people there that I can only go surface-level with. There are people there that I have to don full-on emotional armour in order to face. I don’t usually take down my walls; with the exception of a select few. I don’t even really sing – which is something I do every day in Vancouver. Facing my birth province is challenging for me. Let alone facing my birth province plus the person who forced themself on me when I was only twenty.
“You don’t have to say anything to them,” my therapist said in the session prior to the wedding. “You don’t owe them anything.”
Easier said than done. As soon as my assailant entered the room, I found myself very aware of their presence. Though I’d expressed to my family that I didn’t wish to talk to them, and I made a conscious effort to distance myself, they followed me throughout the night.
“I’ve heard you’ve gone through hell,” was one of the only things they managed to say to me.
I’ve been through many hells. You’ll need to be more specific.
But I did well to protect myself that night. I was constantly checking in with myself and was honest when it was too much. Then, I’d action. I don’t fear walking out in the middle of a speech when it’s in the spirit of defending my inner child.
Other emotional shit came up for me, though. Women with Daddy-Issues. I could be the founder of that fucking group. My birth province had me caught in a vice.
Then, the night moved and they left. I was finally free to celebrate properly with my loved ones. I felt relieved.
A few days later, a verbal fight broke out between some of my family members. I don’t know how, but the assault was brought up. Probably in mention of how certain people “protected” me at the wedding. Because, that’s how it works with some of my family members, you see. You don’t get anything for free.
“When people ask me, Do you believe her -” my family member was saying.
“Who fucking said that?” I was blinking on the couch; ears ringing from the emotional grenade. My family member had said this without any consideration to how it would make me feel. They were saying it because they were about to banter on about how they always defend me. They were saying it in preparation to make themself look good.
They named no one in particular. Because of course, they didn’t. But I was still absolutely devastated.
There are people that don’t believe me…
Read that again.
There are people – that may even be in my own fucking family – that don’t believe me. There are people that think I made up my sexual assault for attention…
Now, I’ve been lied to my whole life and I don’t vibe with that anymore. Integrity is a massive value for me – as is honesty. So I hate lying, and I try my best to never do it. I’m the worst fucking liar in the world, and I’m certainly no attention seeker. I’ve got enough fucking real problems to get “attention” for. Never mind that from a pragmatic perspective, it makes no sense for me to “make-up” my own trauma.
I was so fucking shattered by this.
Releasing my emotion to the extent that I deserved, I got very upset. Which lead to me being attacked by my other family member for being upset. Which made things much worse.
“Your family uses anger for manipulation,” my therapist once told me. Man. If there was any proof of this, it was in that fucking moment.
Once again, I escaped into isolation. Crying for hours up in the bedroom. How could people think that about me? How could they be so cruel? Then, a revelation hit me…
“You’re not safe here, baby,” I whispered to myself. And I didn’t mean that I wasn’t physically safe. I meant that my heart wasn’t safe…
There were people in my family that were treating my assault like gossip. A rumour. A juicy little tidbit that they could hold until it could somehow be twisted against me. And it hurt like hell to know that the people that are supposed to love me can be so careless with my heart.
Unable to think on it anymore, I picked up Red, White and Royal Blue and escaped into my favourite book. There, I could be with Henry and Alex, and they’d help to make my emotional turmoil disappear. And I’m so fucking grateful to Casey McQuiston for this. Books are so fundamentally important to their readers in that regard. They provide worlds that we can disassociate into when things get too heavy in this one. And I hope – to the most visceral depths of my soul – that I can be the author that does that for someone one day.
When I landed in Vancouver and walked out to the Skytrain, I took my signature three gulps of sea-air, hoping that it could help heal my poisoned heart. I came back emotionally and physically sick in a way that I hadn’t felt for a long time, and my feet fell dejectedly across the sidewalks of my city.
“I’m here,” I heard Vancouver whisper, as the wind caught my hair. “I’ve got you, and we’ll heal it together. Don’t worry. Welcome home, kiddo.”
I raised my chin to the wind, grateful for the immediate embrace. It was finally clear to me why I felt so alive here and so dead in Ontario. Here, I was safe. Here, I was far from the people that could hurt me. And though I’m still looking for my partner and chosen family, I’m hopeful that one day I’ll find those that will nourish my heart instead of poison it.
To Conclude:
A range of emotions have come and gone as I’ve grown over the years. I’ve minimized the assault. Buried it. Felt bad for being mad about it. Even justified it on my assaulter’s behalf – as unfair as that is to myself. Love in any form is a funny thing and it makes you see things that aren’t there.
But I’m old enough now to know that was happened to me was severe, and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve what they did to me, and I certainly didn’t owe them anything – especially my body – for where I was in life. I am not the reason this happened. But I am the only one that can heal it. I want to embrace that twenty-year-old version of me. Love her like no other, make her feel safe, and prove to her that she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
So, am I going to do anything else about it?
Other than emotionally healing myself, probably not. It was over fourteen years ago and I don’t want to risk anymore damage to my family by escalating it. For me, justice is much more trouble than it’s worth. That and I’m the victim. I’m allowed to be tired of it now.
And I know that’s sad, but what can I say? I’m certainly no good example of the Me Too movement. Maybe I’m just not as brave as those women. But if people have made it to the end of this blog, then I hope my story’s been eye-opening in some way.
There are people that I know will probably be hurt by this post, and that has to be okay. Because I need them to know how deeply I’ve been hurt by how I’ve been treated. I am a human being – a bisexual woman – with worthiness issues, a wounded inner child, and a spectrum of feelings. I have a hard enough time reconciling what happened without being unfairly judged by it. But at least my truth is in writing. At least the story is out there. Written by me. Like it always should have been.
If you’ve been a victim of sexual assault, please know that you are not alone. You are not at fault, and you did not deserve that to happen to you. Your worth cannot be measured in words, and you deserve to feel safe and loved and emotionally nourished. Your feelings are valid; even if they don’t seem to make sense at the time. The world needs you.
Resources:
http://www.bcwomens.ca/our-services/specialized-services/sexual-assault-service
https://www.sadvtreatmentcentres.ca/
https://www.rainn.org/national-resources-sexual-assault-survivors-and-their-loved-ones