Ultimately though I think the most effective thing I’ve done has been in the last few months, when I’ve found so many people with similar (and quite often more serious) rape stories, in response to me telling my own story, which has led me to appreciate that it’s ok to be broken, rather than to strive to be mended. Everyone has baggage and it’s important to accept and recognise your baggage and get used to how to carry it in the easiest way. I suppose the analogy of healing in a physical sense is a good illustration: some medical problems can be completely cured if the situation causing the symptoms is removed; other medical conditions have to be endured and managed if the cause of the illness will always be present. Sex will always be present, unless we become nuns.

(sorry for the mini-essay here – I can talk for hours about these things!)

I have good days, where I don’t see her or feel her or sense her. Then, I have days like I did yesterday when I wanted to scream, cry, put my fist through a wall and curl up in a ball all in one afternoon.

While things are improving, the end result is that I was still raped and that has deeply transformed me in ways you can see and in ways you cannot. Your analogy with the surgery scars was perfect.

I’m guessing those days will eventually be fewer and farther between. Do they ever go away????

I will never again be the person that I was before I was raped by my boyfriend many times over the course of two years. I will never again not have flashbacks or five-alarm triggers that hit me from out-of-nowhere and knock me out-of-commission for several days.

Because it has been so long, I’ve come to accept this. I’ve learned how to function when I get hit with it. I’ve learned that the crash post-trigger that sends me into the depths of despair will pass if I just sleep it off. I’ve had enough positive sexual experiences since that time that I know that while I’ll never be the same, I’m not damaged.

Someone else said roughly that healing is integrating the experience into who you are today. I won’t speak for any other survivors out there. I had a lot of support through this whole experience that I know a lot of other survivors do not have. My family, friends, the faculty at my college, my therapist have all had my back the whole way through this. Because of this, I had a safe place to heal. I had a safe place to transform my fears and pain into power.

I’m currently writing my MA thesis on my own experiences in a sexually violent relationship. This is what I needed to do to heal. I needed to tell my story. Tell why I was able to be so strong (loads of support) so my thesis isn’t read as a “well, she got over it, why can’t the rest of you?” type of memoir. Tell the story to bring attention to the issue so that medical professionals don’t tell someone who comes to them for help and tries to say that she “hates sex and is afraid of it” that this is “just something you have to get over”. So that other people in sexually abusive relationships can find someone else who went through what they are going through, see it for what it is, and get help before the extent of the trauma is as debilitating as it has been for me.

Healing for me is transforming my pain into power to help others. I have to make what happened to me meaningful.

I can’t accept the fact that I can’t “heal” from this, because it’s too overwhelming for me. I can’t accept that I will always feel like this; that I will always have panic attacks. The day that I accept this, is not a day I’m looking forward to. I’ve had PTSD since I was 5 years old. I don’t want to still be dealing with it like this when im 55.

But sometimes, the pain is just so much that I can’t deal with it. And I feel like “healing/healed” is the cheese at the end of the maze, and I keep hitting dead ends. I don’t know who I was before the abuse, so I can’t ask to go back. I like who I am now. But I don’t want Who I Am to always be the girl who can’t be touched, who can’t get close.

I don’t know how to make it better.

I have PTSD, bipolar disorder, and fibromyalgia. I don’t get a break from these, ever. I am angry at the people who emotionally abused me and the person who sexually assaulted and raped me, but I can’t imagine that they crushed some potential person into whom I’d have flowered. The “me” with PTSD/bipolar/fibro is the only me that there is. I’m not going to get better from any of these things. But I live with them. I survive. I’ll never be healed or cured. But I endure, and I endure with happiness, joy, and as much grace as I can muster.

When others say I will “heal,” I look at it as an attempt to direct my conversation and tell me how to talk, or to direct the ends of my conversation. It’s intrusive, and it’s useless, because my mind and body, et all, have heard it and reacted. Who likes it when others butt in on their conversations? No one. They shouldn’t do it to others, even if it isn’t a conversation as they understand it. They shouldn’t assume the conversation ends as far as their understanding goes, either. Their intentions are good, and I do think intentions count for something, but their efforts are counterproductive.

This is a conversation I need to have with myself, and figure out for myself. If I need help translating or figuring out the right words, I’ll ask others’ help. For the most part, though, I’d appreciate a respectful attention to the parts I choose to share.

Oh, and I’m a stutterer, too. Maybe that’s why I have this perspective.