I went through many different cycles of abuse, during my childhood, at school and in adulthood. Up to the age of 22 I was physically and emotionally abused. I am a friendly person, and very sensitive. It seems my sensitivity was seen as a vulnerability for others to use against me. I went through many different cycles including physical violence, rape , break ins and people took advantage of me left, right and center. Some of it I spoke out about and reached out for help, but that fell on deaf ears, landing me in a very vulnerable position where I almost died, and I have spoken about that in my article 'I found love on a Psychiatric Ward.' This is a follow up from that article, and talks about how these issues affected me in more detail.

Maybe I am having a crisis, maybe I just have a heart… I am freaking out.

On this evening I was in my third and final year of uni, I was 21 years old and was having a particularly difficult time with my mental health. I was spending time with some friends from my course at the Student’s Union on campus, the group consisted of myself, my mature female friend whom I lived in a house share with, a mutual female friend of ours I wasn’t particularly close to, a male former course mate from the year prior and one of his male friends whom no one else knew. The five of us spent the evening drinking and chatting, having a really great time, and I was happy to escape my loneliness and avoid wallowing in depression for the night.

This was thirty-four minutes of my life. I was at work on the sales floor, cleaning like I do every day. Nothing happened, no one said anything to me but I got to a point in the back of the store where I had to stop. Something entered my body. Not just my brain but my entire body. This was not a physical ‘thing’. It was more on the metaphysical side. It was something that was already there and it chose the perfect time to fuck up my night. I stood there for a moment and stared at the glass in front of me without really seeing anything. I felt people walking around me so I had to walk to the office. I couldn’t sit so I paced back and forth and repeated, “This is my body, this isn’t me”. I said that more times than I can remember. At this point, my hands were shaking.

Trauma. How many times have you heard or been told what trauma is, or what counts as trauma and what doesn’t? Everyone has their own perspective of trauma based on what they know, think they know, or what they have experienced; however, trauma affects each person differently. The following are five truths about trauma that I have learned from my personal experience and from my experience in social work.

My friends and family maybe want to know why I kept fucking up time and time again this past year. And why, now that it’s over I can’t go back to being my old self. You see, my old self has been changed. I’m never going to be the same. My old self is gone.

A few posts back I wrote about not being able to remember myself before having had cancer. About how my old bedroom was a mausoleum to who I was pre-illness, and sometimes I just wish I could live one day without the weight of cancer survivorship pressing somewhere on my soul.

Readers discretion.... There can be some triggering stuff in here. Sexual assault..

I can't remember the day that I left. I can remember the days that led up to it. I can remember seeing red. Everything around me felt surreal and blurry, blurry, and red. I used to think that was a figurative saying, but it wasn't, not in my case. The entire room was cast in red.

Based off real events.

I sat here this evening looking through a years worth of documentation. Ten notebooks of garbage and evidence to the madness that occurred over the past year of my life. Not on purpose mind you. I was merely looking for lost or “vanished” passwords to get into some accounts. The harassment, the bullying, the threatening, the control. People knowing things about me that nobody should know, and the taunting and teasing about them toward me, or TO me. Knowing personal things about me. Teasing me about them. Making me do such insane stuff on promises that were never fulfilled. Stripping down for a Facebook photo, putting me on a dating site. 5000 Nigerians following me and harassing me on Facebook. Thousands of disgusting pictures sent in my fb messenger. I could go on with the list of the year’s worth of antics, but I won’t. And, I will never get down to the bottom of it either. As far as who is responsible. Who did this to me? Why was I so deserving of a years worth of hell? I almost killed myself on three occasions. Oh, I know, because I humiliated a man of pride and ego. Probably a few men, it seems. Because and But.... I don’t think any of them realized they had been having sex with a 7-year-old, every time they were having sex with me.

There was a rainbow trout who lived in the babbling brook.