Why I Finally Decided To Go To Therapy

For someone who is a huge advocate of therapy, I have avoided it for years and it hypocritical really, but I finally did it, and this is why.

I first knew I needed therapy back in 2014, I was kidnapped and dumped in the middle of nowhere, but thankfully I found my way back to the highway. I tried not to think about too much, but I vividly remember that it was when the nightmares started. They were, and still are so terrifying. On countless occasions I’ve woken up screaming and woken up with wet pillows because I’m crying in my sleep, but I repressed it.

In 2015 I walked out of this man’s house after he had defiled me. I had an overwhelming desire to claw out my own skin because of how disgusting I felt. He had done what he had done, brushed my hair, put money in my palm and sent me on my merry fuckin way. It was the worst day of my life. Once again, I took that memory and locked it in a deep dark place.

In 2016 on my way work, now this was the worst day of my life. I got into a cursed bus, the driver and the six men on the bus were all in on the robbery. They took everything from me, they undressed me, touched me and beat me then threw me out in the dark somewhere. They took everything from me and I don’t mean material things. What did I do? I couldn’t feel it, so I locked it up in the deep crevices of my mind.

For years, I bottled up all this trauma until a few weeks ago. Something I had learned was to take negative emotions and try to spin gold out of them, so that’s what I did. With how fragile my mental state had been as a result of the Corona virus-induced quarantine, I had noticed that this place I had locked up all this darkness was cracking. I was having flashbacks, I would feel dirty and irredeemable and hate myself again, the nightmares had returned, so I decided to turn my terrors into love, so I wrote about how I love this man because he makes me feel safe.

What I did not anticipate was the feedback I got on my Instagram and Twitter. Several women who I knew and some who I didn’t, shared with me privately how they were also struggling to deal with sexual assault years after it had happened and the devastating theme amongst these women’s stories was the fact that their assault came at the hands of someone who they loved; at the time, just like mine was. Their stories caused this crack to widen some more.

For the first time in six years, I started to feel. I felt everything. I was reliving my worst nightmares. I could feel all over again the fear that engulfed me when I realized I was in a cab with three men who were kidnapping me, I felt how I struggled when this man pushed me down and towered above me, I felt those five men beating me and undressing me. I felt everything like it was all happening again at the same time. I felt like I was carrying the burdens of these women who shared their stories coupled with my own, and it was too heavy for me, and the cracks burst open.

I have never felt fear like I felt that day, I was curled up on my bedroom floor in a fetal position and trying to breathe, but I kept choking on my tears. I always joked that I was broken inside, but two weeks ago, I broke. I am scared shitless because I think I am who I am because of my trauma. I generally have an upbeat personality but what if I am only that because I’ve spent the last couple of years trying so hard to be this person so that I don’t have to think about this heaviness in my heart. What if I let it all out and I’m not me anymore? I wish someone would sit with me on the couch during therapy and hold my hand because I am very very scared. I am afraid that I am who I am because of this darkness because I’ve been trying so desperately not to feel. I am so scared because I’ll have to admit to myself that everything about the person I am is a persona I have created out of fear. I have struggled to live with a very flexible definition of okay, but deep down, I am really scared.