A Rough Go Of It

CW: rape, suicidal thoughts, PTSD

My friend and I are sitting on his balcony. He is passing me a half smoked joint through the cold night air. We’re talking about a girl we both know, who was going through a breakup at the time. I make a comment about how terrible her ex was, to which he responds “yeah as far as guys go, she’s like you, you’ve both just objectively had such a rough go of it”. At the time I remember agreeing and laughing it off with a comment about how I always have had bad taste in men. But that comment kept me awake at night. How do you know? I think. Do you know about it?

It’s the summer after my high school graduation. I'm 18 years old and I feel invincible. I dancing in the dirt and the sunshine with people who have made up my everyday life for as long as I can remember. We hug and laugh and cry and promise that we will never drift apart.

On August 8th 2016 I am raped. I dont leave my couch for two weeks straight. My mother buys me a big fluffy blanket and even though it is over 100 degrees outside, I keep myself tightly wrapped in that blanket as though if I dont, the pieces of me will go flying in every different direction and disappear forever.

It’s my first day of university. I've left everything and everyone familiar behind. I am a new person. I can be, because no one knows who I had been before. I watch the other girls in my classes and in my dorm and in the cafeteria. I pick out the traits I like best and I mimic them, until my entire persona is made up of little fragments I’ve stolen from others. I’m fine. I’m happy.

It’s my first time drinking since it happened. I am drunk and sitting on a boy’s lap. I dont know how or why but I hear the words “last time I drank I was raped”. It isn’t until I see the look on his face that I realize the words had come from me. Similar instances occur for the rest of that first month. I put on a fun, carefree, happy, act. I pretend that nothing touches me and that I’ve never had a bad experience in my life. But every time I drink I’m entirely unable to stop myself from saying it. I had been raped. Every time I wake up the next morning full of regret and embarrassment at the fact that another friend now knew what I desperately wanted to leave behind and bury. No one I tell that month ever mentions it ever again. They eventually fade from friends to acquaintances. I dont remember if they distanced or of I pushed them away.

I eventually stop saying it. I stop thinking about it. I am drinking heavily, often to the point of a blackout, three nights a week. People think I’m fun. I’m making friends. That becomes my role that I set for myself. I am fun. I am not allowed to be emotional or sad or even very smart. I am fun. I am entertaining. I am wild. I am unashamed. I sleep around. When I stay within this role I start to believe it. I am in control.

It is the summer after my first year in university. I'm working in a restaurant on a remote lake as my attempt to avoid ever returning home. I've started to drive a half an hour every day to a beach spot that I know is always empty. I sit on this beach every day trying to wish away my thoughts until I panic, realizing I cannot. I swim as far out as I can and I float on my back. I contemplate letting myself sink. I don't. Every time I swim back to shore and show up for my shift like nothing happened.

I’m in my second year of university. I’m unable to sleep. All I want is to be alone and when I cannot I lash out viciously at those around me. I am drowning in my foundation level economics course. I call my mom from a parking lot in the dark. I'm coming home I tell her. I drive back to my dorm, withdraw myself from my course, and pack a bag. The next morning I get in my car and drive 8 hours. The next I drive 9. I am home.

I am home. I’m having debilitating panic attacks every single day that last hours. I start going to therapy. I have anxiety I say. But I dont say it. I feel like I physically cannot. Like my year of burying and refusing to say it or remember it, built a big brick wall that stops it from escaping and slipping out of my mouth ever again. I am sad all the time. Everything feels bad.

“I'm referring you to a psychiatrist. Please consider making an appointment”. My therapist thinks I need to go on medication. She doesn’t know what to do about the girl who comes in and sobs while talking about how great everything it and how nothing bad has ever happened to her.

I’m sitting in a leather chair in a room that looks like an accountants office. It's rigid. Unfriendly. There is no soothing music or soft lighting. We’ve been talking for quite a while. I've been telling her how great my life has been but how lately I have the tiniest bit of anxiety. My hour appointment is almost up. She asks me if there is anything else I have to say. I say no. I am crying. All of the words I have been pushing down, unable to say, are out. “You have PTSD” she says. I am given a prescription for sleeping pills and sent home.

I dont have PTSD. it doesn’t make sense. I've been fine for over a year. I can’t have PTSD.

I'm back at school now. Ive stopped going to therapy. I'm having multiple panic attacks every day. I'm using heavy coursework as an excuse for the always present bags under my eyes and my poor hygiene. I'm not sleeping or caring for myself. I write suicide letter in my head every day. Every time I get to the part where I assure my mother that there was nothing she could have done and to please not blame herself I have to stop. I never put it down on paper. I dont need to. I have it memorized.

I’m now 22 years old and about to graduate from university. Ive still never written my note down but I no longer have it memorized. Ive taken steps to improve my physical and mental health. I have a home that I created for myself, with friends who have become my family.

I have accepted my reality. I was raped. I have PTSD. I will most likely never go back to how I was before. I will never know what it is like to live without fear of a poorly timed panic attack. I will never know what it would be like to live in a world where trust and vulnerability feel naturally safe for me. but all that I have experienced has made me strong. I am a survivor. this thing that happened to me, that almost killed me, it didn’t win.

I was raped. But that one moment does not define me. What does define me is every moment that I have lived and survived since.

Now, when I think my friend on the porch saying that I've had “a rough go of it”, it doesn’t send me into a panic like it once did. My mind no longer races thinking how do you know? Do you know about it? instead I feel calm. Maybe you didn’t mean anything by that comment. Or maybe you did. Maybe you do know about it. And that’s ok. I'm finally ok.