The Things We Don’t Talk About.
Opening Pandora’s Box: Journalling In The Aftermath of Sexual Assault.
Opening Pandora’s Box: Journalling In The Aftermath of Sexual Assault
It’s a punchy title, I know — and so be it.
It’s a punchy experience, too.
Yet I’m sharing this because I want to. Because it’s important to me. Because (I feel that) we don’t speak about these things enough. Because the antidote to shame is share.
Because — finally — I believe that I have nothing to be ashamed of.
And because I hope that sharing this may help somebody else to feel less alone in their experiences.
So, where to begin?
I’ve kept a diary for many years, and the following excerpts are taken directly from it.
At the beginning of last year, I was sexually assaulted. I reported this to the police and went through the process around this. For reasons that I don’t want to go into here, the case was dropped before it could go to trial. But this post isn’t about that. It isn’t about what happened, nor about the injustices of the criminal justice system. (You can read plenty about that elsewhere — see this article as a starting point.) It’s about how I dealt with this traumatic experience, where I’m at with it now as I endeavour to move forward with my life, and above all else about how I felt.
Because feelings, whilst ‘not facts’, are important and valid in their own right, and should be respected and listened to accordingly. Our emotional responses are akin to a compass — they guide us to look at, question, and understand ourselves and the world around us differently.
This experience left me with mixed feelings, some of which I am undoubtedly still working through. But what I am learning, and am most proud of myself for, is the way in which I have been able to turn this experience into a positive.
No, I am not glad that it happened — but I don’t need to be.
What happened, happened. That’s gone now; that’s out of my hands. What I can control, and what — by extension — I can change, is how I respond to this. What I do differently in the here and now, and how I frame the experience in my mind, is how I heal from it.
I forgive him. And I also forgive myself.
Sometimes, it still hurts a little, but that’s okay. We don’t need to be afraid of pain. We just need to hold ourselves in and through it. Pain itself cannot hurt us. In fact, it is our greatest teacher.
17.6.2019
I am writing because I have something to say. Because finally, I can speak again. Because finally, I am freed from my cage.
Closure: it’s over. It’s all over. I can breathe.
It may not have ended how I intended but that’s okay because I did all I could and that’s enough. And even if it’s only ‘enough’ because it has to be, because what other choice do, did, I have, because we do what we can to survive but we also do what we have to, it’s still enough — and that is everything to me. I can rest in peace tonight. I can die happy. And, hey, I can live happy, too.
This does not define me.
***
I am the kind of woman who lives in the gaps between the stories. (Quote taken from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood, with thanks.)
I am the kind of woman who sees light and shade and beauty and pain and power and shame in everything.
I am the kind of woman who refuses to be afraid.
I went back and edited this to replace ‘girl’ with ‘woman’. Because I am not a girl anymore — and that’s the point. The ‘girlish’ me would never have done this: she wouldn’t have been able to. It’s not that she was weak but that she didn’t know how. It is only upon claiming my womanhood — and, with that, owning myself as an adult human being with wants, needs, agency and personal responsibility — that I’ve been able to truly feel, recognise and harness my power.
It has been the greatest gift.
I feel like I am falling in love with myself, with life, with this pretty-ugly world. I am alone and yet I have never felt so full, so whole, so abundant, so at home. I am at peace amidst conflict and despite pain. I can love and I can laugh and I can feel and I can let go of what no longer serves me. I can cry and I can smile and I am open and ready and waiting, so much so that sometimes it all feels the same: just sensation, transient. Bracing. Tidal wave rises upon the shore but leaves only ripples in its wake. If you look away for too long, it’s as if it never came — but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
When you go to bed at night, what do you feel?
When you are at one with yourself, can you sit with your thoughts? Can you take the time to truly listen? And are you comforted by the skin you’re in, the touch of a finger stroking slow, lazy, deliberate, the notion of being purposeful only in presence, as if being there is enough, as if this is all there is, as if we could live our lives defined not by the pursuit but the experience, as if all we had was this moment in its entirety, stretching out forevermore. Are you at peace with your physicality? Can you love yourself in all your glory? Can you accept what is as being what you want?
But what would it mean to be everything you ever wanted?
What would it mean to no longer need?
What would it mean to trust yourself enough to love yourself unconditionally?
What would it mean to break free?
This is the work.
It’s not about being ready.
We are never ready.
We will never be ready.
I will never be ready and, hell, I’m not ready.
It’s about being willing.
This is the work, and it’s hard and painful and exhilarating and beautiful and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This is the work.
This is my life.
This is me and, no matter what, I refuse to be ashamed.
****
21.6.19
What am I doing?
I want to share the conflict and juxtaposition, too.
I want to make it clear that this wasn’t, isn’t, easy for me to do.
Why did I report? Because I felt like I had to. I didn’t have a choice. Once I realised what had happened, once I had managed to come to terms with — in some sense — the notion that someone had purposefully violated me, and all the difficult emotions that come with this, I had to do something. It’s not just a matter of if not now, then when? (although delaying reporting does the victim no favours), but something more intrinsic — something that speaks more to weakness than strength: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.
Writing that sounds, feels, a little melodramatic. Sure, “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t”, but what does that mean? These phrases roll off the tongue nicely, add a little ‘excitement’ — but for what?
What I mean when I say this is that I couldn’t sit with myself.
When I realised what had happened, I couldn’t un-realise it. I couldn’t hide or pretend. But, most importantly, I couldn’t go back — in any sense of the word. Not to being who I was before, nor not-knowing. I had to just keep going. I don’t think this was an act of bravery or defiance, although it may be for others; for me, it was a matter of gritted-teeth survival. I felt broken, but I knew enough about myself to know that I wasn’t, or at least that I couldn’t let myself break now. I was lucky, at some level: this event occurred at a point in my life in which I had more than I had ever imagined, let alone dared to allow myself to actively ‘want’. I resolved not to let this take any more from me than it had already; I refused to let it — him — beat me.
That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t afraid.
****
Am I afraid now, still, in the aftermath?
I don’t know.
Am I afraid of him? No. He has no power over me. I will always have questions about that night, but I accept that they will likely go unanswered — and for good reason. Sometimes, there can be no resolution. I don’t know if he would, could, actively, publicly, externally acknowledge what he did. Sometimes I wonder if he knows, and then I stop myself.
He knew.
It wasn’t consensual.
It wasn’t a case of miscommunication and misunderstandings.
He knew it wasn’t consensual, and he took advantage.
I suppose what I’m wondering is whether he could, would, admit this. I wonder whether this would be painful or unsettling for him. Somewhat understandably, the ‘rapist’ label gets a bad rep. Who wouldn’t deny knowledge or culpability in that context?
Sometimes I wonder whether we’re asking the wrong questions; whether the very pursuit of enforced ‘justice’, rigid in its parameters as well as its outlook, is misguided. There is, and can be, no justice: two wrongs don’t make a right, and no amount of time behind bars can be said to rectify or redeem past trauma. No matter what, I will have to live with this — and I am one of the ‘lucky’ ones.
Because no, it wasn’t ‘that bad’. Yes, it could’ve been so much worse. But does that really make it better?
Where do we get these views of ourselves from? The internalised misogyny; the sense that we are somehow deserving; the ease with which we can excuse abuse and mistreatment with the excuse that ‘s/he didn’t mean it’ or ‘it wasn’t that bad’. As if it really was just a matter of misunderstandings and miscommunication. “Oops, sorry — my bad.” As if these things could be laughed off as easily as they occur. As if ‘it’s okay, because…’
What are you trying to excuse?
Who are you trying to justify yourself to?
Why do you feel the need to do so?
It’s not what it is, but what it represents: the body is a vessel. We may be its master but it doesn’t — won’t — answer to us. There are always things that we can’t control. There are always things that we can’t explain. The body remembers what the mind cannot. It gives and gives and gives until it can’t anymore.
***
5.8.19
I want to write about anger.
I want to write about fear.
I read a quote today that said that beneath anger, there is always fear.
Fear of what?
And are we — should we — be angry about that?
I am angry, too.
Sometimes it feels like my anger is a tidal wave, undulating inside me. Building momentum. Implode. Explode. What’s the difference?
Often, it feels like my anger is cliched. I am frustrated by my own frustration. There is nothing (more) to say. My anger is toxic; my anger is waste. My anger is a source of shame and indignation. I rail against the emotionality of my experience and, steely-eyed, submit to self-flagellation. I give myself what I want, need, deserve. I give myself what I cannot understand. I am unapologetic and unflinching and lost and found. I am sad and I am happy and I am hopeless and I am free. I am dead and I am desperate and, at the end of this, I am still breathing.
Everything makes me angry, because emotion is about connection and I am hyper-connected and I see so much hurt and pain and injustice in this world, every day and everywhere around me.
Nothing makes me angry, because I am pragmatic and compassionate and I know that there is nothing to be gained by being such. Anger takes and it takes and it takes until there’s nothing left. It doesn’t fuel the fire; it is the fire. What goes up must come down and what blazes will one day just be ashes in the grate.
And I want to forgive you. I want so badly to forgive you. Because it is not you that is the problem. It is everything around you, around us. You are a symptom; there is nothing that you can do to make this better. And yet there is something you can do: you are, you could, be accountable. You could be honest. You could own up. And there’s something inside of me that would see that as redemptive in and of itself, and would take an admission as a symbol of progress so significant that it wouldn’t warrant any further action.
Why?
Because what do I gain, really, from you going to prison?
What does this achieve?
Aside from the fact that this is now extremely unlikely, it misses the point. The punishment bears no relation to the crime. At best, it’s punitive — and perhaps unnecessarily so. What do I really want to know?
That the buck stops here. That this won’t happen again. That other women and girls will be safe. That my actions were not in vain. But none of this can be guaranteed. Edge to edge, we must sit with uncertainty. What other option do we have, really? As human beings, can we really prove that we’ve changed?
Actions speak louder than words, but words are a start.
You did it, but I don’t hate you for it.
You did it, and part of my work is around accepting this. Hate solves — changes — nothing. The same is true of, for, fear. I am not afraid of you anymore. I was and have been, but things are different now. I see that you are broken too.
***
16.9.19
I am the kind of woman who has learned that it’s dangerous to show weakness.
But yes, I am afraid. And of what, I can’t explain.
I think this takes me back to my childhood. That perennial sense of being weird, ‘other’, different; the association between being seen and being laughed at.
At times, I am scared to be seen. I am scared to be known. I am scared of what that might mean. I am scared of where this might go.
I’m still scared that he might hurt me.
I’m scared that he might seek revenge.
He is a very angry man.
And yet, to a very large extent, I never knew him at all.
I saw him in this light and I cannot unsee what I have seen. He may be wonderful, but he has a darkness within him.
And yet we all have darkness within us. How do we reconcile ourselves with that?
How do we reconcile ourselves with the idea that, if pushed, we too could do terrible things?
Hell is not other people. Hell is how we relate other people to ourselves.
I don’t know what pushed him. And I wish I could ask him. I wish I could understand.
And that’s why I went back. Even though it made no sense. Especially because it made no sense. (Because narratives are constructed in retrospect.)
Because I was blinded by fear, confusion and emotion and I wanted clarity if not comfort.
I wish I’d brought a tape recorder.
I wish I’d brought a fucking camera.
I wish I had it all. Maybe that would’ve made a difference.
But I didn’t, and I don’t, and we find ourselves in the gaps between the stories.
I think he was lonely. I think a part of me felt sorry for him. And, because of this, a part of me didn’t realise — or want to believe — what he was doing. Yet hurt people hurt people; it really is that simple. And sometimes there is, and can be, no justice: two wrongs don’t make a right.
He hurt me but he also taught me an important lesson. Through this, I have changed for the better.
And so, I am grateful. In a way. Of a sort. Tentative, reflective. I’m not about to reframe and reclaim this narrative to the extent of saying that I’m glad it happened, because I’m not. Of course I’m not. To say so would miss the point. This hurt. This hurts. I hurt, too. We are all hurting.
And I look up at the sky full of stars and suddenly I am crying.
***
26.12.19
I am driven to make something beautiful out of something ugly.
Pain. Myself.
And to forgive.
I don’t think I’m ugly, but we all have shadows.
And as time stretches on it stops mattering so much. I stop caring. It feels indistinct. I wonder how this realisation will affect me and shape me; what will happen if and when I get into a relationship again, and how it will affect how I feel about and interact with my partner. The simple truth is that I don’t know. I just don’t know. But words are healing, and writing is healing too. This brings new joy, new peace, new everything. There is so much to learn. There is so much life to live. It’s time to let go, and I’m not just saying it. We store so much emotion in our bodies, unexpressed, and call it tension. It hurts, physically, and we suffer for it. I ache to be known. But, more than that, I ache to know myself. And so I unshackle myself, violently. I disturb myself. I am not afraid anymore. I am not afraid anymore. I am not afraid anymore. I have nothing to be afraid of. You have unleashed me. I have unleashed me. Fuck you. I will be who I was born to be.
And settle now, again, fingers tap-tapping with an urgency at odds with the quiet, dark room this is being penned in. A moment of softness, of silence, amidst the reverie. Stop. Take a breath. You’re safe. You can let down your defences. Let it be.