The storm of ‘acceptance’ continues to whirl and swarm around me. I’m stood in the middle of the heavily weighted word. Its contents spilling out in all directions, mainly towards me. It abruptly intrudes and makes me experience a cycle of battles which is simultaneously rooting the trauma deeper inside my brain and body.
A battle of thoughts.
A battle of emotions.
A battle of attempting to carry on as normal.
A battle of memories in my body and,
A battle of memories in my brain.
A battle of not letting this experience solidify itself as part of you. But it’s too late. It is part of you.
A battle of telling yourself that you were raped and sexually assaulted.
A battle of believing this. Fully.
A battle of letting yourself feel the emotions that are frozen in time. Frozen from the night or not experienced at all because you were so scared.
The battle of understanding that you were so scared that your normal emotional responses had disappeared in the face of the fear.
The battle of comprehending this fear.
Sometimes when I tell other people pieces of the night, I watch how their faces change, and how their words express emotions that I stop myself from experiencing. Pushing them away before they become fully formed, alongside the memory they are attached to.
But to process and move forward, you have to comprehend the scale of it. You have to let the emotions embody the memories.
Emotions feel different now. They feel vividly intense, and I experience them alongside the memories. All encompassing.
So I’m trying to let myself experience the emotions. To let myself validate them. And as I do this the battle field feels like it expands around me. I’m a small dot in the middle of it all, everyone around me pushed a distance away. It makes me feel smaller and smaller. It makes my world feel less like mine. It makes me feel like I’m stuck in time. It makes me feel like everyone else is moving forward without me. It makes everything feel louder, and everyone look intimidating. It makes words carry weight and sometimes they hurt. It makes me start grieving and missing the old me. It makes me think that I’m not safe. It makes me scared.
The temptation to push all of the above away is huge. But I’ve been doing that for too long, and that’s why the trauma has got more and more stuck. It’s why the trauma has creeped out and plagued every aspect of my life uninvited. Because you can’t ignore.
Or you can ignore, but there comes a time when there is no choice but to face it all.
And as exhausting as the battle is, I have to hold on to not letting him win.
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