TW: Rape, Sexual Assault and description of violence.
Part 1 - Making sense of Fear
It’s been over a year since that night. Since I naively put on my favourite dress and my make-up. Since I picked the right jewellery to match my outfit and went to meet him for some drinks in London.
It’s been 16 months and 17 days since I was violently sexually assaulted and raped 3 times. In my own home, in my bedroom with all of my belongings around me. Belongings once familiar and safe. Belongings now objects that I don’t want to belong to me. Belongings that ‘refuge’ my fear. That trigger and maintain my fear. And that enclose my fear tightly around me so that I can’t escape it. They’ve held onto him.
It’s been 496 days since I’ve recognised myself. Since I’ve been the me that everyone knew. The me that I knew. Like my belongings that are now objects consumed by fear, I am now consumed by fear too. And in some senses, I just feel like an object as well. An object frozen in the fear of that night. Stuck. Rigid. It’s imprinted on me and I can’t shake it off. But he isn’t here anymore. So what am I fearful of?
How you go through something traumatic is one thing. Something unbearably inhumane. Something that tests your sense of safety beyond any capacity you thought possible. Something that makes you think you might not survive.
How you communicate and express that to people who haven’t experienced that degree of trauma before is another thing. How you communicate and express that to yourself is an even bigger other thing.
For me, since that night, I’ve been taking apart and challenging the reality I had before. I’ve been trying to navigate what feels like a brand new world to me with a new understanding that fear as an emotion is multi-faceted.
It is now deeply rooted and tints everything I do.
It holds the fragmented bottomless layer of incomplete memories that are rattling around inside me.
It hides memories from me, because they are too full of fear. But it also pushes some memories into my present.
It’s like it makes me wrestle with beginnings of a permanently unfinished tale – taunting me. It presents in different ways and has thrown me into a dual reality. It can’t decide which version of itself to be.
It makes me fearful of the fear itself.
My new fear-fuelled dual reality combines the so-called predictable rhythms of day to day living side by side with the overwhelmingly unbelievable ever-present past. The overwhelmingly unbelievable ever-present presence of him.
I can identify one moment of the night where it felt like this dual reality begun. Where my whole world narrowed to a small sphere around me. Where I’m stood watching the terror of what is happening to me. Observing from a distance and unable to move to stop it. I have no real sense of time, no past and no future. There is only darkness and a tidal wave of fear, panic and horror that encloses over me.
It’s as though in that one moment I used up all of the fear, panic, and horror that I ever believed possible to feel.
It’s as though I actually had too much of the fear, panic, and horror to fit inside me. My body played a role in making sure I was feeling the fear, panic, and horror strongly. Reinforcing and confirming my emotions. Furiously charging my body with adrenaline. My heart beating faster, my muscles fuelled with energy. But with nowhere to physically get away, the fear, panic, and horror charged on. It over-spilled and triggered the most protective and resourceful skill we use in the face of overwhelm. Dissociation. A disconnect. A numbness thrown over me like a blanket.
At this point, there’s darkness. There’s a pervasive stillness. A quiet bubble, and I’m separate. I wasn’t in control before, but now I feel more out of control but the difference is I’m not panicking here. I’m just observing. Observing myself away from my own physical body. But I hold my hands out in front of me, and I can see I am also in my own physical body. It’s a terrifying and disconcerting feeling. For me, it has stemmed from this fear, panic and horror. It’s a sub-part of fear that I have never felt before.
So this is what I mean when I say I’m frozen in the fear. For me, the fear that is imprinted on me is a rush of the adrenaline followed by this silence. It’s as though the adrenaline charges up, runs and jumps to catch a string attached to a balloon that floats away peacefully in the sky. Observing from above, getting smaller and more insignificant and less easy to see or hear as it gets further away. The good thing about being less easy to see or hear is that you can also see and hear less too. You avoid, and push away the reality of what made you float away in the first place.
Unpredictably these memories rear their ugly head’s and elicit the fear. The physiological overwhelm, and then the dissociative silence. The short fragmented snippets of the night flash quickly. Vivid images, or vivid sensations. My brain immediately plays the part it did when he was here, and numbs me from it all. It’s the easiest way to find myself back to the strong and so-called grounded predictable rhythms of my present self.
But in the numbness, and in the dissociation, I’m not facing and piecing together the memories of the night. They aren’t being rebuilt into a narrative that makes sense to me. A narrative that processes and validates the emotions. They are quickly summoned away before they get a chance to really properly speak. They get stuck, and they make the fear stronger. They morph into different shapes and present themselves differently. Doing anything to be heard.
"It’s like the words of what happened to me sit around me. I’ve let them gain meaning and emotion and they’re heavy – but they’re there.
But sometimes I have to pretend, and the words pick themselves up and the letters forming the words detach from one another. The letters swarm around me, and create the perimeter of the dissociative bubble.
White noise.
I’m squashed smaller as the vortex of letters expands out around me, quickly submerging everything. Everything I can immediately see and beyond.
I’m weaker, more unsure.
I know now each step I take won’t feel like mine. Each word, each sentence, each conversation I sit in won’t feel in my control. I’ll feel separate from my body.
Because all I will hear loudly is him. As the letters swarm and make my surroundings burry and foreign to me, he becomes the strongest version of himself.
Even he becomes a bit less vivid and real, less like something I can change. And more monstrous and unbelievable. His sniggers and scoffs echoing – mocking me. The thump of his punch by my left ear making me recoil. The sensation of his hands around my neck making my chest tight and I can’t breathe.
The noises and screams I want to make recoil too – they are noises of fear, that are too scared to make a sound.
I’m in a battle between past and present. But also between that past being dissociated or not. Being within my reach or not."
Fear becomes your greatest enemy. It’s now multi-faceted nature becomes something to be fearful of. You’re ‘fearful of the fear’. How can anyone comfortably sit with memories that illicit terror so huge, that your body’s only way to cope is to disconnect and not feel anything at all? Dissociation is another version of fear that makes sure fear is with you everywhere you go?
“Who can find a proper grave for such damaged mosaics of the mind, where they may rest in pieces? Life goes on, but in two temporal directions at once, the future unable to escape the grip of a memory laden with grief”
Lawrence Langer Holocaust Terstimonies: The Ruins of Memory (1991)
Part 2 – A Walk Making Friends With the Fear and Dissociation
I went for a walk and noticed something had shifted
It was quite a grey evening and the night was drawing in earlier, but there was some comfort in that.
I remember that feeling strange, because the darker evenings often elicit a feeling of daunt. A marker of change, a reminder that the world is still moving forward whilst I feel stuck.
But there was comfort in the grey evening.
The clouds above me looked heavy and full as if they were mirroring me.
I looked up at them and noticed they were layered on top of each other, each a different shape, each a different transparency. The most transparent at the front moving quickly away.
They reminded me of my thoughts and flashbacks. Some rigid and stuck, others lucid and understood.
They reminded me that I have made some progress.
They reminded me that whilst some things feel stuck, other things can change.
The clouds above me looked heavy and full as if they were mirroring me.
Mirroring and validating the feeling of heavy with helplessness, and fear.
And yes, that does sound a bit depressing.
But for me, it was a shift and a turning point.
I’d given myself permission to feel heavy and full.
I could recognise it.
It was real.
And it came with no shame.
I think I was allowing myself to be OK with not feeling OK.
So the clouds, which were heavy and full as if they were mirroring me became my companions. Acquaintances. Bezzie mates. Chums. And they took me on this walk where I started to properly feel again.
The music I was listening to felt crisper and more alive. Like every note being played was being pressed just for my ears right at that moment.
The grass was green and hydrated against the grey sky.
Either side of the path, the trees were still holding onto their leaves. The branches reaching over above me to touch the branches of the tree opposite itself. Like the leaves were holding hands and creating an archway.
The pond shedding light on the simplicity of life. The ducks following eachother in uniform one lined processions.
There’s something about this walk, and the heavy and full sadness that I was allowing myself to feel that made everything around me feel more important. More alive. My senses had reawakened.
The heavy and full sadness that I was allowing myself to feel made me realise that I had stepped out of the disconnect or the dissociation. The trap I fall into when everything begins to feel overwhelming.
For me the dissociation comes from the flashbacks. It comes from the anxiety, the shame, the fear that something bad happened to me. I can feel him on my body again. I can feel pain. I can see him clearly. Or sometimes I can see him morphed into a terrifying shadow that has no face to help me predict what he might do next.
For me the dissociation comes from the flashbacks undermining my capacity to feel safe.
For me dissociation comes from these flashbacks triggering both my brain and body into a state of turmoil. A constant cycle of being submerged. Both my brain and my body have no idea where to turn so they both surge into action. Energising my body with a run of physiological overwhelm which rapidly makes me retreat and feel helpless.
For me dissociation comes from these flashbacks layering up on eachother so they become the strongest version of him.
For me dissociation comes from these flashbacks becoming impossible to comprehend.
For me dissociation comes from these flashbacks inhibiting my confidence to function. And inhibiting my belief that I will ever function again.
For me dissociation comes from these flashbacks leading me to feeling as though I have nowhere else to turn.
Dissociation has made everything feel so big and inescapable, that I felt like I had no option but to not be here anymore. That I shouldn’t be here anymore. Like I didn’t know why I was here. Like there was no point in me. I had no worth to others. I was convinced it wouldn’t be noticeable if I wasn’t here, maybe it would be better? I’d be less of a burden, a nuisance. Less of a broken record. I felt completely submerged under the wave of this all.
But I’m noticing more now this shift in and out of dissociation, like with this walk for example. That’s progress.
I’m noticing the shift in my ability to hold him in mind. I look at him, stare at him in the face of the fear he elicits in me, and really hold him in mind. I feel like I can touch him, there is a realness to him. Before he felt dark and difficult to make sense of.
I can interact with the flashbacks more. I can pick him up and move him like a character in film. I can make people come in and help get him off me. I can sometimes breathe again. I can make him turn into water, something less strong and easier for me to get away from.
I can see the letters of the words of the things he did. Letters of words that I kept at a distance. Letters that when I put together, just created words. Bite. Hand. Face. Held. Arms. Punch. Just words, no meaning. The letters swarm around me and create white noise. They create the perimeter of the dissociative bubble I sat in. But now the letters form the words and the emotions attached to them. The emotions I find difficult to comprehend, hence the separation of the words and the dissociation. But the words did happen to me. It doesn’t make me run away as much anymore.
I’ve started to see some of the flashbacks as separate from me. In a pile, of boxes, of sheets of paper, of random shapes and sizes. They are all their own objects. And each one I imagine I can pick up and work through separately. Importantly, separate from me. Only some, but that’s something. It gives me some control. The haphazard between past and present, the processed and unprocessed, feels more distinct for me. I can consciously see and feel aware of it. The distinction I’ve had that some flashbacks I can see next to me, and can carefully select and others come uninvited feels empowering.
I now feel like I am at the surface of the water. My arms and legs are flailing a bit, and it’s not the most elegant I’ve looked swimming. But I’m at the surface nonetheless. The waves are choppy, and water is splashing in my face and I’m squinting to see. Sometimes the flashbacks tug at me, and pull me under. But I’ve seen the surface now.
Someone told me something along the lines of me being in charge. I have to make the change. People are there to help, but no one else but me can get him off me but me.
They also told me that it can’t get worse than this current battle, and so I have to keep going so that the rest of uninvited memories begin to know their place. The cycle of this battle is relentless. Dissociation is protective, but it maintains. And sometimes it’s automatic and I can’t help it. But what I realised on this walk, was that they are right. I am in charge. And I have to be in charge because I have to move forward.
I keep getting worried about the fact I didn’t really notice how dissociated I had been over the last year, and getting more worried that in a few months’ time I’m going to be annoyed and disappointed that I didn’t notice I wasn’t doing certain things or realising other stuff in this present time. Setting myself expectation and time limits.
But now all I want, is to be a future me, looking back thankful that I held on even though I felt lost and confused. I stayed.
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