Just like mourning, healing is also a process -- one that everyone works through differently. Some people require more time than others, some require therapy or medication, and still some can move on from their problems with seemingly little effort or experience interference in their daily lives. This could take days or years and there’s really no way of understanding why that is.
Healing from sexual assault has been a long journey for me, only because for the last four years I truly believed I was fine. I never developed a fear of men or intimacy, I never had nightmares or flashbacks, and in fact I rarely ever thought of what happened. I considered myself generally unaffected in almost every aspect of my life, seeing it as an event that happened that I learned from. I never considered myself a victim for many reasons, just one being my own shame and guilt in putting myself in what I realized was a bad situation. I didn’t cry about it. I didn’t talk about it. I simply moved on.
Now many years have passed and since then, my three best friends have suffered from rape, sexual assault, and an emotionally abusive relationship. I cried with them when they told me what happened to them and silently empathized with their situations, but still I never cried for myself or talked about what happened. At this point, I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t want to or didn’t need to. Had I truly moved on? Was this acceptance?
I learned very quickly a few days ago that I hadn’t and it wasn’t. A conversation about rape as a theme in comedy or as a joke brought back memories of me consoling my friends, and the idea of their experiences being equated to a punchline made me sad. And I grew even sadder realizing that my own experience was the same; just another joke in someone’s routine or an event that I made up to get attention or a way to criticize me for bringing the assault upon myself. And for the first time since the night it happened, I cried for myself.
In the past few days I’ve learned a lot about myself and what it means for me to heal. What I thought was me being unaffected and accepting was probably my way of denying what had happened. If this were mourning, I would have been stuck in the first stage for over four years now. Don’t be afraid to cry for yourself sometimes, because it can open up the door to healing. Maybe I didn’t need to cry to have to validate my experience, but that was what happened. In a country where 1 in 6 women and 1 in 10 men has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape, and where publicly addressing the issue results in victim blaming and shaming, it’s critical that we encourage each other to heal the right way.
It's not about just 'getting over' what happened, but accepting what happened. Surround yourself with people who care about you, speak when you need to, cry, journal, begin therapy, or whatever you need to do for yourself. You owe it to yourself to heal the right way.
