Trigger warnings: This article talks about sexual assault, anxiety, and depression.
As we get closer to 2017, I finally feel that I am ready to share how I overcame the worst experience I have ever had. Being that this is an issue that unfortunately affects so many people, I made a vow during the end of the summer to help other people who have struggled with sexual assault. It is also my understanding that when the seasons change, it sometimes gets harder to cope with feeling down and gloomy, and you may have more down time to think. For some people, winter is the hardest season of the year. The difference is that since I am home from college for the holidays, there are reminders everywhere of what had happened. Sexual assault is so difficult to go through – but there is so much of your life that is left to live.
In March of senior year of high school, I was sexually assaulted at a DECA conference (for those of you who don’t know, DECA is a competitive high school marketing club). Following that experience, I did not press charges. I filed for a restraining order – to no avail. A few of my “closest friends” on my state officer team gave statements on his behalf, and I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to continue my fight for justice. The first few things that I learned came out of the process after the assault.
The first thing I learned from this was that you cannot trust everybody whom you would like to trust. The boy who sexually assaulted me was on a team with me, and I unwittingly got myself into a position where I was vulnerable around him. This isn’t what I mean by “don’t trust everyone you meet.” This lesson came from adult advisors and my state officer team members. These were people whom I had trusted, opened up to, had spent weeks with leading up to this event, who I felt like knew me and I knew them as some of my closest friends. They weren’t witness statements; they were character witnesses for him. They deemed him “sound of mind” and called me crazy for accusing him of anything. That haunted me while I was trying to recover from my assault. It was the cherry on top of feeling like I didn’t know myself anymore. Being betrayed by so many people who I trusted was possibly the loneliest feeling I have ever felt. After that, I realized very quickly that I couldn’t unabashedly trust people anymore. Not everybody has my best interests at heart even though I always did for the people in my life. It was the biggest lesson that I had learned from the experience and something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
If you have ever gone through a sexual assault, you will know how lonely it is. How it’s hard to trust others, how intimacy becomes difficult, and how you feel totally and utterly alone. No amount of comfort from your siblings or pep talks from your best friend can make a resounding difference. I realized pretty quickly that I needed to find support, and that sometimes you can’t make it on your own. I finally opened up and started to heal when a friend of mine who had gone through the same thing talked me through every late night, every tear, every fear and every horrible memory. While my assault happened in March, she was still there with me in October when I couldn’t sleep because of anxiety attacks. I also frequented crisis text lines. A favorite of mine is 741-741. They have trained crisis counselors who give you tangible goals and coping methods for your recovery. I would text them a quick “Hi” or “Hello” at least once a week and have a conversation when things were especially bad.
Something else people don’t realize about recovering from sexual assault is what the victim loses. For me, it was Prom, Graduation, my last International DECA conference, my summer, and my best friend. While I did go to prom (and thanks to my mom, I had an amazing experience), the weeks leading up to it were torture. I didn’t want to go, at all. I didn’t want to get ready, go to dinner and the dance, and then go to the after party. It was painful to try to do something that I had been so excited about before March, when it felt like all of my enthusiasm had literally been ripped to pieces. The same went for graduation. At the last minute, one credit was on the line, and I wasn’t sure if I would walk at graduation or not, but I had no drive to make sure that I did. Once again, my mom got me through that, and I did walk at my high school graduation. My last international competition was an experience that I was okay with losing, as long as it meant never having to be near the boy who had hurt me ever again. The organization failed to do anything to help me, so I had to take manners into my own hands. That meant not going to a conference that I had loved going to before. Losing my best friend was a process more insidious than the others. We had told each other that we were fine, but the truth was that we were disconnecting. She didn’t know how to comfort me, and I wasn’t sure how to focus on anything other than what had happened to me. It wasn’t until we had gone to college and 1800 miles separated us that we really felt the divide; it tore us apart.
Going through sexual assault was the hardest thing I ever went through, but I wish I hadn’t given up on getting a restraining order. That is my biggest regret through all of this; giving up. I want now to tell myself in April to not give up; that I needed to be a champion for myself and for every other girl and boy who have gone and will go through sexual assault, that it’s not just me that I was fighting for. I think every day about how I should and could have fought harder because while the case was a game for him, this was my life and wellbeing he was playing with. I think every day about how this happens to other people, and they aren’t believed either. I think about how I should have fought harder and I should have been a champion for everyone else who has gone through what I did.
My message here is that I promise you there is life after sexual assault. I can’t say that I am okay now, but I am so much better off than I was 10 months ago. There will be hard times, there will be times where you try to find the will to get out of bed but honestly cannot, there will be hurt and pain and so many “what if’s” running through your head that it will dizzy you. There will also be glimmers of hope, times where you realize that you haven’t thought about it in record time, times where you find yourself getting excited again about your future, and events, and holidays. You will one day wake up and realize that you’re okay. “Okay” is different for you now, but I promise that you’re getting there. There is still a life that you get to live, a life that does not have to include your sexual assailant. It took me months to figure out how to take the power back from him, because even after the assault, sometimes they can affect you for months or years afterwards, but it’s up to you to decide if you’ll let them or not.
