“In your twenties…” is a sentence starter I hear all the time. We are supposed to do this in our twenties, we are supposed to be doing this and that thing and be a certain way, and have similar struggles. Some make me laugh, some make me scroll vigorously away. I think the most important thing to take away from this type of article is that your twenties are a great time to grow, find yourself, find your passions and find your people. That is a great thing about the Internet; once you shuffle through the endless memes and trolls, you can see growth. I love that about the Internet, but I never applied it to myself—until today.
Imagine a small white girl, wrapped up in a cheap Lands End sweater, sipping on some lemon tea and scrolling through Buzzfeed and the Washington Post in her small office during a boring day at work. This is me. I decide that I just really, really want to see the picture of my boyfriend I took around the time we first met, so I begin to stalk myself on Facebook (note: dangerous task). I have a difficult time finding the picture, because it’s from three years ago. I begin scrolling through my photos, meticulously combing through every photo album to find this damn picture because it’s Tuesday and right now, I have nothing better to do.
However, soon, I am paying more attention to the pictures that are not the one I am looking for; instead, I notice something. In between my sophomore and junior year of college, I really look different. Yes, I dyed my hair a different color and started working out, but something else was really different. It was in my smile, my eyes, and the way I carried myself. I had not noticed this before. Realizing this now, in my office at my entry-level job eating a really shitty salad, I begin to tear up (and quickly stop that nonsense before someone notices). Because unlike (or quite possibly, surprisingly like) my fellow college students, this change was not indicative of just any “self-growth” that occurs at school.
I was resented a bit in high school because at my all-girls school, I was one of few who had a boyfriend. I laugh at this now, not only because it was petty, but because the jealousy would have quickly evaporated if they knew what I was going through. It took me years to realize that for three years in high school and the beginning of college, I had been emotionally, psychologically and physically abused. I had been raped and stripped down to the bare bones of my soul. By the time it was all over, I didn’t even know what had happened to me. I did not realize the weight of the damage.
With abusive relationships, a lot of people focus on the “leaving” aspect. As if when someone is finally free of an abusive partner, the pain goes away. It does not always go away, at least immediately. Sometimes it lingers, like that old rug in your storage closet that you forget about, find randomly on a rainy day, and have to beat mercilessly to get the dust out and be able to see it clearly. That was my pain. Today, I realized I can even see it on Facebook.
When “stalking” is taken lightly as a regular Facebook activity, you usually can see how a person has aged. Any picture of me from 2009 to the beginning of 2013 showed a girl who had no idea what she was going through. She was told what to do with her free time, where to be at a certain hour—or else. This girl, young, naïve and in her first relationship, had no other standard for a normal relationship to which to compare this. She said no to sex but the boy went through with it anyway, and she thought this was a relationship norm. When the yelling and the berating began, she also thought this was normal. When the boy insisted they go to college in the same place because he would die without her, she obliged. He told her she was lucky he let her pick her own school within a ten-mile radius of his own choice.
When the physical abuse started in college, this girl was so numb from his psychological abuse that she thought she deserved this treatment. She didn’t even pause to consider her otherwise—again, no one had taught her this wasn’t right. It wasn’t until her next door neighbor in her cramped dorm heard him screaming at her one night and turned her in to the RA that she began to realize something was wrong.
As she began to distance herself from this boy, their mutual friends started pointing fingers. “You’re the crazy one,” said one boy, referencing a night he heard from outside a bedroom, with her screaming at the boy. What he didn’t know was that this screaming occurred right before the boy threw the girl into a dresser, which landed her in the hospital. But no, the girl was to blame. Others similarly blamed her; this added to the confusion. The friends began to disappear and the girl was soon left with few friends and a crumbling college GPA. She kept trudging through, and began therapy after the panic attacks began. The therapist asked about her first semester at college; she told her everything in PG format. She never told her about the physical abuse. Without saying it directly, she helped her realize that she had been abused in every which way. Without knowing it, she helped her realize she had not only been raped, but cheated of herself for the past three years. She had no idea who she was.
Back at my second semester of college, I specifically remember walking up the stairs in my dorm one day listening to a country song, singing and dancing in the stairway. My ex had told me I wasn’t allowed to listen to country—it was hick, primitive even. But I had always loved it. I still wasn’t dealing with what had happened to me, which yes, you can track on Facebook. I started partying, hard. Most of the pictures from the next few semesters are at creepy frat houses with neon lighting.
It wasn’t until my junior year of college that I eventually began to own what had happened. I could finally say to myself that for three years, this boy manipulated me, controlled my life and even raped and beat me. This led to a semester of depressed nights curled up in bed (and yes, another sunken GPA). But after I came out of that tunnel, the feeling compared to a 500-pound person shedding over half of their bodyweight. I felt like I was learning how to be me again. It shows in those photos.
My life turned around completely after this. I broke up with my second boyfriend. I moved out of my parents’ house. I spent my last semester abroad. I spoke up in class—loudly and often, when before I had always sat silently in the back. I worked at my dream internship and soon afterwards got a job offer. I graduated with honors and started working almost immediately after. Now here I am, a girl who actually looks like she’s laughing in her Facebook pictures rather than trying to smile. I support myself and safe to say I’m doing well. I realized that many other girls have experienced similar situations, and our resilience only grows in numbers—they make me stronger. I am my original goofy self. I have come a long way. You can see it in my Facebook pictures.
Your twenties are a great time to grow. For me, that’s exactly what they were for. I found myself, and I can finally begin to grow. My only piece of advice is to never, ever let someone else define that growth for you.