After my rape, I felt incredibly scared and alone. I thought I was dirty. I thought I was crazy. I had a million thoughts running through my head:
Why had this happened to me? Why was this happening again? What was I doing wrong?
I was so ashamed; I had nightmares in which I relived the trauma so vividly that I would shake and scream. I felt disconnected from the world. Feeling alone was terrible, finding out I wasn’t turned out to be far worse.
Months later, in some attempt at healing, I started sharing my story and as I did more survivors came forward to tell me their story. I started to realize that, among women, what I was going through was as common as getting a bad test grade. For me, this was more terrifying than believing I was a freak. Although connecting with other people like me was empowering, I was also suddenly thrust into other people’s stories and I had to process all of this vicarious trauma.
Flash forward to this year: the #MeToo movement is trending and my newsfeed is flooded with people sharing stories…Just. Like. Mine. Since then, it has been a non-stop litany of Hollywood, religious, Olympic, and other workplace abuse scandals. At this point, I do not know how to reconcile any of this as normal. I once had grappled with a reality in which I was all alone and carrying a burden that needed to disappear. Now, I have reoriented myself in a new world in which this is every woman’s reality and where sexual exploitation is commonplace. Every 98 seconds in the United States someone is sexually assaulted, and one in four college aged women report surviving rape or attempted rape at some point in their life.
After my rape, I was always assured by my close friends that I was not alone, and now I wish I was. How do we move forward from here?