This article could be triggering for some. If you are a WLU student and have experienced intimate partner or gendered sexual violence, please contact Sarah Scanlon: gendered and sexual violence advocate. If other resources are needed please contact Kids Help Phone, Good2Talk or Youth Space — or someone who you trust.
I have “written” to you before. More than once. Wrote down everything to express the thoughts that I could not physically put into words — or words that I was incapable of saying out loud. I wrote to you the first time you did it. We were fifteen, in your parent’s basement, arguing about something mundane. I remember everything clearly. I was facing away from you and felt your fists hit the bottom of my back, as hard as I thought you could. A rush of emotions, instantly, ran through my body. I turned around and you were looking at your hands. Mumbling something that I couldn’t comprehend before you could articulate the words “I’m sorry.” I forgave you. Told you everything was going to be fine. You promised not to do it again.
I cried in the shower while the water hit my back. In bed, until my eyes were swollen and came to school with a script rehearsed, in case anyone asked what was wrong.
You did it again. You did it for years and I can’t remember the moment where I started to accept it. I can’t remember the moment when I stopped being surprised and would just be ready to feel your fists against my skin. Feel a kick. Feel your hands against my throat. I don’t remember when I started to believe I deserved it. I don’t remember when I stopped fighting back.
I remember the pain. Every inch of it. Every time I held my breath and I can still feel the blow to my stomach. I can still remember the nights you got so mad that you didn’t even look like the person I fell in love with. I convinced myself that you had to be a different person. Because there was no way in the world that you could ever hurt me the way you did.
I covered for you with every lie in the book and every moment I fell more in love with you than I understood. I guess it wasn’t love. Because love is not pain. Love is not abuse.
It took me months to say that word. To accept that sentence. When you left, I had to tell my parents and all my friends. I didn’t know how to accept that I wasn’t okay. I thought I was giving you everything. I didn’t tell anyone your secret, believing that somehow, I could fix you. “Fix” you, while I was breaking me. And I’ve been picking up pieces ever since.
I used to feel like I was drowning or that my body was going numb. The human brain has a funny way of suppressing trauma and helping individuals survive. At one point, I didn’t know how to make it stop. The last time you got that angry, you told me to tie your hands behind your back to the dresser in your dorm room and move away. You told me that you were mad at me and would hit me if I got too close and wanted to take precautionary measures. I did exactly what you asked and cried while my hands began to shake. Your plan didn’t work.
I don’t forgive you. But I refuse to hate you because without it, I wouldn’t be in the place I am today. And I am slowly beginning to love where I am. Every inch of me has grown, has made mistakes that I needed to learn from, has cried so hard that I gasped for air. It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, yet it’s something that genuinely believe changed me for the better. I will also apologize for the pain that I caused you. We were both hurt in different ways.
So I’ll use you as an example. Don’t think of it as an act of revenge or a hit at your reputation. It’s none of my concern how you feel surround my healing. I am now a part of a statistic, one that I never thought I would be. But I refuse to let it define me. I’d rather scream my story so loud and so often that you will never forget my name. I am learning how to be patient with myself, when it comes to letting someone in, when it comes to remembering what happened for those four years — and when it comes to healing. I will do everything in my power to help any individual that is faced with a situation like mine. As though I was placed on this earth for that reason alone. I will fight against anyone who is just like you.
Make you sure you’re listening. Closely and carefully. I was not built to break — and I will never be silent again.