Battle Wounds
I hide my pain in a dark and empty place. I only recognize it when it when sadness floods my conscience, a flashback hits or these feelings creep into my present.
Am I a survivor? I’ve always struggled to answer that question. I’ve endured, I’ve experienced and I’ve moved on…at least I like to think so.
A quick google and I learn a survivor is defined as a person who copes well with difficulties in their life.
Does that mean I am a survivor?
I’m coping.
Coping…present tense, an ongoing and continuous action; an action I conduct daily to keep living my life. Am I actually coping well? Do I cope well enough to be a survivor?
Sure, I cope. Coping well, now that’s another discussion.
If I’m not a survivor what am I? Am I a victim? NO… I cannot be that. It implies I’m helpless. For the time being I will not label myself.
Let’s go with I was sexually abused. Even those two words are hard to write. It’s been 17 years. 17 years since I was molested and 12 since I was raped. So why am I shaking as I write this? I have a knot in my stomach that is so intense I feel like I cannot breathe. I want to throw up. I feel physically ill. I check my iwatch, my heartrate has increased 18 BPM. This is why I hate trying to remember. It brings back the same feelings I felt back then. I close my eyes. I try to really feel it. I take a few deep breathes and I give it of couple seconds. I whisper to myself “come on, you can do this, define this emotion”. Two more seconds go by. Damn it. I have always struggled to define my emotions…. this is.. fear. A paralyzing emotion that can trap you in a moment of time, in what feels like an eternity.
When I open my eyes I focus on my reality. I’m on a military installation. I’m in Starbucks. I’m safe. I say that multiple times. “I’m safe”. Then I work to slow my breathing and I think those two men are far far away. They can’t hurt you… physically.
It always comes back to this.
Every time I reflect on my past my instinct is to dismiss and forget.
When I think about my trauma, my abuse or the memories that my brain forgot as a response,
I realize that those memories left me but the feelings did not. There is piece of me that needs to be exposed. So here it goes:
My name is Ashley. My uncle molested me and a boyfriend raped. Those wounds have never healed. Two weeks ago my rapist reached out to me on social media. This wasn’t the first time. It took me days to open his message. I didn’t have the courage to read it because I knew it was going to sever the wound. The one wound I try so fucking hard to suture close. The wound I pretend is a scar. The one that I fear will never mend.
A few days go by and I deliberately open it while sitting next to my husband. There wasn’t a safer place to do it. I knew it would be a message with an admission of guilt. Yes, my rapist has apologized multiple times; no, I have never responded. Nor do I let him know that the damage he causes me is only a fraction of what my uncle did. In some ways I forgive him, but if I told him he wouldn’t have to agonize over what he did to me. It’s my piece of revenge, an exertion of my power, an action I didn’t take the night he raped me.
I read his message, turn to my husband and I let him read it. He asks if I want to talk about it and I say no. I never want to talk about it. I need to be at work in an hour and I know I can bury this on my drive to work. I kiss my husband goodbye and turn to music to uplift my mood. Instead I spend the next 40 minutes feeling much like I do right now (shaking in a safe place).
I recognize that I need to talk about this. I need to stop pretending what happened to me doesn’t define who I am. In reality it is at the core of who I am.
My sexual abuse is what drove me into books and school, they were my escape. A place where I could tune out the dreaded anxiety of not knowing if I’d wake to hands down my underwear or worse, something inside of me.
My sexual abuse has given me strength. I refuse to let it break me. I have chosen to channel my pain into success; to empower myself. I must take more from life than what was taken from me.
Before I walk into work I smooth my military uniform, reach for my headgear and look at myself in my rearview mirror. I wipe my smeared mascara and tell myself “You are a fighter. Do not let this affect your exam. They cannot impact everything you worked so hard for.” I take a deep breath and walk away from my car. I perform well. Before the exam I thought about talking to a friend, but I decided against it. She didn’t know about the wound, what happened me 17 years ago and 12 years ago. Would she see me differently? Was I too ashamed? I had no desire for her pity.
Am I a coward or am I a survivor?
I can open correspondence from my rapist and pass an exam. I can cope, but do I cope well? I don’t know. Two weeks later and I’m still fighting to forget that message. Fighting…
How about settling on fighter? Let see what the google machine says.
Fighter. Definition 1 uses the word fighter in it. I roll my eyes and scroll down to another. Definition 2: a person who does not easily admit defeat in spite of difficulties or opposition.
I chuckle a little. Now that sounds more like it. I’m a fighter. I say it out loud and smirk a little. I’m fighting a war inside of me. Two weeks ago I was wounded in battle. I’m fighting to not allow them to win. To take back the power I lost. I am fighting for my happiness.
This internal war is one many other women and men are also waging. A war that people live through silently, without discussion.
I want to break that silence.
I’ve been silent for too long. I thought silence would save me, instead it disempower me. It is time I expose this wound. Drench it in alcohol and feel the pain. Allow it to be visible and vulnerable; permit time to heal it.
With my wound exposed, the silence is ceased. My truth is revealed.
I am fighting, are you?
