Healing

March is always an awful month for me. In Cape Town — my home town — March marks the beginning of autumn. Summer’s exhilarating heat comes to a sobering end. Sweltering afternoons and nights spent around the fire ominously disappear, soon to be replaced by gusts of winds and air so cold it literally hurts your face.

Supposedly, the happiest people are living in the moment, seizing the day, and generally living like it's their last day on earth. It all sounds inspired, wonderful, and profound. And simple. Who wouldn't be on board? Me, that's who. And somehow I suspect I'm not alone.

Much has already been said about the way the Stanford swimmer's privilege has insulated him from consequence, about the ever-pervasive victim blaming in public discourse, and about the inadequacy of the criminal justice system. But in so many of these conversations, in our rage against the rape culture machine, we forget the survivors — the most important people in the fight against sexual violence.

Individual “parts” of my system [...] have become dysfunctional as a result of trauma. Some of these parts are stuck as young children or teenagers, while others carry individual emotions like worry or anger. They’re all still parts of my whole — not full-fledged personalities as in dissociative identity disorder — but they are separate enough to take on a life of their own to protect me from harm.

Survivors need support, but often, when they reach out, they are met with responses that only cause further trauma. The impact of these responses is immense.

[CN: sexual assault] It happened to my mom, three of my best friends, and then it finally happened to me. Like so many women, I never imagined I’d face such a terrible violation, let alone that I would have to struggle to recover.

I was drowning in stuff, and felt constantly tired — even though I’d made an art out of trading in my old clothes at secondhand stores, minimizing expenses, and sharing apartments with strangers. Something felt fiscally oppressive despite the fact that I’ve never owned a house, a car, or anything larger than my bed.

I feel I got the short end of the stick because of emotional and financial costs I am still paying for what he did — the grooming, the mind games, the violation of my body and my agency, the disregard for my mental and physical well-being, the purposeful isolation from friends and family. I have already spent a decade in therapy trying to find solid ground, struggling to revive even a shadow of the person I used to be.