They keep calling me brave, but mostly I feel guilty

Over the past few weeks, I spent two days at the local police station giving my statements and being questioned about some of the worst times of my life.

I’m pressing charges against two people from my past. One was my boyfriend for five years. The other was barely an acquaintance, a friend of a friend. And I’ve had to pay the price for what happened (you could say I’m still paying it), but they never did. I’m not doing any of this for revenge, though. Someone asked me that recently, and it nearly made me recoil. No, it’s not about that. It’s not about them at all.

Finally, after so many years of telling myself “it wasn’t a big deal, so I shouldn’t make it one”, I started telling myself something different. I started telling myself that what happened to me mattered.

That it was real, and it wasn’t my fault.

Ten hours. That’s how long it took to recount these events. A five-year relationship that took place in my 20s, and a deeply frightening experience when I was 17.

It was humiliating at times - being asked about my ex boyfriend’s porn habits, if I was sure that I didn’t consent to being raped, hadn’t asked for that or agreed on it somehow. The female officer who took my statement apologized up front for the questions she would have to ask me. Being questioned about something that was done to your body against your will feels especially invalidating. What felt worse though, was every time the police officer pointed out that this happened a long time ago. Yes, it did. But that doesn’t really make any difference.

See, trauma stays in the body differently than a regular memory does. It sticks, and it can often be called up much more easily and vividly than just any other memory. Reliving snippets of it though flashbacks is common. And contrary to what many people think, flashbacks are not only a mental video triggered by sensory input that reminds you of the event. Flashbacks are usually triggered by something, yes, but you might not even register the trigger before the flashback comes. Flashbacks can also be physical sensations or emotional states, like feeling the same way you did when/after the traumatic event took place. Sometimes we even get stuck in those states for years.

And because traumatic memories stick with you in this way, it also doesn’t feel as long ago as it maybe was.

I was reminded of a memory from the summer of 2010, six months after the first time I was raped: it’s early morning, sunrise; me and my friends are still awake from the night before. We’re sitting on the terrace of my mom’s house, just chatting, laughing, smoking cigarettes. It’s such a nice memory. And it feels like a long time ago. When I think of this memory, I can tell how long ago it was. How much time has passed since. But traumatic memories don’t work the same way. The memory of the rape doesn’t feel as long ago as this objectively less distant memory.

The pleasant memory is something I remember from time to time. The traumatic memory is something my body has never forgotten.

That’s the difference.

So when someone tells me it was a long time ago, that doesn’t matter. It likely won’t feel that distant to the person who lived through it. “Distant?” My body remembers every day. It’s part of me, like a scar. The goal, by the way, is not for the scar to disappear, but for it to be just another part of your body. Neutral. Not triggering to look at. Just: yep. That happened. But we’re okay now.

Most days, that is where I am. But having to open up so completely in this way, recounting the events down to the smallest detail - it really was like reopening the wound. It will need time to heal again. I will need time to return to this self, the one choosing to do what feels right. The one standing up for herself. The strong woman, not the frightened girl.

To be fair, I don’t know what that officer meant when she kept telling me it was a long time ago. She didn’t clarify. She could have meant “it was a long time ago, so your memory might not be the clearest”, or “…so you’ve been carrying this for a long time”. All I know is how I took it. How it sounded to me: invalidating, minimizing. Like I should be over it by now.

Maybe that’s because it’s what I’ve told myself so many times. So I just did that again, using her voice.

⊹

Everyone keeps calling me brave lately. Inspiring, even. But what I feel most is guilty. Weak. Empty. Exhausted.

Why do I feel like a fraud when my lawyer, friends and loved ones look at me and tell me I’m brave for doing this? It’s like I’ve been caught in a lie, but I haven’t lied about anything. Everything I’ve said is the truth.

It’s weird, but sometimes there is a glimpse of feeling powerful. So far, those moments have been brief and fleeting. Maybe one day, that feeling will stay.

No matter how I feel, I have very little doubt that I’m doing the right thing. Ever since I decided this summer, it felt right. I made the call to the police with an old friend by my side. I was shaking and feeling as if I was going to pass out, but I did it.

Because the country stands still during the summer months, I had to wait two months for an appointment. Two months of wondering if I should change my mind. But the loudest voice inside me was the one saying “we need to do this”, and I knew it was right.

And then, when I spoke to my lawyer on the phone and later met with her, it became even more clear that this was the right choice for me. Everything just … aligned.

It’s funny, but the events of this spring is what lead to this even happening. Would I have gotten here anyway? Maybe. I like to think so. But it might have taken much longer. Seeing a counselor at a center for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence is what made my thinking slowly start to shift. My counselor, H, is a woman who radiates strength. And she’s not afraid to ask me tough questions that unravel my careful systems of self-protection that really ends up protecting my abusers way more than it has ever protected me.

I still carry a lot of guilt and feelings of responsibility for the things I’ve experienced. But that’s normal - it’s a symptom of the imprint from the experience.

Did you know that one of the most common symptoms of PTSD is thinking that what happened to you wasn’t that bad? That so many other people go through worse things? Everyone thinks that. People who went through the most horrible torture - they think that. Isn’t that wild? But most people, we only think that way about ourselves. As soon as something happens to another person (even if it mirrors our own trauma perfectly), then we can see it for what it was, and be rightly shocked and appalled and feel deeply empathetic. Why is it so hard to have that same empathy for ourselves?

⊹

The way I see it, my job is done. What I needed to do was say what happened. The next part is not up to me. But god, do I dread what comes next…

When these two men have been questioned and had a chance to give their statements, I have to sit in my lawyer’s office and listen to what they said. Two of the people in this world whose thoughts, memories and opinions I care the absolute least to hear, and I have to hear what they’ve said about some of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I have to sit there and listen to their thoughts about me. It honestly makes me want to throw up.

At one point, I said to my lawyer about the 25 year old man who drove me out to the middle of nowhere, raped me and took pictures of me when I was 17, “What if that was just a regular Wednesday for him?” (Because that’s actually what I’m dreading to hear from him the most. That it was nothing. Like, damn, she remembers that? Still?)

She answered, “If that was a regular Wednesday for him, it makes it even more important that you’re doing this, because that would tell us a lot about his state of mind and what kind of person he is. If he thinks that was normal, that in itself is highly abnormal.”

I know she's right, of course. But telling yourself that something isn’t a big deal for sixteen, almost seventeen years, is surprisingly effective. Maybe he’s been doing the same thing. Or maybe he was always completely justified in his mind. Based on things he told me, I suspect it’s the latter. But I don’t really want to think about that.

For this particular man, this person who was essentially a stranger to me, I feel no guilt. But when I was gathering evidence for my case, I looked him up on Facebook and saw that he has a girlfriend. They’ve been together since a year after the incident. It made me wonder: does she know? (probably not) what if they’ve talked about all of this stuff and she has chosen to stay by his side? (good for them, I guess. In that case, this won’t break them either) what if she has no idea and thinks he’s a completely different person who would never be capable of something like that? (but how realistic is it that he’s managed to maintain a perfect mask for so many years?) what if he has done the same thing to her, or harms her in some way? (well, then it’s even more important that I’m speaking up)

He said there were others. Told me I wasn’t the only one. I’ve wondered so much about that over the years. Did he mean that? Why would he say it if it wasn’t true? He had a different girlfriend at the time. Did she know?

That’s what I worry about the most - the girlfriends, partners. How will this affect them?

What I keep coming back to is that they deserve to know. You have a right to know who your partner is, and who they were before you met. We can all be many different people in the span of a lifetime, but if one of our past identities include ‘rapist’ or ‘abuser’, I think our partners deserve to have that knowledge. To decide for themselves if that’s something they can accept.

I worry about my ex boyfriend, too. Even though he was never truly a good friend to me (because you cannot abuse someone and be a good friend to them at the same time), I considered him my best friend for many years and it’s hard to forget that. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, know nothing about what his life is like now. Is he better? The same? Is he so far down that this will be the last nail in his coffin?

That’s not my responsibility, I know. He isn’t my responsibility. But if you’ve been conditioned, like I was, to put other people first even when they harm you, it takes a conscious effort to redirect your patterns of thinking.

We’re both adults. He’s five years older than me. He can take care of himself, and if he can’t, it’s still his responsibility to get the help he needs. Still, saying that makes me feel cold. Rotten.

I have said nothing but the truth. My evidence is real and tangible. If me literally just saying things that happened means that someone will have to face legal consequences, then all it means is that crimes were committed and the law agrees. But there’s a voice in my head calling me a snitch. As if I should have some sort of loyalty towards these men. That thought makes me feel sick, too.

I don’t think there’s a comfortable way to do this. There is nothing easy about this, and I think I just need to be okay with that.

⊹

For now, I’m trying to detach from whatever comes next. Honestly, I don’t need a consequence, sentencing, a verdict. I don’t need any external validation. It’s difficult to really take it in whenever I receive it, anyway.

My work of speaking up is done. The work of healing continues.