You survived the abuse. You’re going to survive the recovery.

It has taken me a long, long time to even be able to speak as candidly as I do about my past, present, and future dealing with depression, bipolar disorder, and self-harm. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever opened up to more than just my very close-knit circle of friends about how I had been struggling with self-harm for over 5 years, I wrote a Facebook status and only made it available to about 30 people. I was afraid of judgment. I was afraid of the stigma attached with what I was doing to myself. I was afraid that people who respected me wouldn’t anymore. I was afraid that I was tarnishing my own reputation, the same way I had inflicted pain upon my own body. I carefully chose the people who I thought would respond in an open, loving manner, and I jumped. The reactions from that first group of friends, family, coworkers, teachers, and mentors was overwhelmingly positive. I wasn’t some broken, inherently bad person just because I was struggling. My brain, though a little sad and sick, and maybe muddling through some faulty wiring, was still valid and worthy of love and belonging. This realization helped me learn that it was okay to share my struggles with EVERYONE. Once I grew confident and comfortable in that, messages began pouring in, from people I knew and people I didn’t, all shouting “me too!” and “I thought I was the only one!” and “This is my story. Will you listen?”

I listened. I learned. I grew. I had the harder conversations, and I asked questions. I cried. I reminisced. I related. And as far as I’ve come with having these very important mental health conversations, it just isn’t enough. I’m only sharing the tip of the iceberg, and the ship is threatening to sink. I’ve painted out the inner workings of my soul for years now, and sometimes I worry that it just isn’t honest, because it isn’t everything. You can’t repair up a broken heart if you only stitch it up halfway.

So today, with my heart threatening to pound out of my chest, I open a new chapter. I open a deeply personal and profoundly painful part of why I am the way I am. One of the hardest things for me to admit in this life is that I have been a victim of extreme abuse: emotional, physical, and sexual. I have been made to believe that I am unloved and unlovable, that I am broken, that I don’t deserve this life. I have learned to cover up black eyes. I have walked much of my life keeping my mouth shut and my eyes pointed downwards, walking on eggshells, playing it safe. I’ve sat shaking in cars in ditches, actually afraid for my life. I’ve been told horrible, malicious untruths from the people who were supposed to teach me about trust. I’ve learned how to breathe despite broken ribs and a head full of the initial blow being replayed over and over. I’ve let the hand who threw me into the wall hold an ice pack to the bloody lump on the back of my head. I’ve said “no” and been smacked across the mouth so hard I wondered if any of my teeth broke. And I’ve been viciously raped. And I hate that word. It sounds to me like the demon it is. A short, harsh word, smacking an uninvited truth to broken, horrified lips. It is a word I fear. It stakes claim on my mind, pulling it along for a dance I never wanted to learn, stepping on my toes and breathing down my neck.

The first time I was really, truly raped, and not just coerced and persuaded, happened in early February 2009. I was thrown to the floor in my bedroom, and when I tried to protest, he held both hands around my neck and shook me until I knew I couldn’t say anything else if I wanted to live. When I cried “too hard”, he’d hit me, and to this day, I can taste my blood on his fist. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night, panicking because I can still feel his sweaty hands holding me down, and my dogs look at me worried and perplexed, tails wagging. They have no words to ask what I’ve been seeing, and they come to me with enthusiastic kisses, and I wonder how he sleeps at night. After the first time, he stood up and told me that if he’d known I’d just lay there, he wouldn’t have bothered. He closed my door quietly, and I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel. I just curled into myself and held on, as if I could hold together what was left of me and keep those broken pieces safe. As if there was anything left to keep safe, anyway. When the tears finally came, I didn’t recognize the sobs as my own. I cried until I threw up, and then I bleached my carpet until the blood and puke was gone, but that span of carpet didn’t match the rest. It makes sense though. I will never be able to completely erase the horrors staining my heart and brain either.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. The next day was when I finally showered, and I stayed in long after all the hot water was gone. I shook because the water was so cold, and I still felt like I couldn’t scrub him off of my skin. I felt smothered. I felt dirty. I felt dead.

He raped me 3 more times over the next few months. And I can’t talk about those right now, and maybe the details aren’t important anyway. What’s important now is the response. The first time I was brave enough to go to an adult about it, I was told “Well, he’s your boyfriend, right? Work it out. Your boyfriend can’t really rape you.”

He can. He did. Yes, my rapist was my boyfriend. That probably gives you a good picture of how skewed my idea of relationships are now. My first love tried to kill me and fucked with my body and my soul. He took everything. At the time, he took everything.

I write this because in recent months, I’ve realized that maybe, just maybe, I don’t belong to him, or my other abusers (who I may write about in time), or what they’ve taken away. That’s why I write these words. Because when I learn more about who I am and what I’m actually meant for, it occurs to me how I’m not the only one who has been abused so horrifically. I’m not the only one who has cried these tears and endured these flashbacks and been triggered by everyday life into just not being able to breathe and wanting to die. I write these words for those who walk this path with me. We are victims, and that is sad, and that is true. But more than that, we are survivors. The abuse I’ve survived is something that happened, something I had to deal with, and something I continue to deal with every day. And the very definition of survive is “to persist, to carry on despite hardships or trauma, to persevere, to remain functional,  to cope, and to live”. I wasn’t in a devasting car crash, and I haven’t been diagnosed with any terminal diseases. But what I went through was debilitating, insidious, vulnerable, and haunting.

I am not what has been taken from me, and if you’ve been hurt by someone or multiple people, you’re not what they stole from you either. You are what you’re giving to yourself, and kid, you have to keep giving. I promise you can live through it. I promise. You survived the abuse. You’re going to survive the recovery. You owe that to yourself, you know? Its not going to be pretty, or romantic, or easy. You will still wake up from nightmares, panicking when you imagine him touching you in places where he has no right to touch you, but you will reclaim your dignity and your heart and you will survive. He will kill the flowers in your brain before you realize, but you can grow them back all by yourself, watering them with patience and time rather than warm beer and bad sex that lies when it calls itself love. You are meant for the promise of better days. Someday your mouth will stop tasting like his fist, and you’ll try ice cream and a really good margarita and another man’s lips when he promises you the world and means it. You are not the hospital bracelet that you ripped off your wrist with your teeth, nor the blood staining your sheets. You are a mosaic, a piece of art comprised of broken pieces that, through time, learn how to sparkle and find light, a piece of beauty in its own right. You might always jump when someone touches you and it takes you off guard, or shudder when people touch you in a certain place, but these are your triggers now, and that’s okay. Some people will be patient with you, and some won’t. That’s okay too. You’re learning who can love you the way you deserve to be loved, and that’s one hell of a good thing. Sometimes, people will have nothing but the best intentions in mind, and they’ll still do something or say something that will throw you into a full panic, even when you truly know that there’s nothing to be afraid of. But you’ll learn how to breathe again. You really will. And more than that, you’re going to have your bad days. I couldn’t get out of bed until 4 PM today, and no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or how fiercely I shook my head, I couldn’t get some images out of my head. But my heart was still beating, still fighting, still winning, still reminding me that I’m alive, and even my worst days only have 24 hours. You need to crumble? Alright, fall completely apart. Did you know that for a star to form, an entire nebula needs to collapse? Maybe you do too. Call it destruction, or call it rebirth, but you know, sometimes strength is wanting to fall into the ground and die and then staying alive just to spite those evil thoughts and evil people.

You’re a survivor. And no matter if they’re baby steps or huge strides, you’re making them. Today I wrote a blog I told myself I would never be able to write, and already, I’m thinking about the stories I’ll be able to tell next. You can prove yourself wrong too, and in this line of fire, that’s incredible. So do the things you think you can’t. You’re proving your abusers wrong. They couldn’t take you down or out. You’re a goddamn survivor if I’ve ever seen one.

I write these words because I’m not about to watch myself sink. This ship was made for greater things. The waters are not always calm, and the storms sometimes threaten to take me out, but I’m the one in charge. I’m the one who gets to decide how I live now. I lived to tell the tale, and I plan on surviving the recovery.