I’m angry and I will get loud
I will attempt to tell this as plainly as possible. This is my truth, this is what my life has been, is now, and it will be both similar to and different from the stories of those with similar experiences.
(This is a practice run at narrating my truth well enough to be understood by those in my life who don’t understand. I have railed at their lack of empathy, but perhaps they need a chance to know what this has been like from the inside.)
I was sexually assaulted as a young child. I was four years old. I do not know exactly who assaulted me, but I know what was done, what I was made to do, in excruciatingly vivid detail.
My family moved shortly after, and my young brain — that did not fully understand the sexual implications of what had happened — locked this incident away somewhere deep in my brain and I forgot about it.
Consciously, I forgot this incident. Unconsciously, it ate away at me. Unconsciously, I spent the next two-plus decades traumatized and constantly battling the effects of trauma. I have an inherited disposition toward depression and anxiety, and trauma amplified those things, but I was unaware and unable to label them — depression especially — for what they were. Instead, I felt a perpetual sense of failure and unworthiness as depression eroded my ability to function, especially in school. I was smart and bright and I should have been able to accomplish so much! And I felt shame for not measuring up to my potential.
A couple times over the course of those decades, the box opened. Once, when I was nine. My attempts to articulate what had happened and to place it in context were not successful. And my parents didn’t know what to do, so they did nothing. Another time was in college, sitting in the cafeteria with a group of friends while a teasing conversation about oral sex whirled around me and suddenly I had a context, I knew what had actually happened to me.
I also felt the shame typical to those who have been sexually assaulted or abused and raised in a conservative religious environment. Without knowing why exactly, I always felt less than, outside, unworthy. This was exacerbated by being socially awkward generally, and then moving to Utah when I was in high school. The girls in our neighborhood and at church were often mean to me, and my introversion was interpreted as snobbery. My feelings of not belonging at church only continued through college and grew worse as it became more clear that I was unacceptable in the dating pool too. I had a couple boyfriends in high school and they were good, nice guys. I went on a couple dates in college, but that was it. I became bitter about the social aspects of church and my failures to fit in, and my shame worsened. Unconsciously still, I was certain I was undesirable because what had happened to me had made me unpure.
Additionally, I never felt fully safe. I still don’t. My creep-radar has always been highly tuned, and some part of me is constantly evaluating the men I work with, live near, interact with randomly in a store, see walking down a sidewalk, for potential threats. At times, it’s exhausting — especially when I’ve lived alone. But it’s my traumatized brain attempting to avoid additional trauma.
In my late twenties, the box opened for good, and my depression worsened to the point of suicidal ideation. The pain was too much and I wanted to be erased. For months I spent hours every night on the phone with my best friend, sobbing out 24 years of pain and helplessness and feeling worthless. Eventually, I came around to the conclusion that I needed therapy — my friend had been suggesting it for a long time, but I had to hit a certain low point on my own before I made the call.
I was finally able to say out loud what had happened to me and my therapist helped me understand how it had shaped my world and my brain, and that I wasn’t alone in my experience. In hindsight, I could finally see that so many of my “failures” as a student, as a daughter, as a friend, were the result of my depression-wired brain and not actually character defaults.
I dealt with the shame. I put it mostly behind me. There are still times it sneaks up and says “you’re not good enough”, but I know what’s happening.
I left the church shortly after finishing college and have remained happy with that decision. It was one of the first things I did as an adult that was purely based on what I wanted and what felt right for me and not what was expected of me by other people. In therapy, I discovered that I spent too much time talking what I “should” be or be doing. Church and religion were full of “should”s and I wasn’t myself under the weight of shame and “should”. I am not bitter towards the church or toward the people in my life who continue to find it fulfilling and enriching to their lives.
Over 13 years after my first foray into therapy, I’ve become better at recognizing the patterns of both my depression and my anxiety, and mostly handling them. Sometimes handling means staying in bed for the day, but less than it used to.
At this point in my life, I choose to medicate my anxiety but not my depression. Medicine was crucial to my recovery from clinical depression, but I also had a couple nasty experiences with side effects, and I came to value the highs and lows that fueled creativity but that were evened out by an SSRI medication.
My father died 7 ½ years ago, and I went back to therapy — that deep grief was so much like depression, and I had to recalibrate.
Honestly, I should probably be in therapy more regularly. But that’s another step for later, at least for me. I’m not claiming total grasp on total mental health here, just that I’ve made progress over the years.
And then a man who bragged about getting away with sexual assault got elected as President. I felt immediately sick and retraumatized and pessimistic. And then deeply hurt when it was suggested to me by family and a chunk of society that I was overreacting, being dramatic.
And then Dr. Ford testified and Kavanaugh got confirmed anyway, and I am deeply retraumatized.
I feel profoundly unsafe.
Because the country that raised me and some of the people who profess to love me demonstrably don’t care about me or what happened to me at all.
My point of view has been dismissed as the hysteria of someone “triggered” and “not over it”.
I got over my shame, but being a survivor of sexual assault is something I will live with my entire life.
If I’m angry, and I AM ANGRY, it is because too many people in our country are not safe, are degraded and discounted, usually for the benefit and power of the rich or the white or the male.
I have been silent for too long, because I don’t want to strain family relationships, or stir up drama, or seem like I’m seeking attention.
But I am DONE WITH SILENCE.
