By Elizabeth
After experiencing a trauma, it is instinctual to go into survival mode.
We hold it together everyday: participating, smiling, pretending. We listen to unsolicited words of advice:
“It will get easier.”
“There’s people who have it worse.”
“It’s over now.”
However, blanket statements such as these do not help. If anything, they compound the guilt of the affected person by making light of their situation. What I wish someone had done, during the course of my life, was be honest. I wish someone had warned me that when the damage is severe enough, there will always be cracks. We can pick ourselves up and put all of the pieces back together again; we can do everything in our power to keep the edges glued: go to therapy, develop support structures, channel energy through creative outlets. Eventually we feel stronger when the pain subsides and the scars fade, but we are still left with the cracks. So long as these cracks are acknowledged and maintained, they will stay as fine lines on our souls that remind us of what we have survived. But, when left unattended, these lines fester into gaping wounds that leave us vulnerable to further damage.
I learned this truth after I had the abortion. No one knew about it so it was easy to pretend everything was fine. If someone noticed that I was detaching from a conversation, or if I was so lost in thought that I began to look sad, I blamed it on exhaustion from work and school. I became so apt at lying that no one ever pressed further. Life went on and I repressed it all, which created a nice opportunity for the darkness inside of me to grow. In pushing the trauma into the deepest recesses of my mind, I never healed. Rather than fine lines forming, there were open wounds which produced more sadness and self-loathing. My depression, which I had been fighting to control since I was a teenager, gained the upper hand. My sense of self-worth, which took years to coax into existence, disappeared. I hated myself and no longer wanted to try fixing anything because the weight of it all felt insurmountable. I so desperately wanted to feel whole again but had no strength or idea of how to do it. It was this hopelessness which left me susceptible to what would happen next.
It was when I was at my lowest that I met him. Well, re-met; we knew of each other but had never interacted. From the moment we spoke he looked at me like I was special. He treated me with a tenderness I had not experienced before. He was so incredibly frank about his own sordid past that I began to feel safe. As time went on, his unwavering, genuine interest in me led to a relationship.
He didn’t judge or chastise me for what had happened. Each time I let him in, the burden of my shame lifted so I continued to share: my history of depression, the anxiety attacks, the suicide attempt. When I finally opened up about the rape in Peru and subsequent abortion, it felt so intimate. He told me he would keep me safe and I believed him.
But I wasn’t.
Once I showed myself completely he began to change, becoming cruel and controlling. It started with smaller things that I was able to brush off because they were done in private, like knocking me into a wall when he was drunk or being a bit too vicious during a fight. Then, as his confidence in my silent fear grew, he transitioned into more public displays of aggression. Once when I was talking to his friends, he came behind me, gripped my wrist, and whispered into my ear that the only reason they were “wasting their time” speaking to me was because I was dressed like a slut. Another night he got drunk and accused me of flirting with his roommate. When I tried to leave he spit on me, yelled that he couldn’t wait to see who I was “forcibly fucked” by next time, and that told me I deserved to be raped again. When I tried to speak up, he told me if I left him, he would tell everyone about the “baby I had killed”. He used every bit of what I had confided in him to hurt me. It’s embarrassing to admit that I still wasn’t strong enough to walk away. I felt like I deserved this degradation, as if enduring him was my penance. His abuse continued to escalate until one night he slammed my face into the corner of my car door.
Seven stitches and one black eye later, I was still weak enough to give him a platform to speak to me. He vacillated daily between admitting fault and blaming me. First, he wrote a long email professing his love and admonishing himself for his behavior. The next day, he admitted to what he had done physically, but said it was my fault because I had hugged a girl he didn’t like (she had tried to warn me about him). Then, it devolved into him trying to convince me and mutual friends that I had abused my anxiety pills, blacked out, and fell into the car door. He ridiculed me and told me I should be embarrassed of what I had allowed to happen. For a while it worked and I spiraled further into depression. However, at some point, I was able to surface long enough to notice how much it was hurting my parents. I had never seen my dad so angry or my mom so sad, both feeling powerless in their collective inability to help me. While I still didn’t care enough about myself to leave, it was my love for them that allowed me to finally walk away.
For a long time I chastised myself for being weak and allowing myself to become a victim, but it was that type of negative self-talk which landed me in a position to be taken advantage of in the first place. Rather than trying to deal with what had happened, I buried it. The cracks formed and because they were invisible to others, I ignored them and allowed them to grow. Although I should have felt pride in the life I was creating, teaching full-time, tutoring, and attending graduate school, I instead felt only self-loathing. I allowed myself to be defined by a singular past experience and based my sense of self-worth on that.
It took many years, and one very patient man, for me to get me to a place where I knew I would never allow something, or someone, to control me that way again. While the trauma of the rape and subsequent abusive relationship stripped me down to my most bare and vulnerable, it also allowed me to begin the process of building myself back up to a stronger, more complete me. Though the cracks remain, they along with with the visible scars serve as reminders for days that I feel weak. They help me remember all that I have survived, that I came out stronger, and that I will continue to grow. They remind me, each day, that I have nothing to be ashamed of and that there’s nothing left for me to fear.