My Going Out
Trigger warning: this article contains depictions of sexual assault and suicidal ideations. Readers’ discretion is advised.
“Forgive yourself for not knowing earlier, the things only time could teach.”
Five days ago, after a two-hour session with my therapist, I lock my bedroom door and weep until my head aches. There are a couple of strong painkillers on my bedside table, and a glass of water. When the snot in my nose cleares and my head becomes a little bit lighter, I wait for the bitterness in my throat to disappear, but nothing. I wait for the lump in my throat that has been lodged there for four months now to melt, but nothing.
I wait, and wait, and wait….nothing.
One by one, I put the pills in my mouth, washing them down with little gulps of water.
My mother, when in the mood, says how much I loathed medicine as I child. I was the child that needed cajoling before a pill made its way down my throat. I wailed, rolled on the floor, until I ran a fever. Still, I refused the pills. Until they began asking doctors to only prescribe injections.
The gods must have been kind to me as a child, because I don’t remember any sicknesses that held me down, physically, until early in my twenties, in campus when I was unconscious for 48 hours, and when I came to, my best friend at that time sat next to me, tears in their eyes, saying, “You could have died. The doctors say if we had brought you here just an hour later than we did, you wouldn’t be here.”
I am a full, proper adult now, and in between menstrual cramps, a lower back that almost had me confined to a wheelchair 4 years ago, and the things that keep me awake, sometimes, are emotional and mental, where I cannot be asked ‘what hurts?’ and point somewhere and say, ‘here’, pills have become my almost-way-of-life. Or my go-to when the things of this world have pushed me on edge, and I am dying to disappear from the face of this earth.
One by one, I put the pills in my mouth, washing them down with little gulps of water.
***
A couple of months ago, I was violently sexually assaulted in a place where safety had been promised. Almost guaranteed. Even as I type this, I can’t help but imagine how naïve this sounds. How wrong, because it almost sounds as if to say there are places where safety is not promised, almost guaranteed, and it is okay to be sexually assaulted in these areas.
You always think your paranoia will save you. Your awareness of the things and people around you. The way you listen to your gut. You hear about these things in podcasts, and watch them in crime documentaries, and even though they break your heart into tiny bleeding pieces, at the back of your mind you think, ‘well, that can’t happen to me’. You think because you sit with your back straight, you walk with confidence in your step, you speak as if words are manufactured in your belly, you carry grace in everything, you…you think because of these things, you are immune to sexual assault.
You think. You think. You think…until suddenly, there is a man looming over you, heavy, drunk. You recoil into your seat, further and further, but there is only so much space you can pull yourself into. They force their mouth on you, and the stinking, drunk breath almost suffocates you. Everything happens so fast, before you know it, their hands are grabbing your breasts, and…
***
The morning after the assault, I sit in my couch and heave. There is a heaviness in my heart that has cut the motion in my tongue. I think, and think, and think.
An old friend calls me, and one of my biggest regrets to this day is telling them a blow-by-blow account of what happened the previous night. I should have known that human beings are fickle little things; they pretend, and fake empathy, and offer pseudo-guidance and allegiance. I had no business saying those things to anyone – I had not even fully processed the magnitude of the violence that had just happened to me.
And how I felt grounded in the initial days after the violence….I should have known that that is the kind of violence only I, the victim, could sit with, and accept without bitterness. And try to live with it, through it. I should have known that no other human being was capable of holding me through that magnitude of sexual assault.
The morning after the assault, I stand in the shower and scrub my skin until there are tiny droplets of blood on my gloves. Until the skin has become too sore the hot water begins burning. I scrub my skin for hours, yet, I still feel filthy. I still feel the imprints of his hands on me. My whole body still smells like his drunken breath, and I just know there is no way I shall survive this.
The first time I report to the police, the attending officer holds me in her arms as I cry, and when I finally pull myself together, I see her eyes have turned red. On the phone to her colleague, she mentions, “Please make this an exemption; she is afraid because the perpetrator has an idea of her routine.”
I cry until they escort me to a back room, where I cry myself to sleep on a dusty desk.
***
A week after the assault, I tell myself that the pain will go, eventually. I just need to survive one day at a time, to keep myself busy. My mind will forget, my body will stop jerking every time someone comes close to me. I shall find the courage, again, to look myself in the mirror and not see the darkness in my eyes.
I think, naively, that this is the worst pain I could ever feel.
I think, and think, and think. Until they start asking why I did nothing to defend myself. Why I did not just walk away. They insinuate a lot of things, amongst them, the most hurtful, that I was inviting to this perpetrator. That I led him on. They say, and say, and say, until I become undone, I bawl my eyes out, refusing to be silenced.
Then they accuse me of being emotional. For not thinking straight. For forgetting things I should remember. For remembering things I should forget.
Slowly by slowly, the empaths draw further away from me. They stop calling to ask how things are going. What the lawyers are saying. Their phone calls reduce from daily, to weekly, to completely none; they stop acknowledging my presence, and this drives a fresh knife through my heart.
I do not sleep for days. I do not eat. I laugh when they expect me to. I show up. I perform. I try to not tell this story to more people than the ones who already know, because shame has slowly started creeping into my existence. I try, I cry, I try again, so I go home, pull my locks to one side, and repeatedly bang my head against my bedroom wall until the dizziness takes me out.
***
A couple of months ago, I was violently sexually assaulted in a place where safety had been promised. Almost guaranteed. Even as I type this, I am still crying- been crying for the past three hours. My heart is so, so tired of everything, and I hope my going out, if today, will be soft and slow.
