We are calling it theft. As if he could pluck open your ribs like cello strings, Pocket your breasts, steal what makes your heart flutter and tack its wings to his wall. Some days you will feel dirty! Some weeks you’ll remember how hard it is to breathe in public, like your heart beat is climbing to the attic of your throat only to suicide itself on the pavement. But know this: the person who did this to you is broken, not you

I just feel really shaken up right now. I feel lonely and I feel like breaking down and crying again. Last night was horrible and I don’t really have a lot of days like that in a while. I had seen someone walk past my house last night and I had a panic attacks, so I hurried up to close my blinds and it hit me in the head and knocked a statue over. So I was on the floor crying trying to glue back the pieces and I had this horrible flashback of Banky raping me and I had broken down. At first I was angry and then I was sad. I got up and sat that the computer and cried. I cried so hard that after a while I got tired of crying because it hurt too much so I had to stop. I had another flashback but this one was about Frank and it felt like the 2 years that we were together had been crammed together and I had felt every single time he touched me and it was in such detail like I was watching a movie but I couldn’t stop the movie from playing. After I had caught my breath and stopped having the flashbacks it felt like my body was here but my head wasn’t. My body didn’t feel like it was mine. And all I wanted to do was get the pictures of them out of my head. The flashbacks became nightmares the whole night and I got no sleep.

I just feel so hurt right now. I woke up this morning and I feel like I have to throw up and my stomach is so upset right now. Like for the first time in months I’m actually scared to be in the house alone. Like I feel like I’m becoming paranoid again. Like I can feel them watching me. So when I woke up this morning I didn’t want to get out of bed because my vagina hurt so much. Like it felt like I was burning and I can still feel it. I’ve tried everything to get that feeling out of me but nothings worked so far. It felt like that after Banky had performed oral sex on me and before he raped me. It’s like that feeling just won’t go away and it just makes me sick to my stomach because I can smell him on me and no matter how hard I scrub I just can’t get it off of me.

 Someone to tell me it’s going to be ok, someone to hold me and just be there for me, I need to hear that it’s not my fault and that I’m still normal and beautiful and that I’m not damaged. I can’t do this part alone. I’ve tried so hard and I can’t so I’m reaching out to my support system. I’ve tried doing it alone and it doesn’t work, I only hurt myself and everyone else around me when I do it alone. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s ok to lean on other people when I need help. That I’m not weaker because I need help, that I deserve to be happy just like everyone else.

 I’m trying so hard not to cry because my daughter is here and I don’t like crying in front of her because she picks up on emotions so easily.  My daughter has changed everything for me recently. I was so selfish the past couple of years, especially after I had her; I was selfish to my ex- husband and everyone else. But just being around her more and actually spending quality time with her and opening up has changed my life.  I want to be there for her when she’s 100 lol I know that it’s not going to happen but I want to make sure that I’m around for her. She’s my heart and if it wasn’t for her, I would still be drinking and trying to kill myself. I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a mother like I did. That is the 2nd worst thing that could happen to her and I would never want that for her. Every day I look at her and she gives me a hug or says I love you mama I think about why I’m fighting so hard. Why I keep fighting to survive, I’ve been raped and hit and abused (sexually and emotionally) enough times so that maybe one day she will never have to go through what I went through.

Each day is hard; it’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed, some days I just want to fall asleep and never wake up again because on my bad days I feel like I would be so much better if he would have killed me and then I have days where breathing hurts so much that I’d rather hold my breath until I die. But then there are days where I have really bad panic attacks and I have control over them, and that makes me feel really good because I know that everything I’m doing is finally working. The emotions that I go through every day I can’t explain it. There are a lot of highs but so many lows to go along with it. It’s a draining and exhausting process that I’m scared that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get better, to be normal again; I guess I just want to be a normal woman. Someone who has no problems with her sexuality. A woman who doesn’t have the flashbacks, panic attacks, triggers or the jumpiness when she’s touched by her partner. I want to feel like my body belongs to me again, that someone never touched me in the most intimate place every. I can’t get that back, none of it I can get back and I don’t want to say its ok because it’s not but I’m determined to heal from it.

Sometimes I think about if there’s actually healing from this. Is it something that you can actually be cured of or will it kill you slowly in the end? Do we actually heal from the flashbacks or do they eventually go away for a while and come back again when you’re not expecting it? When it does come back do you have to start all over again with therapy and healing? I wonder how many hours of my life I’ve lost to being raped and fighting this battle. Who would have ever thought that it would cause so many problems and so much heartbreak that a lot of people just don’t understand. I just want to know if I can actually get better from this or am I just holding on to false hope…..