Living with Trauma.

Let me tell you what it’s like living with trauma. Sure you could guess, read a book, and even assume what it’s like, but that isn’t ‘real’ life. I’m not a page in a textbook and I certainly don’t fit into a neat little box. They don’t tell you that, although significant, the act of Rape is only the beginning. That in the grand scheme of things the afterwards is much more significant than the during. Admittedly being raped is horrific and violating but it doesn’t end when he goes away. It doesn’t end when you’re lying on the ground bleeding. In fact, it never ends. Because that event has a domino effect upon everything that happens next in your life. It impacts upon your grades at school, your work, your relationships, your self esteem, and it can even lead you to commit suicide. It’s not just about rape; it’s about everything and anything after it.

I’ve been close to death many of times in my life. Many times through him but most by my own hands. It’s usually when I feel invisible, like I’ve vanished. By this I don’t mean everyone has left me. Not at all. I mean I’ve left me. I’ve walked further from myself and become this body which feels so foreign. A scarred and violated and pale body that flinches at any touch. This body that holds no laugher but no tears either. Empty. Yes, that's the best word to describe it. It’s like I don’t feel anything at all and therefore there is no reason to continue living. You have to feel something to connect with someone and without connections you die more and more inside. I know this because at school the kids treated me like dirt on their expensive shoes. They ignored me. I was invisible and that killed me. Not physically but it killed parts of me that make me, well, myself. I started losing myself when I was nine years old, when the abuse started, and every year I lost another chunk rather than gaining a new element of Sophie. Who the hell was this girl anyway? I don’t even think she was ever real; just a mismatch of a person people decided she was. But the parts didn’t fit right so I never really felt like a complete person. How could I? Nothing made sense because virtually every person saw me differently.

I’ve not always been unlucky in terms of finding people who care. Maybe my problem isn’t this at all, it’s more that I never truly believe I deserve them and therefore I find ways to make them hate me and leave. I push and pull them and wear them down to almost nothing. I do it to prove to myself they either don’t care or I’m a horrible person; usually it’s both. Men have made me feel loved, safe, and visible. But these relationships never last. People fall for me quickly and I don’t know why this is, but they do. The problem is that they do it so fast that I feel the need to tear myself down to make them not like me at all. It’s comfortable for men to dislike me or for me to have to earn their love. What’s not is for a man to simply love me. I see a person and I can recognise that they are kind, good, and decent. I might have been with a fair few bad choices but I know a good man when I meet one. This is why I get scared; because they will end up leaving. With the bad guys I know what they want and how to make them stay. With the good ones? I only know how to screw it up and force them to walk away. I haven’t mastered reversing this.

The impact upon my interpersonal relationships has been huge. I fear being abused but it’s all I know so I end up gravitating towards it. I don’t know how to allow someone to love me and for me to feel like I’m worthy of this love. Do I deserve to be cared about? Am I all that important? My head says no and that means I only accept the love I think I deserve which isn’t a lot. People get close and I don’t know when they will leave me; it’s unpredictable. That’s why I find it easier to be alone. But then being alone comes with it’s own problems and feeds the thoughts around deserving to be alone forever. I just have considerable amounts of evidence that most people leave. I get too much for them; I have tonnes of baggage. Do you really want to be handling all this? Some say they will and then it gets too much. Friends, boyfriends, and even professionals back away and then it’s reinforced all over again. Don’t get me wrong, I will never judge or despise people who decide to leave, I know I am tough to handle especially now. But it is lonely and it is always terrifying being left or anticipating someone leaving.