Hello, Let Me Introduce Myself [CW: Sexual Assault, Suicide, Abuse]

Content Warning: Sexual Assault, Abuse, Substance Abuse, Depression, Suicide

Hi, my name is Autumn. You might know me as a writer, a D&D nerd and DM, a maths geek, or someone with really bad jokes (generally referencing maths). That's me, in a nutshell, and I'm okay with that. It's taken a long time to become someone that I believe is a genuine, caring, and likeable (most of the time) person. But this person that I am now wasn't conceived and born in the womb - she's been born through trials and fire, and events that no one should ever have to go through. 

Hi, my name is Autumn. I'm a survivor. Of sexual assault. Of both physical and mental abuse. These are things that never leave you. They change you in ways you cannot anticipate until you've experienced them yourself. I was sixteen when I was raped - by someone who I thought cared about me. Maybe I thought he loved me. I asked myself these questions for years, wondering if that was what love meant because I was a teenager. How was I supposed to know when that was my only point of reference for intimacy? So I told myself that was how it was - that was what I was good for, and that was all I deserved. 

It never just happens once. Every time someone touched me my skin crawled like it was him. Every moment of intimacy brought me to the verge of tears, of panic, of pure and unadulterated fear.

It never just happens once. Moments like that haunt you until all you see are ghosts, all you hear are the echoes of the past and all you feel are slimy tendrils of darkness on your skin. 

That was almost ten years ago. Sometimes it still feels like yesterday - especially days like today. It happened in April, and there are months at a time where I don't think about it at all - until April rolls around again. It's a time of hurt, of fear, and I still battle feeling disgusted with myself. It doesn't stop because someone apologizes, or promises to do better, or vanishes off the face of the earth. It doesn't stop because I want it to.

Sometimes it feels like you can never escape. I burned myself on people multiple times - and each time there was less and less of me left to burn. Sometimes it feels like the only thing left is their words, the feeling of their hands around your throat, or the drywall crashing into your skull and the stars it leaves behind your eyes. People tell you to get back up - to learn from your mistakes and become stronger and smarter for what you've lived through. To never let it happen to you again. Like it's all your fault. So you don't tell them that you've been hurt. You don't say anything about the fear, about how you feel like if you go home you might not get to walk out your front door ever again. 

All because when you were sixteen you were told you should know better, and then at twenty-two, you'd be proving all your critics and demons right.

They're wrong. 

I didn't believe it then, but I know it now. It's not easy - and some days I'm right where I began. I tried everything to escape, from drugs and alcohol to self-harm and attempted suicide. I didn't want to face it - and who would? Revisiting trauma in any way isn't easy. Heck, even admitting that what I had experienced was trauma took years. Not because it wasn't traumatic, but because I always told myself that other victims had it worse. I discounted my own experiences, and in doing so discounted the experiences of others. But as I grew more accepting of the truth of my experience I learned something no one experiences trauma in the same way, so no one's can be ranked against another.

Assault and other traumas - regardless of medium or form - need to be taken seriously. As outsiders, we cannot decide what constitutes trauma for a victim. We cannot talk over them. And we cannot discount their experiences for fear of 'invalidating real victims'. Because a victim is a victim - no real or fake. And those experiences shape who you are for the rest of your life.

Recently, there was some discourse on the internet (isn't there always?). I wasn't involved in the original situation, but I was witness to the aftermath - to an apology that brought up more anxiety and fear than any of the stories told by the survivors. Because I've heard those words before, in some form or another from my abusers. I've seen praise and defence for such things, just as I saw them in my own life. 

All this to say that it's all real. It all matters. And none of it should be acceptable.