**TRIGGER WARNING** Detailed account of rape.
I told each of my friends about what Will* had done to me. When I told people, I didn’t use the R word; it felt too intense, too violent. It was silly really, having not spoken to anyone about it yet, I already felt like I couldn’t use the R word, for fear of people not believing me.
Fortunately, the first few people I told were very supportive. My rapist had also sexually assaulted one of my best friends, Georgie, previously. I knew this before I went back with Will. I really struggle with this aspect of things, and this is where a lot of my self-blame lies. I knew he’d done that to one of my best friends, so why did I think I would be safe with him? I don’t know. I guess I just never thought anything like that would happen to me. As a result of all of this, Georgie and her current boyfriend were incredibly supportive of me and knew exactly how to approach me about it.
Another one of my friends who was absolutely incredible was Lisa. She is one of my closest and most trustworthy friends, as well as being outside of my inner circle and a couple of years older. She currently works in the Welfare section of my Students Union, after graduating last year. She was the first person to use the R word. She told me, ‘What he did to you was wrong. He raped you.’ That day, she drove me to the local sexual health walk-in centre to get some emergency contraception. While I was there, Nila, the nurse I spoke to, told me that I could go to a Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) to get forensic swabs taken and frozen in case I decide to report this to the police in the future. Immediately, I knew this was something I had to do. So, the next day, Lisa drove me for around an hour to get to the nearest SARC. We were greeted by two ladies, Helen and Debbie, who were both lovely. Helen is a Crisis Worker and Debbie is an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) at the SARC I visited. They both talked me through the processes of the visit and noted down important information for me. Debbie also helped me understand the process of reporting to the police, should I want to in the future. Then I had my medical examination with a very friendly female doctor. It hurt at points, but knowing that this could be the vital piece of evidence in the case, should I report it, got me through it, along with the support from Helen and Debbie. I then had to give an extremely detailed statement to be stored for future use. Debbie guided me through this, writing down everything I said and asking me questions to ensure the statement was as clear and detailed as it needed to be. The whole day was long, hard and emotional. Lisa and I were there for around 5 hours. I absolutely would not have been able to do any of this without Lisa, Helen and Debbie. I literally wouldn’t have been able to get to the SARC without Lisa’s help, and her ability to know exactly what to say at what time made me so comfortable throughout the entire process. The support provided by the SARC was absolutely phenomenal and the ladies who helped me were incredibly kind, hard-working and committed to their job. The three of them were my absolute heroes.
In the days and weeks following, I really struggled. For the first few days, all I did was lie in bed crying. The only break in this would be when I would wander to the kitchen, attempt to eat something and then, to the dismay of my flatmates, throw it away. Everything ceased all at once. My feelings, motivation, appetite, social life, education. They all just came to a sudden halt. The worst thing was the numbness. My friends would come to check if I was okay, and I couldn’t even tell them how I felt, because I felt absolutely nothing. I felt like a shell of myself. My once ridiculously high enthusiasm for my University course was now at an all time low. I’d lost all motivation and couldn’t see a point in anything. I’d gone from feeling everything all at once to feeling nothing at all in the space of a couple of days. I didn’t go to any of my lectures, labs or seminars in the following 5-6 weeks. Every night I would go to bed saying ‘I am going to my lecture tomorrow, this won’t beat me’, and every morning I would wake up already beaten, anxious and scared. The more lectures I missed, the less I wanted to go to the following ones and the less I saw any point in trying. Those first few weeks after it happened were a slow spiral into nothingness.
**All names have been changed to protect my anonymity**
Next Post: ‘An open letter to those who doubted me’
-H xo
Unspoken Conversations. 