open your eyes

Open your eyes. Feel your feet against the ground. You’re safe. You’re safe. It’s safe.

It always starts the same way – skin brushed against skin, cold eyes turned into a knowing smile – and suddenly, heavy hands around my throat, a body pressed too close into me.

Just open your eyes. It’s safe you’re safe it’s safe wake up wake up wake up.

I grew up through a series of experiences that proved my body was a commodity. A resource that others could take from, a resource that I couldn’t quite use. I waded through an environment that set me up to be traumatized and re-traumatized. I’ve carried these interactions with me for so long that I didn’t really know there was any other way to be in the world. 

Breathe. Count to ten. Breathe. You’re alive now, you’re alive, one step forward.

I guess it doesn’t always start the same way. Maybe an accidental touch, the scent of saliva against glass, someone’s laugh pitched a little too low or a little too high. But it always ends the same – time travel. My heart pounding through my chest, ready to run, ready to cry. There’s something familiar something sinister about their face, the lights, the conversation. And then the world is cling wrap, startlingly clear and strangely suffocating. 

You’re safe you didn’t die just open your eyes breathe breathe breathe wake up please please.

I’ve spent so long healing from my childhood, my teen years, the sex I didn’t want to have. My therapy focused on teaching me that the world was actually a safe place, that I could trust people, and that I should trust people. 

Towards the end of my undergrad, I met my best friend, in a community support group for survivors of violence. We clicked instantly. It’s like I couldn’t quite see the warning signs because I was so desperate for things to be normal. There was a small voice in the back of my mind whispering, “Something feels off here.”

I’d think of everything my PTSD cost me, and wouldn’t it be nice to finally trust someone, finally let people in again? Trauma can cause people to see danger where there is none. I tamped down my hypervigilance but also tamped down the quiet signals of trouble. 

Just fucking breathe just be normal for one second shut up shutupshutupshutupshutup I hate you.

I confessed to her, one soft night. Sitting side-by-side, my hand tracing patterns in her pink checkered quilt. The words fell out of my mouth. My childhood. The men. Running away. The assault. How he never got punished. The day I walked out of the police station, bruised inside and out. How the district attorney advised me – in the recent context of brett kavanaugh – we needed more than a believable story and evidence. We needed a big confession, something a jury would go for. How he would be unfairly tried as an adult, how it would ruin his life. The sick feeling I had of just wanting to go home but there was nowhere to go no one to fix this no one to help. How sometimes I still feel that lost.

And she hugged me while I cried, took a deep breath, and told me her story.

I won’t tell her story here. Not out of respect for her privacy. But because I don’t know what was truth and what was lies. All I can say is that her story moved me. It felt like relief. Someone who understood the pain I’d suffered, someone who felt it too. Her childhood, her trauma, was so comfortingly similar to mine.

Almost suspiciously similar to mine.

Two days later she raped me. 

Breathe breathe it’ll be okay you’re okay you’re safe. You can get through anything.

It always ends the same way. Hands wrapped tight around my neck, the panic the strained beating desperation of needing air. The strange blank peace after suffocation where your body gives up stops struggling. Her body inside of me. Loving sweet voice telling me things were finally perfect and that it was okay to give in to these feelings. Fighting desperately to stay conscious.

My biggest source of guilt is knowing exactly how violent I became when someone tried to kill me. The walls closing in, the caged trapped wild instinct to live. How hard I’d scream, her blood on my hands, unstoppable fear unstoppable rage. It’s hard to love myself knowing I’m capable of violence. A close second source of guilt is knowing exactly when I’d stop. What sort of pain I’d need to feel to stop pushing back to stop fighting to just – stop.

I’ve experienced so much violation in my life, but in that moment I knew – that even though I could pick myself back up – I’d never be complete again. My life had fundamentally shifted. 

Just keep your eyes closed, pretend you’re hiding in the dark and no one can see you.

The poison of her betrayal flooded through my life. She swept into every corner of my world, crumbling walls of joy I had clumsily stacked over the years. She was outside my class, she was outside my work, she was on my bus, she was in my head, she was in my skin. Every time we interacted in person, I couldn’t control myself. She’d apologize and I’d let her. I’d think about pounds of concealer stacked unconvincingly over bruises, piles of clothing wrapped like armor, the sinking dread as I told my partner what I had let happen to me. I’d think of how our friendship could ever possibly be okay and I’d stare at people walking past and wonder if they’d help me if I screamed. And I’d really want to scream.

I was losing my mind. I couldn’t tell anyone. I’ve had such awful interactions with the police. I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust the racist transphobic justice system. I knew that whatever they did to her wouldn’t reflect my retribution. It would reflect a system that hated trans women, hated indigeneity, a system that thirsted to perpetuate a cycle of further violence. She knew my morals and they emboldened her to keep pushing me.

I’m ashamed of how long it took me to cut our friendship off. I wanted it to be normal. I wanted my best friend. I couldn’t reconcile the gentleness of our positive interactions with the violence she was capable of.

I moved out of my partner’s place. I couldn’t stand sleeping in the same bed with anyone. Every time I looked at my partner, I’d feel such intense guilt and anger. Guilt about not fighting harder, anger that anyone would want to date me.

Why can’t everyone just leave me alone and let me have peace.

I found my rage, subdued at first. Light cracks in my face, shadows in my eyes. Violence crumpling through my bones, an urge to go back into that moment and not let myself stop fighting. A sense that it would have been better to let her kill me if it meant there was a chance I could kill her first. My blood had been replaced by sickness, and waves of rage pulsed through my veins. I’d try to ground, standing on the sands of my favorite beach. A sense of transgression of anger of power pressed against me, from deep in the belly of the earth to the core of my heart. I worried that I lost something – maybe my humanity? It sounds silly, but I worried that I had become evil. I looked the same, but it felt like a demon a creature an animal was looking through my eyes out at the world.

 “I’ve been a bit scared when I go outside,” I finally told my therapist. 

She nodded sagely. “That makes sense, survivors often struggle with the fear that something bad will happen again. Your rapist has engaged in stalking behavior before, I understand why you might be concerned that it will start up again.”

“No, no it’s not like that. I’m scared if I see her again I will try to kill her.” I looked up. My therapist was so clearly discomfited. Why is it that everyone else but me is allowed to express anger at my trauma? 

I think the thing I’ve struggled with the most is how uncomfortable even the basic details of my trauma make people. I can’t even explain what happened to me without causing people discomfort, which means there’s no space for my emotions. And if my anger is unpalatable to my own mind, how could anyone else hear it or accept it? 

Breathe breathe breathe breathe safe safe safe safe slow the thoughts slow the breath. Try again.

There’s no happy ending. Grief doesn’t go away, I accept it and it slots into my life. The intrusive taste/smell/sound/feel of her body is tethered to my tongue/eyes/skin/soul. I study, I work, I live, I laugh. Memories burst through, so intensely real, and then get tucked away. I date, I kiss, I love, I fuck. Dulled emotions tear out of my skin, sadness anger loss terror. I dance, I build a new body, I build a safe life. I grieve. I wonder if my chest was cut open, would it reveal a shriveled violent heart?

I’m not the perfect victim. I made too many mistakes, put myself in too many bad situations. I got a bit too sad but also not sad enough. I created rage to protect myself when I should have projected a desire for someone to save me. I stayed friends with my rapist for so long, out of misplaced grace and counterintuitive self-preservation. My story can’t be wrapped up in a sanitized, palatable way. It’s a story of so many moments in time, too many memories to be believable. I want to say I don’t care, because truthfully no one can ever be a perfect victim. But I do care. I wish my “story” was something I could tell people without the backlash of their judgment. I wish I could open up about my trauma my diagnosis, without seeing disconnect, uncomfortable pity in their eyes. I can’t change what happened to me, but I want to walk through the world as myself, with my past, and be seen and accepted. 

I let myself rebuild but I let myself stay broken as well. Some days, I feel like I’ve moved on. Surrounded by people I deeply trust, safe as I allow myself to feel. Some days, it’s like she never left. And I laugh a little too loud, a little too frantic, trapped in a memory that I can’t fight my way out of. 

Breathe. Open your eyes. Breathe. You’re alive. Breathe. You’re safe. Just one step at a time. `