If you missed the first three posts of On being a victim of rape culture check them out here:
Part 1: The day before
Part 2: Where am I?
Part 3: The day after
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| Me and my beautiful boy almost six years to the day later |
The last session I had with my psychiatrist was about a month ago. In that session I had to discuss with him the freakout I had when I attempted to go back to work in an office. Rather than tell him verbally how I felt about the whole thing I gave him a printout of this blog post. Easy!
From now on, whenever I need to see a new mental health professional, I think I'll just hand them one of my babblingbandit.me business cards and say "analyse this!". My backstory is nearly all here and I find it easier to express myself in the written word than in person. The ADHD in me likes to chop and change around the story all the time which makes it difficult for anyone listening to follow.
There is something incredibly cathartic about organising past events and the emotions around them into words, sentences and paragraphs. I've re-read the last three posts so many times I can almost recite them verbatim. Something has happened to me during this process. I could almost be letting go of it. The pain I mean.
Until very recently I haven't even been able to say the 'R' word. Just saying it made me feel so uncomfortable, nauseous actually. Whenever I talk about what happened to my family or friends I refer to it as 'The Assault'. I guess it deserves capitalising because it was the one pivotal event that changed the my course of my adult life.
You might think I'm fucked up in saying this but I don't regret it happening. It was horrible, it nearly killed me, but I survived. My life was fucked up and heading towards Rock Bottom anyway. I had been trying for six months previous to get clean but nothing was getting through. Not that I was getting the right support (more on that later) but I was trying. At least I had taken the first step to recovery: I had acknowledged to myself and three other people that I was in active drug and alcohol addiction.
Something major had to happen to get me out of the toxic waste dump of a life I was living. The way I rationalise it is even though this path lead to the complete deconstruction of my soul, it gave me an opportunity to rebuild and it led me to Noo, my beautiful boy.
While I still have my many demons and my battles with mental illness continue, my life is a million times better than it was before The Assault.
Do I thank the person for doing what he did to me? Absolutely not. But I guess I forgive him. Hating him like I did for so long, just hurts me which hurts Noo.
I've had enough of hurt.
The next part of the story will continue with the 13 hours I spent with the Metropolitan Police. That was almost as bad as the Assault itself.
To be continued...
Do you write for therapy?
V.
