This Too Shall Pass

I was listening to a playlist called “Harvey Specter’s Music Collection” which is a series of videos with jazz music when I heard this and it totally struck me that this is my theme song.

I am not the same person I was when I was raped in twenty-sixteen, by the same guys who rape me on two other occasions before that. I am not the same girl I was when I was surrounded by gangsters and wannabe’s, I am a woman who is powerful and strong and making a name for herself in spite of what was done to me.

But I don’t feel stronger, I feel weaker, I feel less of myself. I don’t go outside anymore if I can avoid it, I don’t like leaving my apartment or being around people, and this whole isolation thing is making that much easier and simultaniously harder, because well frankly I see even less people now than I used to.

At least before this quarantine thing I had some people that I would run into when I did venture out. I am building myself a birdcage and clipping my own damned wings, that’s how it feels right now.

There is a fence around the property I live on, designed to keep outsiders where they belong, far away from me.

There is a lock on my front door, designed to keep strangers and friends on the other side of the walls that I live in, not that I have any who visit. I am starting to find comfort in the isolation and that is scaring the crap out of me.

I don’t want to get too comfortable, because I am afraid that’s when they will come back, I am absolutely convinced that no one gets away with talking about the things that I have talked about and reported without someone coming at them for retribution.

It’s just not done, I talked about the unspeakable, surely they’re mad enough to kill me, surely this waiting is just them trying to make it as frighting as possible, convince the world that I really am crazy and show up when I least expect it kind of thing.

I am absolutely convinced that Doctor Golden is going to escape and come and find me and slit my throat, and while that’s graphic on a website, imagine how it feels inside my head. I have these nightmares every night when I go to sleep, and I wake up keenly aware that it’s my own brain’s way of preparing me for every possibility.

I am constantly thinking about whether or not I’ll be fast enough to type “help me call 911” into twitter should someone kick in the door, and even as I listen to music with my headphones I wonder if that’s safe. I am constantly and consistently on edge, and rather than do what they are supposed to do, the RCMP are focused on the idea that it’s just easier if I am psychotic.

Gang rape is a problem in British Columbia, it’s a problem in Canada, and I am so fucking tired of it being ignored, but I am afraid to take that step that Heather has taken. I am terrified to put myself out there and start really fighting against it, I don’t even know where the fuck to start.

I am so confused and angry at the fact that I am classified as “psychotic” while my rapists go about their lives spending time with friends or family who either have no idea or have been convinced that I am lying. It’s easier if I am lying, but if that were true how do you explain Heather’s experience? She had to fight for two and a half years for the city of Kelowna to pay attention and actually get a Sexual Assault team together.

I don’t know what the next two and a half years holds, but I have a feeling in there somewhere is a fight for Victims and Survivors rights. I can’t help it, there were people who have been fighting for these rights a might longer than I have, and I feel like its time for me to start making steps to jump out of the shadows and get back in the fight.

The thing is, that the only thing I am really good at right now is writing and asking for help, that’s all I know how to do right now, so that means before I jump into the fight I am going to have to do some research and learn what is needed where, but again I don’t know where to start.

I know that I am not alone, I know that for the foreseeable future I am safe, there are too many people who know the truth for me to be in true danger, and yet I still can’t help but wonder, I am afraid to put myself out there too much, but at the same time putting my story out there is just one more way I am learning to protect myself against retribution.

In all honesty I wish I never had to talk about rape again, I wish I could talk about dating and getting married and having babies and living a normal corn bread fed life, but that’s not my reality.

I didn’t choose to be here, I chose to be me…the best possible version of me is only just beginning to grow into herself, and while I am excited to see what happens over the next two years, I am just as okay with taking things at a nice slow Andy Lassner walking pace for a little while longer.

I know that things will get better and that the challenges I face in the future will grow along with the blessings, I can already feel that. I am just so frustrated with myself because I am not as healed as I think I should be at this point. I am still pushing myself to suffer when I could just set myself free but it hasn’t clicked yet.

Whatever it is that I am waiting for or trying to learn, whatever the lesson is in this moment, I haven’t figured it out just yet, or maybe I have and I am just not ready to acknowledge it just yet…whatever it is that thing is…I don’t know.

I am okay with not knowing, because if there is anything that I’ve learned is that all things pass in time, and so too shall this. Everything changes when it needs to. I’m in no hurry.

Sending all my love,

Devon J H all