If I Close My Eyes Will My Fears Fall Out Of Sight?

Transition
tranˈzɪʃ(ə)n,trɑːnˈzɪʃ(ə)n,tranˈsɪʃ(ə)n,tranˈsɪʃ(ə)n/
noun
noun: transition; plural noun: transitions

The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.

Fifteen Minutes. Fifteen minutes was all it took. From the minute he clasped his hand around my throat I became a victim. Fifteen minutes later I had become a victim of rape. Six and a half years later and I am still a victim. I have been trapped, bound in to what he did to me for 200000 times longer than it took him to destroy  the person I was, and then two days later when confronted, he did it again to “show me” how he would rape me if he was going to, by raping me on the kitchen floor.

I will NEVER be the same again. There are 6000 miles between us but yet I don’t feel safe. How can I? Inside I am not fractured, I am shattered, as though my soul has been knocked from the counter top on to the tiled floor below. Parts of me still glisten inside, they’re still there, just out of reach. They’re encased in the entrails of what happened that morning and no matter how hard I scrub, they’ll never be clean again. Forever tainted. Hopes, dreams, ambitions that I once had are lost to the abyss inside me. I no longer know who I am. He has stolen not only my identity, my core being, but he has stolen my security, I don’t feel safe, not ever. I haven’t stayed overnight with anyone since it happened, and no-one has stayed with me, because of the lingering fear that it could happen again.

I am a victim. Lost in my own body, unable to feel anything but shame, unable to let anyone in. I don’t want to be a victim anymore. I want to stop being afraid, but I don’t know how. How do you even begin to shed the shame of what happened? How do you move forward and become survivor? I’m not entirely sure if I even want to survive for my own sake, I’m doing it for my children. They deserve better. I deserve better…don’t I? I’m not so sure I deserve to move on. I don’t even know how to, or where to begin to even try. I know the only difference between being a victim or survivor of rape is perspective, but how do I change that?

I’m scared. I’m scared of my emotions, of how I feel, of even feeling at all. How pathetic is that? I don’t know if I can breakdown any further, and I’m not sure I want to find out. I’ve been hurt, abused and neglected by so many, for so long now that I don’t know what’s left lying beneath the surface that I’m too afraid to scratch.