Content warning: This piece discusses sexual assault, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts
When I moved cities to start a new job working in a hospital, I faced a nightmare more horrific than anything I could have thought possible: I was raped.
Physically, I healed. It took a week before showers weren’t painful and the bruises faded. But mentally? I knew I would never be the same. I felt exposed, like my soul had been sucked out of me.
I used to spend all my spare time training for triathlons. I wasn’t a professional, but I lived for it – waking up at 6am to go to swimming classes, then hitting the gym and the running track with my coach after work. On the weekends I would swim, bike and run with a local triathlete group, and I would compete in gruelling Olympic distance races.
But after being raped, training was impossible because my mind was constantly in fight or flight mode. Every look or gesture from a man at the gym quickened my breathing, and I’d start sweating, become dizzy, and have to leave.
I stopped swimming because I didn’t want to be that exposed in a swimming suit. It was hard for me to get on a bike or run outdoors because of the fear of being whistled at or finding myself in places that were not well populated.
I used to think these reactions didn’t happen to people like me – I was smart, independent and feisty, and this newfound panic was not something I knew how to handle.
When I was triathlon training, my diet was a precise ratio of protein, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats, free of refined sugar. But I began overeating to force people to avoid eye contact.
Being overweight goes against mainstream media beauty standards. Thin people are considered beautiful, are looked at more and sexualised. By putting on weight, that is exactly what I was consciously trying to avoid.
I gained almost half of my bodyweight over the course of three months, having fast food for every meal, drinking wine and eating lots and lots of ice cream. The weight led to health complications: I became morbidly obese and had high cholesterol, chronic lower back pain, insulin issues, and plantar fasciitis, which caused me to experience pain on the bottom of my feet.
I didn’t want to go out, was exhausted and slept all the time.
Going from a triathlete to a size XXL in just three months was extreme, but I didn’t care – my old life felt like a distant memory of happiness that I would never have again. In fact, I was looking for ways to take my own life as I felt like I didn’t have anything to live for anymore.
Not only did I have to fight the mental health battles in my mind, but when it came to building a support network, I had to be careful about who I could share my experience with.
I grew up in an ultra-conservative home where, if you wore short shorts, you would be criticised for ‘wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention’ and the first question some of my friends asked when I told them about the attack was ‘Were you drinking?’
It doesn’t matter if I was – it doesn’t give another human the right to do that to my body. I didn’t want to confide in anyone who would encourage me to keep wondering whether what had happened was my fault.
It wasn’t until a bartender, who worked at the breakfast bar I visited every Saturday, asked me whether I was OK, that I allowed myself to say that no, I wasn’t.
We hadn’t spoken much before, but he always treated me with a kindness I had convinced myself didn’t exist in the world after I was raped. So I told him that I hadn’t been OK for a long time, and that I definitely wasn’t OK with what I was doing to my body.
At that moment, I realised that dying scared me. It felt like dying would mean I let my attacker win, and I couldn’t have that. That is when I decided to seek help.
Working with a therapist, I discovered better coping mechanisms, such as mindfulness exercises and channelling my energy into hobbies, and received Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy which can be used to help process trauma.
The first step to recovery was learning to live with the fact that what I went through was real, but it took three years before I accepted it wasn’t my fault.
Therapy helped me feel that there could be joy in my life again, even though I had to view the world through different glasses. While this pain will never completely go away, I’m now able to live with it and be OK.
I’ve found a doctor who I meet with every month, who has put me on thyroid medication and helps me control my blood sugars. He supports me in a gentle and kind way.
I’ve also taken up hiking and swimming again, and hope to one day complete another triathlon. My back and feet feel better, and I’m getting back to a weight at which I feel comfortable – although I’m still in the obese category, I’m no longer classified as morbidly obese.
I’ve put aside my preconceived ideas of beauty and have become my biggest cheerleader every morning in the mirror. I wear the clothes I want, do my hair, brush my teeth, take a luxurious bath, and tell my body how grateful I am that it didn’t give up and gave me another chance at life.
I regress sometimes, making choices that make me feel numb, like drinking and random Tinder one-night stands, because I want to remember sex with someone other than my predator. I once stayed awake for 48 hours so I could sleep for three days straight without having nightmares about that night.
It’s hard for me to mourn the stolen years of my life, knowing my predator has already forgotten and moved on. He was never charged as I had waited too long before reporting him, blaming myself for what had happened, and there wasn’t enough evidence to hold up in court.
But I wasn’t going to let him take my future, my happiness, and my hope of finding someone who could love me despite what happened. The difference now is that I’m kinder to myself when I have hard days.
We are human, not perfect beings void of feeling. I’ve accepted my reaction and know that there is no ‘right’ way to react after being raped.
Ultimately, I am taking one day at a time. There is no timeline for when I will be ‘done healing’, only a slow and steady effort towards a better future.
For those who have been in a similar situation or experienced trauma in their life, my advice is not to try and conquer this on your own. It is a monster that will fester, ooze, and boil you from the inside out until there is nothing left. If you’re able to, seek help from a therapist.
Don’t give up. You aren’t broken beyond repair, and you certainly aren’t so broken that people won’t be able to love you. And it is possible for intimacy to be fun and pleasurable again.
No matter what has happened to you, you can still be a powerful person who is able to inspire those around you, just by being courageous enough to choose to live.
Need help?
For help and support, visit a Rape Crisis centre to talk to someone or use the charity’s confidential one-to-one live chat via their website at rapecrisis.org.uk. Or call Samaritans on 116 123 (the service is free and confidential) or email jo@samaritans.org.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing platform@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/05/my-body-changed-after-i-was-raped-but-ive-learned-to-love-the-new-me-13309674/
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