"I am finding that vulnerability gives me great strength, because I am not hiding anymore.”

On November 1, two thousand and thirteen my entire life changed, the walls came crashing down on top of me and I was caught in between them, stuck and desperately confused, withheld from any way of escaping the truth, but the truth were those walls coming down upon me, and deep inside, I knew that I could never escape them. Sexual assault is an event no human being wants to ever face, but sadly, the rates of sexual assaults rise higher and higher each year. Being apart of those statistics is a sickening thought and can easily eat you up completely from the inside out, but knowing you're not alone is a notion that sticks in your brain for the rest of your life. Being only fourteen when this happened has made me change my thoughts and views on society and the culture in a whole, not all for the bad either.

Prior to the assault, I was excelling on the cheer team and spending my full time as a working student at my stables. Cheerleading was the main way I was finding friends, my flyer and I especially connected when we met for the first time during summer practices. Jesse and I turned out to be big/little sisters on the cheer team and we spent hours together at a time, the thought of her going to college broke my heart and made me reconsider staying at the high school for one of the first times. Through out the months we grew closer and closer, more like sisters than friends, we told each other everything. Until October our friendship was inseparable, we had our hardships but we soon figured it out, to my knowledge, in time for homecoming. The night of homecoming began well, after the game ended, we passed a crowd of most of the local police officers and a multitude of students trying to get into the homecoming dance. There was a thought in the back of my mind the entirety of that night that made me nervous, seeing the majority of the police department at the dance gave me little reassurance in the case that something was going to happen, the thought faded into an unimportant feeling but still slightly lingered. Jesse and I soon were on our way to what I believed was a movie, but instead she took me to a dark and eerie looking park. It was about nine thirty when we arrived, I didn't think too much of it, besides the falling temperature and the ominous clouds covering the little moonlight the moon provided us. Jesse met a friend and ran off briskly, leaving me alone and bewildered. I felt a tap on my shoulder, startled, I looked over my shoulder and saw a man standing menacingly behind me. What I didn't realize is that Jesse set the entirety of this night up, not realizing its severe consequences.

Having flashbacks and being in complete utter shock were mental sensations I have never felt nor wanted to ever feel, along with post-traumatic stress disorder, all lingered with me and consistently haunted me, every cautious step I took. Being only fourteen years old, I was mortified and embarrassed but more importantly, I was blaming myself for a sick act that I couldn't stop from occurring. “Over half a million women are raped in this country every year, and only a fraction of them report it because they're too ashamed. It’s a really screwed up world, but it's not your fault, and what happened to you, it doesn't make you the monster.” ? Mariska Hargitay. That particular quote by Mariska Hargitay changed my outlook on the situation drastically, it made me think twice about staying in the dark about the assault. I didn't tell my mom for over six weeks and the time before I told my dad was even longer. Before I told her, I quit cheerleading, which was a painful decision because of my coach’s admiration for me and the positive addition I made to the team. The thought of seeing Jesse, and having to be in charge of catching her and making sure she was safe was going to be nearly impossible for me. Soon there after, I cut off over a foot of hair, found a new school, and had a shadow day at a new school.

As I found out, suppression does nothing but make the situation and the emotional repercussions worse. Eventually it eats you up; your thoughts and emotions resurface and the words need to be heard. The sentences didn’t come easily, in fact they took over an hour to come out of my mouth, and when they did they came like a high magnitude earthquake rattling my mothers head a well as my own. With bands of tears and emotions coming and going we made our way to the police station, six weeks after the assault occurred. I was shamed by the police department for not reporting it right away,  all individuals that were present at the park denied everything. The detective on the case knew I was telling the truth and he still had strong ambitions that we could catch the perpetrator and pin the sexual assault on him. After further investigations they found out that he had left California and moved to Illinois. He joined the military and was out of their jurisdiction, the news broke me to pieces, all I wanted was closure but the thought of having to be in a military rooted trial frightened me all too much. On February 16, we officially closed the case, with eligible ability to reopen it until I turn eighteen.

  The days, weeks, months and years following the assault are just the start of my healing processes, PTSD was a real thing and I came to realize that very quickly. Certain things triggered me and made the event take place over and over again in my mind, nights for a couple months were sleepless, going out in the dark wasn't possible, and going past that one park would not and still will not happen. My life was being taken hostage by a condition that has no cure besides narcotics that would numb my senses and that I refused to even consider. Flashbacks still continue to happen, some days are better than others. Healing takes a long time, but you rarely fully heal, a piece of you has been violently removed and never given back. There are ways to heal but not all of them are easy, in fact, none of them are. Therapy is the most solid way to heal because you can be alone in your thoughts and only talk to one other person about it, with a safeguard of confidentiality.
The detective who I admired greatly suggested a service to me, it was called Peace Over Violence, in the beginning they didn't make things better, almost the exact opposite, but over time, what they had and now have to offer me has changed my life in the most dramatic way ever imaginable. Peace Over Violence is an organization that specializes in the prevention of sexual assault, domestic violence, and LGBT services. Their initial intake made the depths of my feelings come to the surface and made already bad times for me worse. Over the course of the week of the intake, I began to realize that what they were telling me was valid and wasn’t a way to degrade me or lessen the severity of the assault.

When I was looking for community service as of this year, the organization came into my mind, I asked myself, what helps healing more than helping other heal, my answer, absolutely nothing. The thought of having to talk about the assault and hearing other peoples accounts of their assaults were knife like words that I knew would stab right into me with no remorse but an overabundance of emotion that would kill my mind and my heart. Getting used to the words rape, assault, perpetrator and sexual assault will always be hard on the ears but they are so commonly thrown around that one needs to get used to them and acclimate to their harsh tones. Over time, the jobs and tasks that need completion are not as emotionally draining and difficult to hear and to accomplish then they were only three months ago.

Over the past year, I have learned more about myself than I could in years. Dreams, ambitions and well being had been crushed to a fine dust but have developed into stronger versions of what they once were and the slowly, the past, is shaping my life in a positive way instead of a negative one. The courage it took to be able to come out about what happened has and will forever stick with me. Even though they told me that evidence was the most important thing, and without it, I wouldn't get justice, they were wrong. Justice for me came in the form of knowing who the perpetrator was, and the solid thought that he will not do anything to me ever again was all that I needed. The thought of being in a room with him continues to make me sick to my stomach. In the eyes of the law, justice takes place after arrest, or persecution, but in my case it was the discovery of a support system and new found confidence that I had received. Even though I will still occasionally have flashbacks, they have subsided incredibly, the long uneven road we all have to travel along at least one point in our lives has moved and molded me into a human being that I would have never imagined. Comparing the person I am now to the person I was then is an uneven comparison, the assault has made me into a person who is no longer going to stand helpless, no longer wait in the shadows, and most importantly, a person who will not stand for sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, or any other form of violence against anyone, no matter what age, race, gender or sexual orientation.