It's not my fault.

Hi, let me start with some things, it won't make sense till further on, but here I go.
It has been like 13 or 14 years.
I have been in therapy for a month.
I have depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, and possibly PTSD.

I have carried this secret with me for 13 or 14 years.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It was the same night my best friend was raped. We were a little naïve, and did some stupid things. I feel so much regret I couldn't save her like she saved me. She is still my best friend. I don't know if she carried guilt about that weekend or not but we basically never talked about it again.

It wasn't our fault. I didn't even start to entertain that thought until today.

It wasn't my fault. It wasn't her fault. We didn't consent. We weren't in our right minds. They were older, much older. We were outnumbered. We might as well been light years from home, but we were only in a neighboring state.

It wasn't my fault, I couldn't save her. It wasn't my fault what happened to me. These people took advantage of a situation. It opened Pandora's box for a series of events in my life, that weren't all that great, and maybe it affected me more then I ever realized.

Until now, when dealing with a whole other issue. This issue came to the front line. I hadn't ever been called to my face, right in front of me, a sexual abuse victim. I sat there with my eyes open, and the tears fell, and there was no stopping it. I had never had the context in a conversation for someone to say that, I just never talked about it.

I'm going through the some pretty hard things in therapy. There are issues I didn't really know I had, until sitting before my therapist. She put words together today that I had never been called.

I am a survivor of sexual assault.

It's not a secrete anymore. It's not my fault. It's something that I am sure will come up again in my safe space in therapy, but it's not my fault. It's not so much a burden, it's hard to work through the lingering emotions, the panic it brings to my life in certain situations, but it's not my fault.

My name is Jessica, and I am a sexual assault survivor.

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