The Things We Don’t Talk About.
Opening Pandora’s Box: Journalling In The Aftermath of Sexual Assault
It’s a punchy title, I know — and so be it.
It’s a punchy experience, too.
Yet I’m sharing this because I want to. Because it’s important to me. Because (I feel that) we don’t speak about these things enough. Because the antidote to shame is share.
Because — finally — I believe that I have nothing to be ashamed of.
And because I hope that sharing this may help somebody else to feel less alone in their experiences.
So, where to begin?
I’ve kept a diary for many years, and the following excerpts are taken directly from it.
At the beginning of last year, I was sexually assaulted. I reported this to the police and went through the process around this. For reasons that I don’t want to go into here, the case was dropped before it could go to trial. But this post isn’t about that. It isn’t about what happened, nor about the injustices of the criminal justice system. (You can read plenty about that elsewhere — see this article as a starting point.) It’s about how I dealt with this traumatic experience, where I’m at with it now as I endeavour to move forward with my life, and above all else about how I felt.