From "Not Dead" to "Alive"

Quoting her mother, Diane Von Furstenberg said, "There are two types of survivors, those who don't die, and those who live."

In my own journey of surviving I have belonged to both of these categories. This past April marked five years since I was raped. For the first three years after the assault my body was breathing, but my heart felt like it had died in that room. 

There was a secret I couldn't bring myself to say aloud - I wished he had killed me that day. 

This is the first time I'm sharing that sentence outside of a therapy room. I do it for the purpose of creating the contrast between then and now. For those years I was the type of survivor who didn't die. In the past two years I have become the survivor who lived. 

Earlier this year when I took a step back and looked around at my life I realized I was living my dreams. 

In the past five years my main goals have been:

• Stay alive
• Graduate high school on time
• Stay out of the hospital
• Go to college
• Live on my own
• Get involved in mental health advocacy
• Serve a mission 

Some of these look similar to what other 20 year olds might have on their list of goals, but they often weren't a given. My Freshman year of high school was the only one I attended full time and on campus. Graduating with my class wasn't always a guarantee.

I was once told that I should expect hospitalizations to be continuous part of my life. I was told college and living alone were things I might not be able to do, and definitely not at 18. 

But this is my life. I will never be a person who has never been raped, but the defining choices of my life will be mine, not my perpetrators. We all have the power to decide who we want to be. 

Coming to a place where I felt alive again took time and a lot of work. I had to accept that I was different now, but that different didn't mean worse. Coming to a place where I felt alive again wasn't something anyone could do for me. In large part going from "not dead" to "alive" was a choice. 

A choice to fight. A choice to put one foot in front of the other. A choice to change the way I viewed my assault and myself. And it's a choice I continue to make every day. 

The course of my life was changed in an instant. It has been five years and there are still things I have to work through, but I am so glad he did not kill me that day and I'm grateful that I never took my own life. 

How glorious it is to feel alive. 

Forgiving the Man Who Raped Me

I wish everyone could have the opportunity to attend LDS Institute classes. I have taken two so far, one last semester and one over the summer. I don't always make it to class, but when I do it is often the highlight of my day.

Institute is an uplifting environment where I have the opportunity to learn and feel the spirit. I feel like I always get something out of the class.

When I started attending Institute I expected to grow in my knowledge of the Gospel. That's why I was going, right? I figured it would be like Sunday School. I did not expect to be touched and grow as much as I did personally.

I have written before about being diagnosed with PTSD. I write for many reasons. I write to know that I am not alone. I write to spread awareness. I write to heal, but I had not completely healed because there were still things I was holding onto.

When I started this last class at Institute I had not forgiven the man who assaulted me. After going through this past class, I have. It wasn't purely the class that did it. There were several culminating factors that led me to this place.

But going to class, learning more about the gospel, feeling the Spirit and growing as a person were big components of me coming to the point in my life where I could forgive him.

For a long time I couldn't fathom the idea of forgiving my rapist. I knew I needed to. I knew I was commanded to, but I didn't know how I could. I tried to justify not forgiving him thinking, "How can I forgive this man who broke my trust? How could I forgive this man who hurt me so much? How could I forgive this man who hasn't shown any remorse? How could I forgive this man I was still afraid of?" And for a while I was content with that.

I was at Institute one night and I don't remember what the lesson was on that night, but I remember some of the thoughts and feeling I had which I wrote down in the notebook I had with me. One of which was "God accepts me as I am."

Perhaps the most powerful thing I wrote down that night was, "God loves him. God loves this man, despite the terrible choices he has made, the same as He loves me."

I had never thought about that before. I had thought about everything else. I had thought about his family, his job, his house, his calling, but I had not thought about how God feels for this man. This point I had not thought about made all the difference to me.

Throughout the past couple months Heavenly Father has been putting things in my path that were letting me know it was time to forgive. One of which was a beautiful video I saw where the LDS mother of a Sandy Hook victim was speaking about her feelings for the man who killed her daughter. (you can find that here. I highly recommend watching it) This mom's words about the shooter mirrored my feelings almost exactly.

The only person who was being hurt by my anger toward him was me. He had no idea. He didn't care. I was the one who was losing peace. I was the one who was not keeping the commandment of forgiveness.

As I was preparing my Sunbeam lesson this week which was titled "I can Forgive,"  (I told you the topic of forgiveness has been all over my life) I pondered on everything I've learned this past year. As I was doing this I realized I could think about this man without anger in my heart. That is when I knew I had finally forgiven the man who had raped me. And it filled my soul with peace.

My Journey to a PTSD diagnosis

I have written and rewritten this a hundred times over in my head. Even when I thought this was a story I would never share I wrote it out. Somewhere inside me I knew that as part of my healing process one day I would talk about it.

That being said I know there will be some of you who don't agree with my decision to speak out about this on this platform. That's okay.

I had a secret, something I held inside me for years. Until recently I held so much shame over this secret, but I've come to realize that my life doesn't have to be a secret. Speaking takes away the secrecy and the feeling of shame. So here it goes.

When I was 15 I was the victim of rape.

That's quite a sentence for me to say. I'm not speaking out about this to shock you. I'm not looking for sympathy or pity. My only motive is for spreading awareness about sexual assault and mental illness.

I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from my assault, however, I was not diagnosed with PTSD when I was 15. The trauma fractured my mind in a way. Our brains are marvelous things and mine knew that I could not handle the trauma at that time, so it took the memory away from me. This is not uncommon.

But my brain remembered even when my mind didn't actively hold the memories. I became extremely anxious, depressed, and experienced psychotic symptoms. My doctors didn't know why these symptoms were happening so suddenly and I was misdiagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder.

About a year and a half ago the memories had been resurfacing over time and I gathered up the courage to tell my therapist and parents. The Schizoaffective diagnosis was changed to PTSD and I started trauma therapy. I went to a residential treatment program for 10 weeks. When I started getting help for the rape I started making progress. Up until that point we were treating symptoms, but then we started addressing the root of the problem. I became stable for the first time in years.

I am still recovering. I see my therapist every week, I am in a support group with other women who've experienced the same things, and I practice my coping skills everyday. I will be working on myself for a long time, but I have absolutely no intention of letting what happened to me ruin my life.

I am taking back the control that was taken from me.

One important way I am doing this is by writing. Writing and speaking is very theraputic for me and it is so important that we start speaking out about sexual assault. I get it, it's not a fun conversation to have, but it is so incredibly needed.

The stigma is strong around those people who are victims of sexual assault. I have supportive parents and a loving family and I was terrified for the longest time to put this out there. I'm still nervous about it.

Stigma breeds shame which breeds silence.

So I am breaking my silence. If not me, then who?