It’s kind of hard to describe this, but just go with me? It kind of feels like sexual assault is this giant umbrella.
I guess in this analogy you think of everything about my life contained in a pretty circle that sits directly beneath the umbrella.
And my view is from above. All of those beautiful gorgeous memories from my old life – the Aurora I used to be – the things I loved from not just the recent past, but a long time ago… they’re all obscured. I can’t see them with this giant umbrella in my way!
And all of the new stuff in my life – all the adventures I’m trying to have to stay present, all the actually cool stuff that really is somehow still happening in this pit of despair – it’s like it is just sliiiiding right off the umbrella. I can’t get it to go in my “actual life” underneath the umbrella….
And I know that’s sort of an insane thing to say, because this is my actual life. We only get one life, and I am in the midst of living it. But it just feels so separate. It feels like everything is just sliding right down the umbrella and falling somewhere into oblivion.
Nothing seems permanent, or to some degree even “real.” This dumb umbrella that I hate feels basically impenetrable. I can’t reach my old life. I can’t see the old memories as clearly. I can’t touch things. I can’t feel them. And my new life is ever fleeting.
And I don’t know how to break this umbrella – how to move it – throw it to the side, destroy it, whatever.
All I know is right now, it feels very in the way. And while I know it can’t be, it feels so impenetrable, so immovable… and it exhausting trying so hard to move it even a centimeter, and to feel like it is staying right in place.
[This is a post from the sexual assault series.]