As I reflect back on the past year and a half or so, I think about the various stages I went through. And I think about the beginning stages of being desperate for everything to “be okay.”
I think of how much work I put in to trying not only to appear happy in front of other people, but also to force myself to ‘be happy’ too.
I would be crying myself to sleep every night, but I would be making lists during the day of reasons to be thankful, to remind myself, “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. My life is actually good. It’s cool. It’s good. My life is good. I have a good life.”
I tried not only to remind myself of this, but also to do it publicly. I made this instagram post in March in about how wildly happy I was – but I did it through tears. “I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m happy. I’m happy,” I told myself (and to some extent, the world) – even as I was wildly unhappy.
Even when we talk about my individual one-on-one interactions with people, a lot of time, I wasn’t giving the full story.
A lot of people afterward told me something felt “off,” but they didn’t know what.
I talked to some of my friends about how much I was affected by this guy refusing to speak to me. [He punished me with 30 days of silence following the second assault]… But I didn’t tell them issues surrounding it, or that he’d assaulted me.
Everyone understands that it would be frustrating to have someone you talk to multiple times a day, all of a sudden, not be talking to you anymore. Everyone understands the idea that you wouldn’t want someone to be so angry with you, that they refuse to talk to you. Everyone also understands that I, specifically, as Aurora, can take it kind of hard if I’ve really upset someone (and it might bother me more than an average person).
But no one could understand the level of distracted-ness and despair I was feeling. “Okay, so you made somebody angry somehow. You didn’t harm him. I’m sure he’ll talk to you. It’s really not that big of a deal if a boy’s not talking to you for a while, Aurora.”
Because, with the information they had, it wasn’t that big of a deal! They didn’t know what was really going on. They didn’t know the horror that had happened the last time I’d been with him, or that I was crying myself to sleep every night (thinking/hoping a resolution with him would help – therefore being pretty desperate for him to talk to me again).
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow!