I feel like whenever bad things happen, you need a lot of support. You need your friends to be there for you and you need to be able to explain what happened. And when a death occurs, or when you go through a bad relationship breakup, or you lose your job, or you have a housefire, or any other things...there is no social pressure saying "don't tell that, it's scary."

with a sexual assault, that is there. you can't tell because you don't want to scare people and it's akward because it deals with sex and you feel ashamed because, well, "it's just sex." why should it have so much control over you?

but it does. you can't talk about it. you can maybe tell your closest friends and they can support you. so you know you always have a place where you can go and feel safe about it when you need to.

but you have the rest of your life. and everyone else in your life. and the experience carries over into every aspect of your life. and you don't want to define yourself by it because THAT gives the event too much power over you. BUT just by the fact that...it's not normal to talk about it...it takes something away from you.

it still affects you but you can't talk about it and so you aren't yourself but you can't explain why.

nothing should ever take away your voice. nothing should ever take away your ability to find support. nothing should ever make you feel ashamed to talk about it. we aren't in this world alone, and nothing should ever make you feel that way.

and i don't want to relive every detail. i want to move on. part of that is expressing my frustration with the double standard present in dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault.

i want to move on and form meaningful relationships with people and i want to love and trust again and i want to stop hurting the people that care the most about me.

i don't want this to affect me forever. i don't want to have to hide from it. i don't want to be ashamed of my need for people to understand and help me through it. and i need people to support me when things are hard.

so i'm writing this to feel like i have control again. what happened was awful. i will have to deal with it for a while. i don't want to lose the relationships i have along the way. and it's not fair that you're not supposed to talk about this.