Bloom Again

I hope this is the last time I’ll be this candid. I tell myself that each time — that I’ll keep my thoughts locked in a private journal. But this isn’t that. This is for the moments when silence feels heavier than the truth, and when the truth is met with the world’s strange discomfort with the word victim.

I put the word in quotes because somewhere along the way, society decided it’s unseemly for us to claim it. Survivor is the softer, braver term. It’s supposed to shake off the pity in people’s eyes, to make us sound like we’ve climbed out of the wreckage and dusted ourselves off. I understand why some prefer it. But maybe it’s the literalist in me — I don’t understand why naming what happened to me is considered self-pity. I was wronged. I was harmed. I am the victim of a crime. That acknowledgment doesn’t mean I carry it as a badge or romanticize it. It’s just the truth.

After putting my thoughts on trial I realized that it’s easier for me to think of things that happened to me through a clinical lens. I suppose we all have our coping mechanisms. 

The thing that used to unspool my patience was being told I was “victimizing myself” simply for saying this happened, and it hurt me. There’s an old, angry post buried somewhere in my blog archives about that. I don’t think I ever shared it publicly — sometimes I write without telling anyone. Even now, that quiet vulnerability still makes me shy.

Privacy was never an option for me growing up. Every attempt to keep a diary was discovered, read, and used against me. Maybe that’s why I’ve stopped guarding my thoughts so tightly. Maybe that’s why I share. Because now, no one can punish me for speaking. I’ve already lived through the worst they could do.

So yes — I can say “this happened” and “it changed me.” And yes — that bothers some people. Which is fine. Free speech works both ways. We can all be as loud and wrong as we want. But the audacity it takes to tell someone how to process what’s been done to them? That’s what I’ve learned to walk away from.

And if you’ve ever fixed your lips to say “why didn’t you say anything?” — stop. You are not helping. You are planting the idea that silence is a crime in itself, when in reality, silence is often survival. The first time I was assaulted, I was too young to fully understand, but old enough to know it was wrong. I didn’t speak about it for almost ten years. Not because I was told no one would believe me. Not because there was a clever threat. I was simply afraid.

Fear became a constant companion. It was why I mostly avoided men in high school. I kissed someone once in a game of truth or dare. I played along with crushes to look normal. But the truth was, my desire for closeness had been replaced with a reflex to protect myself. There’s one person I still feel guilty for leading on, because I genuinely valued his friendship and I treated it carelessly.

People also say the strangest, most backward things. “You’re too pretty for that to happen to you.” As though sexual violence is reserved for those they deem less attractive. As though beauty grants immunity.

Shame has a way of reshaping the body from the inside out. I felt shame that I didn’t want to be touched, that my introduction to pornography came far too young at the hands of someone who was supposed to be a “family friend.” I felt shame the first time I had sex — not because it was my first time, but because I didn’t want to. He begged until I said yes, and my body froze until it was over. Later, I dressed it up in conversation with friends, made it sound magical when it had felt like theft.

I felt shame when my boyfriend at the time kept going even after I told him to stop. When he finally pulled away and muttered, “and that’s why consent is important,” I realized we had both acknowledged what had just happened without speaking it aloud. I stayed mute until I left. Later, I confided in a friend, hoping for understanding. Instead, she told me it was normal — that boyfriends do that. I couldn’t believe my ears. In that moment, she had all but told me she, too, was a victim, and yet the conversation left me more ashamed. Ashamed that my body had shut down in his presence. Ashamed that, on a primal and biological level, things between us were never the same. And ashamed because some part of me still thought it was my fault that my body rejected him.

And then there was the time I thought I was going to be raped and was saved only by a missing phone. I still have the jeans I was wearing that day — can’t bring myself to throw them out, but can’t bring myself to wear them either. They live at the back of a drawer, hidden but not forgotten.

We live in a world where being violated is shameful for the victim, not the perpetrator. It’s been years since I was the girl in a green Hannah Montana T-shirt and knee-length blue skirt, running for her life down a gravel road in G-West — but I can still feel every hand that has ever touched me without my consent. My mind has yet to block out those memories.

I’ve been sitting on an initiative called Bloom Again. It’s built for survivors/victims — for the ones still finding their way back to themselves, and for the ones who don’t yet feel ready to call themselves survivors at all. It’s about trauma-informed support, knowing your rights, and unlearning the lies this world tells us about our worth. If this is my last time writing about my own story in this way, I hope it’s because I’ve found a better use for my voice: helping someone else find theirs.