Warning: this article contains description of a sexual assault.
When allegations of sexual misconduct started coming out of Parliament House, I knew to brace myself for the worst.
Surviving your sexual assault necessitates this — the way sexual violence is reported on and talked about is a cycle, and often it plays out in its ugliest form. When it starts up again, you can feel it in your bones. Among the ugly, there are supportive claims, saying how hard it must be for survivors to live through the news cycle. Yet, there is little depiction of what that reality looks like. How is it hard, exactly; and why does it matter? The experience varies, surely, but I can speak for myself.
In the abstract, it’s like being stuck in a lift that stops at every floor. On one floor, you have news coverage. Then, reactions on social media. After that, speculations of more accusations coming forward. Next, the memories of your own assault. Another is strange details from the day that you’d forgotten, like the first thing you ate afterwards. The Hell Floor is where the gruesome details of someone else’s pain lives. When you get there, the lift floor starts shaking and desperately trying to ground you in reality. You get to the floor where you realise your body doesn’t feel like yours, and then you’re jolted back up to the News Coverage Floor. All the while, you’re tensed up, or sprawled out and dissociating. Eventually, you get motion sickness, but the lift keeps at it. Once it’s left the news cycle, you might be able to leave the lift, but you can never leave the building.
Once it’s left the news cycle, you might be able to leave the lift, but you can never leave the building.
The way this lift metaphor extends to my material reality is a little more confronting.
The obvious pain is the psychological toll. Reliving a traumatic moment in your life makes it hard to remember what’s going on in the present. I simply cannot be my 2021 self if I am constantly thinking about my 2017 self. I mourn the person I never got to become without the loss of my security. Remembering how I felt back then, I fall back to the same fears I had then. I worry about someone breaking into my house. I try not to make eye contact with anyone on the street, particularly men. With my partner, I try not to be distant, but it’s hard to meaningfully engage when you’re stuck in the worst moment of your life.
The obvious pain is the psychological toll. Reliving a traumatic moment in your life makes it hard to remember what’s going on in the present.
What many find hard to believe is when I mentally relive the night of my assault, the physical symptoms I experienced come creeping back. Living with chronic illness, I’m used to being in pain. My body can identify what is illness related and what is post-traumatic stress. In the last month, I’ve gotten intense pressure headaches, pelvis aches, and sharp pains in my stomach. My whole body is teeming with anxiety, vibrating from lack of or interrupted sleep. This physical toll is essential to understanding what it’s like to be a survivor. Many think it is solely mental, but like any good psychologist will tell you, you can’t divide the body and the brain.
Which is why rape is not a singular event. It endured the morning after on my way to the hospital, feeling like I was watching myself from above. I relived it in the painful and invasive examination I underwent to collect evidence. I saw it in the week after it happened, when I stared off into the distance because I couldn’t bear to be in public. It was months later, when I stayed in the house all day because I was convinced I was going to be hurt again. Now it lives, years later, as the details of someone else’s assault plays on split screen with my own. Rape takes and takes, oftentimes we encourage it to without noticing.
Now it lives, years later, as the details of someone else’s assault plays on split screen with my own. Rape takes and takes, oftentimes we encourage it to without noticing.
Aside from calling my therapist, what helps is not diving too deeply into the news. You can’t be hurt if you don’t know what part of the cycle we’re in. But when the news is everywhere, that isn’t always practical. Where I find solace is taking time to sit alone and listen to the birds in my backyard. I call my friends from home, who I know do not subscribe to the toxicity of victim blaming and want to dismantle rape culture as much as I do. Listening to other survivors have hope, like beloved Grace Tame, helps. Seeing people come out in support of survivors helps. Being believed helps. What helps more than anything, though, is seeing material change taking foot. This doesn’t just have to be through commissions or changes in legislation. If you know someone like me, who is stuck in the metaphorical lift, reaching out and asking how you can help them right now is a form of material change. Community care is as important as self care.
Surviving burns a need for justice into you unlike much else. I never want what happened to me to happen to someone else. Logically, I know that it does and I cannot prevent it on my own. But through truth telling, I want people to know how important their actions to one another are - how, by virtue of learning how to be better to each other, how to be more knowledgable about consent and how to dismantle rape culture, we can be better off. It’s the only way out of the elevator, and thus the building, to see the sun once more.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
Readers seeking support with mental health can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. More information is available at Beyondblue.org.au. Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
also supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
