Submission from a female reader, aged 20, from the UK.

This post shows the devastating effects sexual assault can have on a person's mental health, but it also shows that recovery is absolutely possible. It's such a powerful message, and one that is important to remember if you're struggling.

The author's words are exactly as I received them.

...

I'm not ashamed of my story. 

My story is not a story of rape but sexual assault and violence.

I'm not scared to speak out about this or ashamed. 3 years ago no-one knew my story and still only a few do who helped me come to terms with what actually happened. I want people to know that you are not a victim, you are still a person. Nothing that has happened to you defines you.

When I was 13 I started going to a youth group, I used to travel once a week for an hour on my own. I had a friend at this group who used to stick with me, a few months later I met his friend who was a few years older than me, we all hung out a few times which started becoming a normal thing and we all got along. He asked me to go out with him, I said no as he was too old for me and he left it at that. The next time I saw him we were stood outside having a cigarette at our group and there was just us two. He started moving closer to me and was then right next to me. I was leaning against a wall and so was he at this point. He spun round and pushed himself onto me. So close I could feel every disgusting inch of him. Practically crushing me to the point where I couldn't say or do anything. I just thought to myself, oh it'll be some sort of joke. Then his hands were on me. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn't speak or move and I was just frozen. The feeling I can't even describe. I was in shock with it. His hands were down my trousers, I was in tears at this point. Silently crying to myself, not knowing what I could do. Then my friend started to walk through the door around the corner and he let me go. I was still stood in shock and felt sick from it all. Every time I met up with my friend and he was there I used to always stay on the other side of the room and with someone. But whenever he did end up alone with me, he always tried to touch me and It was scary knowing he could get away with it.

This was when I went in a self destructive downhill spiral which I couldn't seem to get out of. Still not really coming to terms with what had actually happened and just pushing it out. 

A year or so later, I was drinking, and doing other things I shouldn't be doing at the age of 15. However for me that was really my way of coping with everything that I was going through. I was out in town one weekend with my friend we'll call her Sarah. She wanted to nip to her friends which was only 15 minutes away, so we started walking there, I was fairly tipsy but the walk sobered me up. We got to her friends house and I'd never met these people which was scary for me to deal with. My friend went upstairs to have sex with one of the guys which meant I was left alone with his friend. We started talking and he seemed genuinely nice, just chatting away. Next thing I remember was being crushed with his body on top of mine. I had blacked out with shock. Knowing it was happening again and I still wasn't able to fight back or say anything was soul destroying. His lips were on mine and I was trying to get away, I couldn't move under the pressure of him. My wrists were bruised, my top was over my head and I couldn't move. His hands felt disgusting on top of me and I couldn't move. I was crying, trying to shout. I couldn't do anything. I was hit. I hurt everywhere. I managed to get away when he let my wrists go and I struggled to get out from under him. He kept grabbing me and pulling me back. I managed to get out the house. I had no top on and looked a state. I had nothing left of myself anymore. 

I suddenly had no dignity and everything was gone. I felt no hope after what I had been through and thought that would always be me, I'd always be the victim and never be able to gain control of my life again.

I ended up in a really deep hole that I couldn't get out of and I was killing myself with what I was putting my body through. I went to the doctors after some pushing from a friend. It was the most daunting thing I'd done. But I got help, I had therapy to help me over come my depression and PTSD. 

I finally managed to come to terms with what happened and that I am not to blame for it.

...

When we experience sexual violence, we are never to blame and we should never feel ashamed. These Are Not Our Secrets.

All submissions to the blog can be found here. If you would like to share your story anonymously on this blog, email me: thesearenotmysecrets@gmail.com - I'd really appreciate it if you could include your age, gender, and nationality.

All of the posts and pages can be easily found via the blog's contents page. Have a look.

1988; 2006

I've previously written about a sexual assault that happened to me when I was 11, and about being raped a few months later. Sadly, these are not my only experiences of sexual violence. 

Writing about the child sexual abuse I experienced has taken me longer, because it is a more difficult story to tell. By which I don't mean more emotional, but that the narrative is less clear. More like a jigsaw puzzle than a book. You will see.

...

At the beginning of 2006 I was 21. I was working a very draining job, and doing an Open University degree; I had a four year old son, and I was unhappily married. Life was busy, stressful, hard.

My mental health (although never good) had been steadily worsening over the previous months. Since my son was born, I had worked so hard at coping: as though I could just box up all of my mental health issues, and hide them under the bed for 18 years. Being a good mother, wife, person, being normal was all that mattered. But the box full of crazy was starting to leak. My self-harming was getting out of control, my eating was more disordered than ever. Anxiety and agoraphobia were starting to make leaving the house difficult.

One evening that January, my husband and I were at home, and our son was tucked up, asleep. We had probably been drinking alcohol, or smoking cannabis. Both were usual means of self-medicating at this time, as we had both struggled with mental health issues for years. I tended to take it gently, though, as I had a busy life to keep on top of. 

I don't remember anything triggering it, but suddenly my head was full of pictures. I had experienced "visuals" while using drugs before, but this was different. My field of vision was full of layers of images, liquid and merging into each other - when I tried to focus on one corner, that part changed to something else: a wooden dining chair; my favourite fork from when I was small; a door; the BBC test card; a stamp, with the Queen in profile; a wooden gate; a cloudy blue sky. But the image which swam in and out the most clearly was a serifed number: 134. I couldn't stop seeing these images. Eyes open or closed, they would not go away, and I was terrified. My husband convinced me to get into bed, and he sat with me, calming me down, until I fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, my eyes were my own again, but I could not stop thinking about number 134.

Over the next week, more images came - less confusing, but more worrying. I had been so frightened by what had happened, that I had sworn myself to sobriety, but even without intoxication, they kept coming. The way in which the images appeared changed, over time, and I realised that most of the images were of a house. A familiar house. From the street I grew up on. The house over the road? What was the neighbour's name - Jill?* I had no memories of ever having been inside that house - but these pictures, flashes of memory: walking up the drive, my small hand in a bigger hand; standing at the door, head craned up; walking up the stairs; sitting in the bathroom, hearing adult laughter - could these be real? And 134... a door number? Jill's house couldn't possibly be number 134: it was three doors down from our friends at 124. What was my brain doing?

Without giving anything away, I asked my mum whether I'd ever been in the house over the road. Her response surprised me: "I don't think so... but Jill used to babysit you, at our house, while I was at work." When was this? It was when another neighbour, Monica, had ceased to be available on the right days. Jill stepped in. 

This confused me. I had so many memories of being babysat by Monica: playing with the duplo with Monica; eating lunch with Monica; watching Monica fold towels; being in the garden with Monica; hearing stories about Monica's older and very exciting son; Monica helping me to write a letter to the fairies. How could I have retained these older memories of Monica, but remember nothing at all about Jill - a woman who had apparently been a regular fixture in my life for quite some time?

I didn't understand.

...

This next part is hard to write: I cannot remember a time before I was sexualised. I cannot remember not having an awareness of sexuality. And not having guilt and shame about my body. I didn't know what sex was until I was ten, but I can remember, with absolute clarity, being five years old and knowing things that I should not have known. It never occurred to me that somebody might have shown me these things.

This is harder still: despite having been potty trained precociously early, I suddenly became incontinent aged four. My parents assumed that it was in protest against the birth of my brother, and that it would soon stop. I learned to hide it, manage it, but I was a teenager before I regained full control of my pelvic floor. I cannot tell you how much I disgusted myself. It never occurred to me that somebody might have caused me an internal injury. 

...

One day, I was at home, alone, and suddenly all of the fragments of memory - sights, sounds, feelings, physical sensations - slammed together. It was violent, intense. I threw up. 

Jill, who lived over the road, sexually abused me.

I still lived in the town I'd grown up in. I made my way, shakily, across town, to the street I had lived on from a few months to 15 years of age. I stood outside Jill's house, the house over the road from my childhood home. And there, on the gate: 134.

Maybe this seems like nothing to you, but to me, seeing the number nailed to the gate, serifed exactly as it had been in my mind, at a small child's eye level... it gave me permission to believe myself: Jill, who lived over the road, sexually abused me.

...

The next few weeks were horrendous. My head was so full, I thought it would explode. I desperately wanted to talk to my mum about this. Maybe she could shed some light on things. I wanted her to know. But I felt certain she wouldn't believe me. I didn't know what to do.

I spoke to a dear friend. I told him all about the images, the memories, number 134. I told him about the sexual assault, about the rape. I told him that I wanted to tell my mum, but that every time I imagined telling her, I imagined her getting angry and throwing something. My friend listened to everything I said. I had never experienced empathy like it. After I'd finished talking and crying, my friend told me that he was going to pray for me, and he was going to fast. Religious beliefs entirely aside, that is an incredible show of support for someone. I was overwhelmed by his love and solidarity. 

It gave me the strength to talk to my mum.

My relationship with my mum has never been straightforward. Now, in 2015, it is better than it has ever been. She even reads my blog. (Hello, Maman!) But in 2006, we barely spoke. So, it was foreign territory for both of us when I sat her down and told her everything. Everything. About the sexual assault, about the rape, and - somehow - about all of the memories that had recently resurfaced. And she didn't throw anything.

Instead, she believed me. And she told what she remembered. Coming home from work one day, and three year old me telling her "Mummy, we went to Jill's house!", and the shock on Jill's face, the hasty explanation, it not quite adding up. I never mentioned going to Jil's house again, but I know that we didn't stop going. Bumping into Jill at the shops, stopping to chat, and Jill asking my mum about me - only me - I am one of four, but Jill never asked about my brothers. Lots of little things - each meaningless in isolation - all knitted together now. 

...

By this point, my under-the-bed-box-of-crazy had burst open. Dealing with these memories, dealing with the truth, was too much for me, and my carefully constructed attempt at normal had fallen apart. By March, I was in a full-on meltdown. 

I went to the GP, and told her as much of the story as I could get out, shaking and hyperventilating. She referred me to a consultant psychiatrist, and I had to do it all again. Finally, I was referred to a therapist for cognitive analytic therapy. Bit by bit, I told her everything. Being believed, being understood, was amazing.

Through therapy, I started to learn to trust myself. I learned that memories of early trauma resurfacing in adulthood is not that unusual. The concept of dissociation - which the brain uses to protect one's ongoing functioning - means that memories can be inaccessible for years, decades even. It doesn't make the memories not real.

Should you like a bit of evidence (I do!), this paper is from a 1999 study into memories of childhood abuse.

It's the same mechanism that causes some adults who experience car crashes to have a "blank" in between buckling their seatbelt and waking up in hospital. It was suggested that my memories may have been "triggered" by my son reaching the same kind of age as I was at the time of the abuse.

...

It's now nine years since the memories resurfaced, and - as far as I can tell - 27 years since Jill sexually abused me. 

I'm still learning about the impact of the sexual abuse, and my other experiences of sexual violence. Over the past year, I've been coming to terms with the idea that all of the apparently discrete issues I've been struggling with (for almost two decades) are in fact symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

In a recent post, Broken, and also in my account of being raped, I talked about the impact that experiencing sexual violence had on my mental health, particularly in my teens and early twenties. I plan to write about the continuing effects of PTSD, soon.

 ...

This post has been added to the My Story page, along with other posts about my own experiences. Please have a look, to get the full picture. 

*All names used are pseudonyms.