Content warning: This piece deals with the impacts of sexual violence, but does not go into detail about the act itself. If you think this will upset you, do not proceed. If you have had a similar experience and require support, you can contact the Sexual Assault Support Service on 1800 697 877 and/or 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.
“Smile!”
He’s an older, scruffy-looking gentleman; I am by myself on a street in an unfamiliar city, having touched down in Hobart from Melbourne only two days prior. I pull my face into a more polite expression.
“That’s better!”
I wait until he’s passed me before I start to laugh. I had begun to forget that people like that still exist.
After a moment’s pause, my response stuns me. Not long ago, this interaction would have been reason enough for me to spiral into pure panic and, most likely, throw up somewhere (hopefully discreetly, though I haven’t always been that lucky). Due to an incident of sexual violence, I spent the better part of the last few years deathly afraid of leaving the house alone.
I couldn’t walk into the town I grew up in, let alone think of going anywhere further. I had a heavy weight on my mind, an omnipresent fog that pervaded my ability to do the things I had always done and loved – replaced, instead, with terror and mistrust. I had lost all faith in humanity. I was painfully, constantly aware that every single person had the capacity to hurt me and I held tightly to the belief that most would choose to, given the chance.
When you have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), your perceptions change in strange ways; the world becomes an incredibly large and dangerous place and you become small, fragile and defenceless against it. Many of us can get caught in this spiral, especially when you get the statistics involved. 23% of women report experiencing sexual violence in Australia, with 73% of them knowing their perpetrator. If our towns are not safe, our neighbours are not safe, our own homes, even – how can we ever learn to trust in that big, wide world?
I wish I could say there was an easy fix.
What I can say is that you cannot learn to trust this home of ours if you never give it the chance to prove itself. In therapy for trauma, you’re usually asked to grade your levels of discomfort. For me, I found that leaving my house brought me up to a 6-8 out of 10 with upchucking consequences. Progress often felt nonexistent. It was something I had to work hard at to bring down with the smallest, baby steps you could possibly imagine. Hours and hours of appointments, mindfulness exercises, retreading painful memories until their sharp edges began to dull.
And slowly, oh so very slowly, I found myself making the 15 min trek to my local shops. I re-enrolled into university and began walking to the station after class. The world around me felt unfamiliar, places I’d always known were revealing themselves to me in new ways. I felt like a stranger, a newborn. It was something that made me terrified at first, but began to feel like a blessing. I got to visit the places I had enjoyed like I was discovering them for the first time. I still felt hyper aware of myself and those around me but I was getting better, I was regaining my independence.
And the most amazing thing I found was how beautiful it all was.
I fell in love with my hometown, with Melbourne, with the market stall holders, the baristas, my lecturers, the person on the tram who warned me that PTV officers were boarding. I learned in the most wonderful way that bad things happen to all of us but, on the whole, when it really comes down to it, the world is good.
The world is so good, in fact, that this year I experienced the biggest strides in my recovery journey and I attribute so much of that to putting myself out there and just existing in it. Healing from trauma is often a long, non-linear process, but today, four years after my assault, I write this to you in Hobart – a city I’d never been to before that I travelled to all on my own. I’m living in a sharehouse with eight strangers who have proved to me again and again how kind people can be.
Sure, I had a panic attack on the plane and that weird, old man yelled at me on the street. Bad things can feel inevitable, sometimes insurmountable, but I make no empty platitudes when I tell you that they are worth weathering just to get the chance at experiencing a fraction of the world. I know it’s not easy but I also know that I have never been more excited about what the future holds.