Elicia Louise's Story

ELICIA LOUISE'S STORY

When I was raped, I didn’t even know that it was rape. Well, not really. I wanted to call it something different that made me feel better, I wanted to call it something that made it alright so I did… I called it a mistake.

The person who raped me was not a stranger, it wasn’t someone that had never touched me before, it was someone that I believed I loved so an apology was almost enough to make it go away. I had never been weak-willed, I had never been soft and I had known that I said no more than once, that I hadn’t whispered it under my breath but my rapist was the one in tears when I told him that. He cried and he cried and he cried and he told me that he would leave me alone forever and never come back and in all the confusion somehow being raped was my own fault and I was the one that was begging him to stay. He knew how to get into my head and he knew how to make me change my mind. He knew how to make me betray myself although for the rest of my life I would always know; I said no.

My rapist lived in my house, he spoke to my parents, he told me that he didn’t like my friends. My rapist shared my bed and when he touched me, I hated every second of it but I never said no again. I went to work on autopilot, I watched my parents love him and joke with him in ways they never joked with me, I put everything I had into a crumbling relationship where everything was always my fault. And most of all, I forgot. I forgot what he had done because it was easier, because… maybe it was all in my head. Maybe it was my own fault that it had happened to begin with. I felt empty inside but I knew that as long as my rapist lived under my roof, at least he wasn’t living under someone else’s. At least it was only me.

Then, one day, it was over. He was gone. That was the happiest and saddest time of my life, I was finally free but there was no me left that had been there before. I wasn’t the same person. I started to tell my story, I told it to my closest friends, I told it to people that I had only spoken to online, I told it over and over but it didn’t feel like it was my life, it felt like an empty shallow story that happened to someone else. I drank too much on holiday and leaked my story to my grandma, I made my grandad fly off the handle with rage… I posted about it on Instagram in a post that was swiftly deleted afterwards when my rapist rang me up in the middle of the night and said: “I saw your post, I’m so so so sorry that happened to you,” as if it hadn’t been him at all. I hung up the phone and started to cry and deleted the picture and told myself that was the last time I would tell that story at all.

The most common questions I was asked: “Are you sure?” “Did he hear you?” “Does he actually know what he did?”

There were so many questions that I was asked that made me doubt myself, that made me believe that burying it deeper and deeper was the answer. But, the memory is ingrained inside of my brain. I was there. Nobody else was. I know what I said and I remember every moment of silence afterwards, I remember using the words, “You raped me,” before the months of forgetting began.

It has been five years and I am still angry. It has been five years and I still haven’t forgotten and I have to rack my brain for all the reasons why I have to remember that I am a different person now and I cannot let all the hate that I have inside me affect me forever. It has been five years and it seems like every one of them brings me a reminder that I allowed him to get away with it and because of me… I wasn’t the last person who had to.

You see, being raped, being manipulated, those things I was able to get over. I grew and I changed and I built walls that meant that I could cope, I thought I could move forwards and forgive. I never minded being the only casualty of a crime that was never repeated — as wrong as it sounds, for some reason, I still felt like maybe I was just the unlucky one, maybe I was the one that got the bad and someone else would get the good. Maybe people did change.

But, he didn’t.

And now I wait for the next private message, the next phone call, the next message asking me about this person and then worst of all… messages saying that they did the same to them.

The worst part about being sexually assaulted wasn’t what happened to me at all, it was knowing that the same person is out there doing the same thing to other people, it’s waiting just in case it does. It’s filing a police report 4 years too late and begging someone to believe you because you think it might be what saves the next girl from going through all the pain and suffering that you’ve experienced and seen. It’s knowing that there’s nothing you can do anymore, being helpless in a sea of anxiety over things that are totally out of your control.

I’m okay, I have been for a long time, but what keeps me awake at night is worrying that someone out there ISN’T.

IT GETS BETTER
There are so many things that I want to say about my life and the way that I was affected by trauma. There are also so many things that I want to say to others that are out there and trapped or afraid of leaving a situation that’s toxic to them. I want you to know;
IT GETS BETTER.

(Before)

I think that the thing about recovery is that sometimes you don’t recognise how bad things were before until you look back. I looked back on a picture of myself seven years ago during the unhappiest period of my life and it actually shocked me how much emptiness I can see in my own eyes. I can feel my own unhappiness and I can see how much my life has changed, how much more of a positive mindset I have in present day.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen overnight for me at all but the moment that toxic person was out of my life I was so relieved that it was finally done with. My life could finally move on.

It was over the past seven years since that I realised that while things get better, the past never changes. Bury it as much as you like – it is still there. I have never not managed to carry on with my life, I have never stopped picking up the broken pieces of who I was before but the fantastic part of healing is becoming someone new who is stronger and braver.

(After)

I don’t think of myself as brave because I never once felt like I was doing something hard. I just made the decisions I had to in order to move forwards with my life, I couldn’t stay in a bad place forever. Nobody should have to stay in that dark place. It’s not where we belong.

But I think it is true that the bravest thing you can do is realise what happened, accept it and make a conscious effort to make peace with not only the situation but the past as a whole. Peace doesn’t come easily.

There were times over the past seven years where I felt broken beyond disrepair, where I used coping mechanisms that were not healthy at all. I hurt other people that ended up wrapped up in my rage over what had happened to me even though it was neither of our faults. Time and time again I made the same choices knowing the result and time and time again I was left alone but not disappointed. It is so easy to find ways to punish yourself for things you had no control over, as easy as it is for other people who were not there to ask you why you did not simply do something about what happened or leave. Unfortunately, the truth is, I cannot truly answer why it was so hard to leave and neither can I answer as to why, still now, sometimes, I feel like I still need to be punished for something that was out of my control.

Day by day, year by year, things got easier. I began to recognise the negative things I was doing and the reasons why. I was able to realise that what had happened to me had resulted in me being the toxic person in some of my relationships. All the anger that was inside of me, all that punishing myself… It was all just punishing the people that I cared about.

Now, I can finally say that I am happy. I have become a person that is no longer afraid of those dark places or trying to bury the past. I have accepted what has happened and I’m ready to talk about that experience as well as the process of getting to this point.

I want others to know… IT GETS BETTER!

Thank you, Elicia Louise for sharing this truly traumatic story of yours, albeit it with, I am so happy to say an inspiring and motivating outcome in terms of your fight, courage and strength to battle back.
I truly believe this will hit home for so many people, with a hope that it will encourage them to stand up and fight back and ultimately have it become a part of their own survival journey.

I have the upmost respect for you in sharing your story in hope of helping others and wish you the best of luck and happiness in all that you do. 

You are truly an inspiration to many. 

#chasingstarlightwarrior

To follow Elicia Louise's continued journey please check out her blog at:

https://elicialouise.com/

Thank you again, 

Mark 💪