Wednesday, September 8, 2010

I am Me

I wanted to share a piece I wrote after speaking with a sexual assault service provider. I share this piece because it is important for service providers to remember to not lump all victims into a category as they sometimes do when they feel they have encountered 'all' types of victims.

A service provider cannot become complacent and apathetic. I realize that victims share similarities, but no one victim’s experience is the same. We all see it differently. Victims should not be pushed into decisions they don’t feel comfortable making. Who has the right, but the victim, to tell victims when they should take action?

It has taken me 37 years to speak out about the trauma I endured. I encourage others who share a similar past to find your voice on your own time and screw the government who feels it necessary to put deadlines on when a victim should deal with their trauma!

Warm regards,
Lee Ann

I am Me

You keep referring to me as a “normal victim”. But how do you know? Do you know what that means? Do you know that offends me? I keep telling you I am a survivor , so why must you keeping call me a victim? I am not a person who has been exposed to one wicked incident. I am a survivor of thousands of filthy, indecent acts over half of my living years. Don’t put me in a category or tell me you know how I feel. You can’t know how I feel for I am not a “normal victim” as a you call me. I do not fit in a pretty box that enables a label that fits thousands of others as you have declared. I am a survivor in my own way. You cannot know how I feel unless you have endured the pain and suffering I have? I do not want to hear, “in my experience in working with other victims” because I assure you I am nothing like what you have experienced. I am me.


Allow me to be an individual, to grieve as an individual, to seek restoration and tranquility as an individual. For I am not a victim but a survivor. I will keep telling you that because you are not hearing me. Open your mind to the possibility that the worst kind of violence has happened to me, then you will foretaste and see for yourself that I don’t fit in your label of “normal victim”. Incise and separate my legs and my arms from my body and I will still not be ‘Helena(1)’ fitting into a box unable to move, grown, and live because I will not be crippled by fear, dependant on life. Tell me not of what you have known because I will not allow you to diminish my conquest over the dark shadows that seek relentlessly at my very quintessence!

I have come so far not to allow one person who thinks they know my experience based on a mere observation – and a virtual one at that - to play judge and jury over my circumstance! I have not even met you! A victim implies someone who has allowed the demons to take permanent residence in their mind and impinge on the ability to live each day as a gift. I can assure you, I am survivor because I hunt for and feed off of life – life depends on me! I know my gifts and I cherish them – my demons are kept on a tight lease that chokes their eager and throttling desire to consume me for I am me and the only one like me, a survivor – give me that right. In your ignorance, I will battle to divide myself from your label. Remember your words, remember your place, you cannot help what you don’t understand. You will only cause harm and consternation for those you wish to affect change upon. Heed this warning I beg of you, open your mind and see me and those around you for what and who they really are and not for what you wish to make them for lack of acquaintance.

(1) Boxing Helena (1993). A fictional movie about a surgeon who becomes obsessed with the seductive woman he once had an affair with. Refusing to accept that she has moved on, he amputates her limbs and holds her captive in his mansion.

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