This is the fourth or fifth time today I've tried to write this post. I want to get it out but I feel paralysed by the horror and shame of it. This little rabbit is frozen in headlights.

Strange how we hide things from ourselves. When memories come back, they're never surprising. It's like I never really forgot them, I just put them away out of sight. I've talked about how I'm tormented by missing memories, but I know what I've forgotten and I think I've always known. This has always been my narrative. I just hoped and wished it wasn't true.


***Trigger warning - rape, incest***





I once told a doctor I had been raped at age 15. Looking back, I couldn't remember why I said it. I thought I must have made it up.

In the last few days, I've remembered something. There are days when I was at home and my father was there too. I blanked them out. And I forgot about these particular gaps in my memory. I forgot I'd lost them.

Now it seems insane that I forgot. Forgot those times when I was in my bed and he was there and something bad was happening. I don't know why I didn't stop it. Perhaps because I made myself not know, or because trauma makes me freeze. I tried to tell my mum so many times in so many ways, but she chose not to see, not to know.

How old was I? 15, like it says in my medical records. 15, the age when I said I had been raped, then I couldn't remember why I said it.

I have noticed so many other things in the past few days, things I've known all along but I pushed them away, out of sight, tried to make them not true. I'm so detached, so dissociated. Interim-T said I seemed to have a history of trauma (as I kept dissociating in her office) and I laughed. I told her I was confused, as it clearly wasn't funny, but I kept laughing.

Earlier today, I felt water dripping down my face and realised my eyes were leaking but I just felt empty. Then I had really bad stomach and abdominal pains and this horrible stomach upset, like my body was upset. Yet I feel better in my head. Less anxious. My sui feelings have actually eased, because this is devastating but I've already been devastated for a long time.

Here is the thing that I've known all along, that I've been running from for so long. I can only write this out now because I'm so detached. My father used to force himself on me. I don't remember it happening, but I remember knowing it was happening, I remember how I felt. I don't know when it progressed from other things to rape. All I know is that it happened a lot when I was 15, and I couldn't stop it. My mum could have stopped it. But she didn't.

I want to believe I'm wrong, I'm just some demented fantasist, because I don't want this to be true. But it's like the episode of Doctor Who when they see the words Bad Wolf scattered all across the universe. This is my bad wolf, and it's been there all along.

I feel like I am disgusting, I am slime, I am nothing but shame and badness. I've felt like that for a very long time. I imagine people reading this post and thinking I'm disgusting, I shouldn't talk about this, I shouldn't post about it and contaminate PC. I'm trying not to freak out and delete this.