Everyone Else Has An Opinion So Here's Mine

My Facebook is filled with her story, with his.
With opinions both well thought out and others thrown out with emotion.
This post will be thrown out with emotion.

When I first saw the story, about the athlete who was accused of / found guilty of rape (I do not know as I cannot bring myself to read the story but this is what I've pieced together) I didn't know what I was reading.

A friend whose posts I respect and enjoy reading made her status about the injustice of how the case had gone. A sentence or two into it I felt a pain in my chest and I had trouble breathing. I stopped reading.

I closed the page and distracted myself with something mindless.
And I forgot all about it--or well I tried.
But the internet isn't letting me.

This story is everywhere. And while it's great to see this topic being covered it constantly triggers me to have to deal with things I'd rather not think about. My own experiences with rape and sexual abuse. 

And while everyone else has an opinion and can voice their thoughts, I find that this story has silenced and paralyzed me. Well, until now.

Too painful to think about at work, and too scary to delve into on my own at home the thoughts of my past have been preying on my subconscious since I first began to read about her story.

I didn't think it was affecting me until I had a panic attack at the gym yesterday.

I was doing squats in front of the mirror and I see the guy to my left stretching his groin feet away from me. I feel uncomfortable so I turn away trying to stay present. Then the guy behind me begins to go to town on the punching bag. His muscles flexing, his testosterone flowing, grunting, he hits the bag harder. 

The two story warehouse gym closes in on me. My heart races. My hands shake. I struggle to stay present.

"They cannot win. They cannot win. I will not stop my workout because I am triggered," I tell myself. "I've given too much of my life to my attackers and they will not ruin this for me." I say trying to be brave, thinking I'm doing what's right and noble.

But the more I try to be brave and make myself sit in an environment that has become threatening the harder it is to control my breath and my mind. 

To my right a bodybuilder begins to deadlift with an angry force. Jerking the bar up and down. Slamming the weights.

The noise reverberates in my head and I have had enough attacks to realize when one is about to happen. I need to get out of here, but I am frozen. I am surrounded by things that feel threatening to me, how do I move when I am trapped?

The urge to run turns into an impulse. I turn up my music and I book it to the bathroom. I keep my head down. No longer able to control my tears, my body screaming to go to safety.

I bang open the bathroom door almost taking someone out. I muffle an apology and slam the stall door shut, I put my back against the wall, sink to the floor and curl up into a ball. 

Make me smaller, let me implode, let me escape. 

And I stay like this for I don't know how long, trying to steady my breath and stay in the room even though my brain throws memories violently to the forefront. 

It's not fair I think. It's not fair. The gym has become a place of recovery for me where I find myself feeling confident getting stronger mentally and physically but ironically it's also a source of powerful memories from a past I'd rather leave there.

The cold floor helps me mellow. I ask myself simple questions like where was I born and what did I have for lunch that day. And I distract myself until I am calm.

I avoid men as much as I can for the rest of my workout and I forget about this until today when I scroll through Facebook. There it is again. And again. 

And I go back to the avoidance and the distracting.

Everyone has had a voice in this, and I wanted to put mine in. While the victim is being very strong (from what I've gathered she's written a powerful letter to her attacker and probably spoken out as this is getting so much attention) and this story creating much needed attention to a serious issue it is also causing me a lot of pain. 

Everyone's opinion is out there about this story and this topic but I hadn't seen my perspective voiced and felt a need to, as I usually do when I write.

I don't know what most people have had to go through that have been posting their opinions about this so I could be completely off base but I feel jealous of all of you who can feel stronger by this story. I feel jealous that you can read these stories without having the reaction that I do. My past haunts me constantly and lately it's been brought to the forefront and I'm having a hard time coping. 

I can usually ignore it and forget that those things happened but not when there's reminders everywhere. And I'm just angry, and sad, and frustrated that this is a part of my life and who I am and always will be. And I can just hope that maybe one day I can read these stories and feel empowered but I'm just not there yet. Just another perspective to think about.