The beginning

I have struggled with my mental health for 5 years now, my diagnosis being PTSD and BPD. The catalyst fuelling the fire was going to a new sixth form- listening to cases in law class, similar to my own trauma and some making rape-related jokes. Not only that, but a so called ‘best friend’ had invited the perpetrator into the school for help with her music piece. At the time, I guess I felt kind of lucky and appreciative that she alerted me of his presence in the school. On reflection, it makes me angry. How could she bring a rapist into a school- predominantly full of under 16s?! Perhaps you can call me selfish for not telling the teachers of what he was. But I was terrified and spent both break and lunch time on the floor in the sixth form girls toilets. It may have happened a year and a bit before but the funny thing about brains is they react in ways we cannot control.

My PTSD after this incident worsened, and I was in a group therapy at SOSRC (sos rape crisis). To an extent it was helpful. However, listening to other people’s stories and having to tell my own and hold my nerve like the other girls did really took it out of me and thus became more and more withdrawn from my family and friends. At school, one of my only classmates (took sociology with me) let’s just name her ‘Z’ was also facing major psychological stress, was deeply self-harming and suicidal. After seeing her cuts, and feeling desperate it triggered me into cutting my left wrist while in the bath.  I wore bands on my arms to cover it up. She was put in a MH ward close to the school and I missed her company. From then on I sat by myself in a classroom of people that all seemed too dominating. By the time June came around, I was at breaking point. Group therapy seemed all the more hard, my grades were the worst they had ever been and could count all my friends on one hand. I hated life and was convinced there was no future ahead of me. I was sick and tired of fighting flashbacks and as a result of all this distress began to hear voices. So at 16 years old I sat in the upstairs bathroom at home playing ‘breakaway’ by Kelly Clarkson whilst cutting and consuming a mouth-full of bleach. At the time I thought it was enough to kill me, but from a further attempt it definitely wasn’t. Obviously. I am still here. I had a massive breakdown around the 16th July in front of my teacher Miss ‘C’ trying to get the words out to explain why I didn’t want to do a discussion about rape, but not a single word was coherent. She then bought Mrs ‘T’ in who took me straight to the school counsellor Mr Frost. It didn’t really help talking to a man about something that was a man’s doing and quite honestly, I felt uneasy being confided to a small cut-off room with an elder male.

Gym at the time was my sole source of pleasure, getting out of the house and away from school. On more than two occasions I bunked sixth form- sometimes just the morning, telling the class as I came through the door in an apparent ‘rush’ that I had slept through my alarm. I had joined the gym not long after my granddad died in 2013 and it took me roughly a year to tell my PT friend Bex what had happened to me (the second attack anyway). To me, she was like an older sister. Older, stronger, fiercer and fitter. And a good listener. I recall her saying to me whilst holding the slam-ball (weighted gym ball) to imagine the ground is ‘perpetrator’s face’. This was the most healthy outlet of anger. The rest was still being undertaken through self-harming. My legs, hips and arms. When the sweat got into the cuts on my legs, Bex was always mindful and patient with me. She took time to talk and would text me to check on my wellbeing. I honestly believe that once you feel heard you begin to heal.

The last week at Sixth Form, my head of year/ law teacher spoke to me and I told her what had happened and who that ‘friend’ had bought into the school. It felt surreal, like I was talking about someone else’s life. I realise now that it’s ‘detachment’ and is a fairly common symptom of PTSD. Anyhow, my teacher told me ‘it’s not just young girls that get raped, it can happen to grandmas too’ this baffled me, because obviously I knew it could happen to anyone and I was unsure whether she was insinuating that she was also a victim. But she never clarified, and that’s her decision. 

Results day after that abominable year was strange. Attainment wise it really wasn’t great, yet I hadn’t completely failed any subject during the worst year of my life!  I couldn’t wait to get back to STB (where I had gone from yr7-11) to join their sixth form, even if it meant starting yr12 from the beginning.

Of course there were alright times too, very rare in a time of living hell, I made a friend in my English class through someone who was in my form and remade contact in year13 at stbs, to this day he remains one of my closest and dearest friends.