I’m Still Here
I just wanted to take a moment to put something into this space once again- above all, as a baby step in starting to find my voice again. Although I’m going to be spending most, if not all, of 2021 off of social media so I can focus on my healing + my family & I’s safety, I still want to write here in hopes that both myself & others can take some good from what I share. At the very least, I hope anyone else going through similar things will know they aren’t alone.
That’s all I ever wanted, my biggest motivator for sharing my life so intimately on social media over the last decade especially. I’ll elaborate on this in a future post, but I had so many more things I wanted to share with the world. I no longer feel safe to do so, after experiencing years of violent harassment & threats for sharing the parts of my life I have. I know it’s going to be a long & at times excruciating journey of learning how to simultaneously share parts of my life, while also fighting to reclaim my privacy. I’m learning how to navigate all of this, & I know it’s going to take some time & a lot of hard work.
I wouldn’t wish the feeling of having no agency over your own trauma & your own life on anyone. It’s also been hard learning to cope with significantly worsened complex PTSD & depression & anxiety when there are constantly new layers of trauma being piled on, when dealing with the “old” trauma was hard enough. Just two days ago, my family & I dealt with yet another in-person attack. While speaking out has been liberating in many ways, & a lot of good has come from it in my communities thankfully, it’s also been severely oppressive to deal with all of the violent backlash that is still continuing to this day.
Besides the ever-escalating harassment & abuse I’ve experienced both offline & online, it’s also been really painful to see content made about my trauma without my consent going viral often on apps like TikTok, where misinformation is being spread about what happened to me. I’ve seen so many videos saying things like “rest in peace” about me which is so deeply triggering because although my life was almost taken, I’m still here. It’s so unsettling to see videos & comments claiming I died many years ago.
When the truth is, I fought like hell to survive & have been fighting ever since then to continue to survive & to be heard. My fight to do both has resulted in so much trauma in & of itself. I have been punished severely for surviving & for speaking out, with so many abusive people trying to make an example of me, I’m assuming for many reasons including to scare other victims from coming forward.
It feels like erasure to be talked about as if I’m dead or otherwise don’t have a voice of my own, & the content being supposedly made with good intentions to “spread awareness” doesn’t really make it hurt any less. I’ve also seen a lot of videos about me where the person posting it demands that people find the identities of my traffickers & abusers to “get justice” for me.
This is so alarming to me, as I have shared publicly many many times that I know exactly who these people are & have chosen not to name them publicly for my own safety. It’s so hurtful when other people try to “help” by putting me in more danger, or spreading misinformation about my trauma which then leads to a whole new wave of harassment. It’s also so upsetting when people use my trauma that I barely survived to push their own agenda which I don’t agree with. Sometimes, things like this hurt even worse than the outright malicious harassment I get.
It makes me feel like I still am having my consent disregarded & my voice silenced. I’m extremely easy to find on social media & any of these people could have contacted me to ask if it was okay to make content about me, or at the very least done some basic research to verify things like that I am in fact alive. It’s hard to un-learn being okay with crumbs- as I’m sure is true for many other survivors, I’m so used to people not caring at best or worse, intentionally causing further harm to me, that I’ve felt pressured to be grateful when anyone cares, even if their brand of caring is speaking over me on my own life. While on one level I appreciate them caring & doing what they think is right, I also want so badly to feel a sense of agency over my own life & my own trauma again.
It hurts so much to still, so many years after this crime changed my life forever, be treated like my consent doesn’t matter. Whatever happens next for me, whether I ever use social media again as vocally as I used to or not, I want to have a place where I can share the truths about my own life on my own terms. Privately, I started keeping a journal again that I hope my children & grandchildren can read one day, & publicly I’ll be sharing here what I’m comfortable sharing here. Thank you so much for being here in this space with me as I learn to navigate re-defining my boundaries & sharing my life in a way that feels safe & meaningful for me. ❤️
-Rose
