Rape Survivor: My experience, and journey of healing

            One of the hardest things for me to overcome is trusting men. Sometimes I still struggle with it. For example, the other day, I was at Wal-Mart by myself with my little boy, and there was this man that I kept seeing around the store. There was something about him that gave me the creeps. There was one point where he stood in front of my cart and wouldn’t move and was just staring at me. Usually I try to be nice to people, but this guy I was pretty short with and told him to get out of my way. I was afraid that if I was nice to him, he would follow me out to my car. I started to get scared, and I didn’t even finish my shopping because I was so freaked out by this guy. So I bought what I had in my cart, and I left the store… Sometimes I just hate my anxiety.             There are times too where a guy isn’t even creepy and I still get freaked out. I have gotten significantly better, but there have been many times where I run away from a man in the parking lot of a store,

            When I read back through my journal entries of that time when I began my healing process, it’s amazing to me how much I have changed, and how much happier I am now than I was then. My therapist had me write a little bit everyday about how I felt, and would have me put a number between 1-10 at the end of my entry for how my day was overall; 10 being the happiest and 1 being the worst. Most of my days were between a 2 and a 6. In my journal entries, I talked about how all I did the entire day was sleep until 6 pm, or how I cried all day when I thought about something minor that to me was huge. Some days I said how I didn’t want to wake up that morning, so I lied in bed for hours on end and didn’t eat anything or talk to anyone. I would write about how the only reason I got up to get ready was to see my boyfriend so he wouldn’t know that anything was wrong with me. Most days I cried all day. Most days I called my mom and would cry to her about my daily anxieties and hurt. Mos