I guess I should explain why I've been gone [TW: Sexual assault]

So, first of all, holidays. I think my last post was Black Friday or whatever back in November. Then December rolled along. I cut out a lot of people from my life mid-month and then Christmas happened - which was a whole fucking thing.

So, here's what happened. Christmas day. I spent a whole week mentally preparing myself for the buttfuck tons of social energy I would need to spend to get through the day. I was going to my father's girlfriend's family's house some two hours away. It wouldn't be the first time this happened, but at least it wasn't a surprise sleepover like the last time. Thing is, I have severe social anxiety and currently on no medications because my psychiatrist is an infantilizing piece of shit that tried to convince me to continue taking a mentally damaging medication. But that's a whole different story. Point is, I'm a goddamn mental wreck in public.

So, as I was saying, a week of mental preparation. I spent the car ride to myself, crocheting a small white elephant plush. We get there, dad's already stressed because of a full car plus dogs and gifts and drink cups. Just crazy amounts of everything. We get in the house and I pick my spot on the couch. Stick to my project, ignoring most people save for the occasional 'hello' and 'nice to see you'. The presense of dogs helped. But then more people came and it was some 30-40 people (obnoxious children included) crammed into two small living rooms and a kitchen. Too many people, too cramped, too much familiar unwanted hugs and cheek kisses.

And then my period starts. I can feel that initial cramping, so I take care of it before my body has the chance of staining anything. I get out and apparently they want a group photo. Everyone's shuffling into the other room and claiming spots on the two sets of stairs that lead to the second floor. Nobody is willing to move to let me stand next to my dad, so I'm stuck squished between two strangers with another breathing down my neck behind me on my left side. I think I only managed to stay for two of the four pictures they ended up taking.

As I was faking that smile, thinking that if I just focused on the camera everything would be fine, I got more touch contact than I really could handle. It was dumb - just an arm leaning on me, but I backed away from the railing to get space. I was shaking when people started to file back down, and by the time my dad came to check if I was okay I was choking in air. It's weird that people tell you to breathe when having a panic attack "it'll help", because it definitely doesn't. Gulping in air to prevent my eyes from watering didn't work. I went to sit in the other room while tearing up, only to be escorted outside a minute later by my dad because he knew I was about to start sobbing. Good man, he is.

We went inside about fifteen minutes later. One of the hosts approached me, gave me an unsolicited hug (fuck people, is it hard to offer or ask?) and said they were afraid I was bored because I went outside. On the plus side, I got an electric blanket that does wonders for my back when it's sore and a fancy new fitbit to keep track of my exercise and food intake.

And then January came along.

I've been wanting new local friends for a while now. But I'm socially stunted. I don't really know how people make friends or what the red flags are. So, I talk to a guy online. I'm very forward about just wanting to make friends and that I'm in a monogamous relationship. He's fine with that. Awesome. That's better than 99% of people I talk to online. Come to find out he lives just a city over or some shit. Tell him I'd be okay with eventually meeting up. Less than a week later, he's bored and blazed out of his mind and says he wants to hang. It's Sunday, so I was kinda eh on it, but agree.

He was tall and lanky, clearly underweight due to the fact he had trouble holding any sort of food down if he wasn't high. His hair was longer than mine, but maintained soft curls no matter how many time he ran his hand through his hair - which was a lot since it kept getting in the way of his olive green eyes. He also had sparse facial hair; not quite full, but visible enough on his upper lip, chin, and cheeks.

His car was old, some early 2000s model car in that "old man" color that's a cross of dull gold and silver. It smelled heavily of melted crayola crayons and there was a knife in a cup-holder "for protection". On the front of the hood were two dents, as though someone had tried (and failed) to stick a long signpost into it.

He was mostly giggly. And when he wasn't, he was staring at me. Then he'd compliment something about me; my glasses, my hair, my eyes, my "cute" round face. I would say thank you, but my gut wretched each time because of all the things I didn't know about making friends, I did know that commenting excessively on appearance was not a thing friends usually do. I steered the conversation to other topics as much as possible. The last one was alcohol and my interest in making mixed drinks. I offered to make him just one, green apple vodka and ginger ale.

So we went to my house, and I made him a very weak drink. We talked. He got handsy. I told him to stop. He wouldn't. I reminded him I had a boyfriend. He got upset. Whined at me that I had never told him - but I had many times. He continued anyway, and I was too scared to do anything except say no repeatedly. I just froze.

The next day, my partner (who did not live with me at the time) help me report it. He called the non-emergency number and told them he had information about a rape and to call me. Police came, they took my clothes as evidence, and they took my statement. It was two hours of questioning, a lot of it repeating one question and going through my conversation logs to check that I hadn't agreed to a one night stand or something beforehand. One of the cops was a rookie being trained by his superior, who was a very sympathetic and patient woman.

My SART nurse, less so. While doing her portion of the paperwork, she implied that it was consensual sex. Later, during the exam, she became fixated on a medical anomaly that had nothing to do with the assault for 20 minutes; poking at it and asking questions about it despite me assuring her my OBGYN said it was fine. She cracked jokes about the hickies he had left in almost a complete circle around my neck - they took over a week to fade away. The advocate that came to "guide me through the process" wouldn't respect that I, personally, wanted to be left alone. I didn't want to talk to someone about it other than what was needed for the report. I didn't want to fill out any paperwork about state reimbursement or victim's therapy. It was around 1 AM at that point, and had been doing all the reporting steps for seven hours straight. It was 2 AM before I went home.

My dad stayed home for the next few days and my partner literally picked up and moved out here within two days. It was a month before the police called me back regarding how the case was going - which I still missed because I don't feel comfortable talking to strangers. The victim advocates agency practically harassed me with calls regarding "incomplete paperwork for reimbursement" despite the fact I had never even started filling out that information or signed a document from them.

My therapist was extremely blasé when I told her, since it was relevant considering the last session we had we had been talking about how I was affected by past sexual assaults (AKA how guilty I felt about not trusting men). I haven't been back to her office, and to some extent don't want to be.

Life sort of just halted for a while. I didn't work, I didn't go outside, I rarely left my room. Things are a little better. I go to work almost full time now, save for the one day a week where I can't bring myself to get up. I go outside, albeit with my partner and a keychain of pepperspray firmly in my hand.

The guy who assaulted me is/was cyberstalking me. Keeps messaging me to the point where I've had to delete multiple accounts across various sites to prevent that. Luckily, this is not one of them. I think.

TL;DR Lost friends, panic attack coupled with surprise period on Christmas Day, and sexual assault in January.