My assault

CONTAINS DETAILS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

So this will be the most raw and vulnerable thing I've ever put on the internet however I feel by putting it into words I'm freeing this burden from my soul. My only intention by publishing this is to help me work through it all and hopefully show other women they are not alone. In August this year I went on a family holiday to Gran Canaria and one of our first nights there my parents kindly offered to have Tommy for the night so I could go out with my brother and sister, their partners and my cousin. It started off nicely, we had a nice dinner then started hitting some bars. I'll openly admit I got way too drunk way too fast, the drinks abroad are way stronger than I'm used to and I was gladly accepting any that were offered to me. At some point between bars and clubs my brother in law and I lost everyone else and that's when we met two men, one local to the island and one a French man. We found everyone again and they started tagging along, to be honest I didn't think anything of it. I didn't feel unsafe at any point, I was high on life. I was in this great point where I felt I finally had my shit figured out, I was about to start college, I had a good routine down, I felt good about my parenting style. I saw this night out as a celebratory one, like I'd finally got out of my darkest moments. The French man and I took a liking to each other, he kept buying my drinks and complimenting me. We started kissing and I really quickly realized I didn't like the situation I was in. He was biting my lips really hard and when I'd tell him to stop he just seemed to do it harder. At some point he took me away from the group, I was paralytic at this point and I had no idea what was going on. I don't want to go into the details of the assault, but it didn't take long for my sister and her partner to find me. They immediately removed me from the situation, not realizing how far it had went. I think I was in shock and I wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. I begged them to not take me home yet, I wanted to drown my sorrows. We went to one last club and this is the point I blacked out. I don't remember being in there or how I got back to the hotel. I'm very grateful to have been with people who took care of me. My lips were bruised for the rest of the my time there, my body was black and blue because I fell over so much. My head hurt for days where he pulled my hair. 

I feel like I floated through the rest of the holiday in a desensitized haze.  I have very much not been myself since I got home. I keep telling myself it was my fault and if I hadn't been so drunk it wouldn't have happened. A few weeks ago I went on a night out with some close friends, we done karaoke then went clubbing. I was having a great night, it was the first time I'd been out that way since I got home. But when I found myself in WhyNot and got separated from my friends by the crowd I started to feel this intense weight on my chest. I started struggling to breath and I just had to leave. I held it together while waiting for my coat but the second I left I just broke down. I was sat on the steps of the Dome at 2am balling my eyes out hyperventilating. One of my friends who had already went home was on the phone begging me to go home but I didn't want to leave my friends who were still in the club; oblivious to what was going on. At that point the only person who knew I had been assaulted was was on the phone to me. I had to hang up to save the 4% battery I had left. So there I was in the middle of Edinburgh. Alone. Sobbing. Covered in mascara. What a sight. People kept trying to help but strangers approaching me was making it all worse. Eventually my friends found me and I felt better but they couldn't understand what the hell was going on with me. I got home safe with their help.

I thought I was over it. Stupidly I believed I'd gotten it out my system and now I was 'fixed' and could move on without giving that stupid French man any further thought. I was dead fucking wrong. Last weekend I went out again, this time brunch then a pub. I was having a great time and kept ignoring it when I felt anxious or the thought of what happened creeped back into my mind. Turns out suppressing all negative emotions is not a healthy coping mechanism. I got super overwhelmed and locked myself in the toilet for an hour. In my drunk anxious state of mind I hit my head. Once again having a panic attack alone on a night out, in a disgusting toilet, dizzy and throwing up. When my friends found me I was dragged out the bar because we had to catch the last train, I feel awful I worried them again. Halfway to the station I held one of them back and demanded I'd get us an uber because I couldn't keep running. My nerves targeted my legs and I could no longer hold back the tears. I sat on the steps of a church waiting for the uber while almost incoherently spewing out what had happened to me. I was saying something along the lines of what's the point in being alive if people will just hurt you for no reason and your words mean nothing. How could someone so blatantly ignore the word no? After sobering up and reflecting on the situation I know it's not going to just go away and I can't handle hard situations by ignoring them. I want to be able to enjoy going out again without the need of a babysitter. I'm pissed off at myself for the position I put my friends in. I'm (obviously) not great at processing my emotions and when I get overwhelmed I tend to just shut down, that's why I went off on my own those nights out. I didn't want to burden them with my problems or have anyone see me cry. But by disappearing I made the situation ten times worse and rather than hiding what was going on with me I made myself look like an idiot.   

However, I've moved past the sad stage of this. I've moved past not wanting to the world to know. Now I'm angry. I refuse to feel shame about this anymore. I always felt safe in the world, I know it sounds naive but I never felt in danger like that and it's changed my outlook on everything. My views on the world around us, on safety, on who I am as a mother and protecting my child. I'm not going to go to the police; I think that whole process is stacked against women and it's too complicated, it was a foreign country and neither of us were from there so there's nothing they could do anyway. My process to come to terms with what happened and get back to my old self is through this post. I was assaulted by a bad man but that does not define me. I am so much more than what happened to me. I'm a mother for god's sakes; I created life motherfucker.  Whenever I feel that everything is horrible and what's the point in anything I hear Tommy's wee giggle and all is right in the world again. I don't think I'll ever get over what happened, it'll always be in the back of my mind but I know now more than ever that I can survive this. I have survived worse. I thought people would blame me or downplay what happened but I've only been met with overwhelming support and love. The silver lining to this horrific situation is that I'm reminded that I have an incredible support system behind me which makes me feel so full of gratitude I could burst.

Women need to talk about these things so we can destigmatize it. Women being assaulted by men is not a woman's fault.  It has nothing to do with what we're wearing or how much we've had to drink and everything to do with predators taking advantage and preying on who they deem weak and easy targets. I am more than what happened to me, but it has made me stronger and taught me resilience. I don't want people to look at me like they feel sorry for me or see me as a victim. Maybe he thought I was so drunk I wouldn't remember or maybe he thought he could scare me into not saying anything but either way his power came from thinking I'm going to stay quiet. There are lots of words to describe Alix Crawford, quiet certainly is not one of them.