It's funny what emotions start coming back first.  You think it would be the primal ones--anger, fear, pleasure.  But it's not.  Instead guilt, sorrow, loss.  Interspersed by euphoria that's horribly because you can't figure out why you'd be happy in life.  Is being happy pushing the pain down and trying to disassociate you wonder?  Or is it just trying to keep on living?

I'd have to say that it's just how I keep trying to live.  In an odd chain of events once I accepted this--accepted it was ok to feel again and decided to face the pain, no matter how hard it was.  Then the instinctive emotions kicked back in, things I was so afraid to express--fear, anger, sadness.  It's almost a relief to start feeling a little angry--because all of my friends were--and I wasn't--and I couldn't figure out why.  But that's what happens when we accept our true emotions.  Things get scary.

I attended a panel the other day on title IX investigations.  There were old professors and a few law students.  The saddest was to see the three young girls there--including me--who were undergraduates.  They asked questions about what to do about their own cases and investigations--because we want to do everything we can to keep ourselves safe.

I've given up on getting justice.  Justice is in God's hands.  I don't think I have the strength to see him ever again.  I cannot see the man who tried to control and ruin my life.   But I will do everything in my legal power to keep myself safe, even if it means facing him at trial.

Rape--especially rape when the assailant is known to the survivor--is not like physical assault.  Someone has shamed you, hurt the most private, intimate part of you.  Assault is about fury and anger.  Rape is about emotional abuse, making the victim feel powerless, dishonored, and used.  Taking something away from someone.

So no, I don't feel bad that I feel so scared to take the stand.  But I can and will stay safe and will fight against any retaliation that I face.