As part of the counselling degree I am studying for, we were asked to write about grief and loss, either what it felt like or what it sounded like, according to us. I chose to write about how it sounded.
A piercing sound that shatters the core of me as if I were made of glass. I no longer recognise myself. I am fragmented.
I search through the shards for my reflection. I am desperate, flailing. Physical pain isn’t registering but God, the emotional pain is slicing into me like the glass slicing through my fingers.
The piercing sound has stopped but its echo lingers in my mind tormenting me. I can’t find my way back.
There is no way back.
Upon reflection, it is clear to me that I have written about the grief and loss I experienced as a result of rape.
And there is no way back. No way of restoring the sense of self I had identified with before I was raped. Like the echo of the sound that lingered, I will never not know the pain of that experience, the sound of it, but in the shattering of who I was I was awakened to the knowledge of that which cannot shatter, and with that knowledge I continued and continue on.
-Zoe Patterson
-Fighting Back
Zoe Patterson: Fighting back 