I’m fully aware that most people reading this might have no idea that chronic illness is something I’ve struggled with. Sure, my friends might gently tease me for constantly being sick, and you might even remember times when I disappeared from school for weeks at a time growing up. I always tried to laugh it off or downplay how horrible I was feeling, because no one likes hanging out with the sick kid. I even got a crash course in “people will think you’re faking to be able to miss class” when I landed in the hospital during college, which was harder for me to brush off. It’s hard to be forgiving of yourself for your illness when no one else is.

A great quote I found recently by Toni Bernhard: “I blamed myself for not recovering from the initial viral infection–as if not regaining my health was my fault, a failure of will, somehow, or a deficit of character. This is a common reaction for people to have toward their illnesses. It’s not surprising, given that our culture tends to treat chronic illness as some kind of personal failure on the part of the afflicted–the bias is often implicit or unconscious, but it is nonetheless palpable.” We live in a society that absolutely blames the sick person for how they got there. Even doctors who care endlessly about the patient can sometimes allow their bias to seep through in their questions or comments about their condition. I can’t count the number of times when I try to explain my health difficulties to someone who responds with some sort of question about why I don’t just try harder to be better. Usually these people don’t realize how obsessive I already need to be about my schedule, my routines, and my diet on my doctor’s advice. After taking endless amounts of medication and participating in medical testing that never seems to find any answers, I’m tired. Trying to center your life around your health is hard, and makes you feel weak. It seems easier sometimes to just stop going to the doctor and hope that my body will figure out how to fix itself.

The thought of embracing my health problems has always seemed too far away. Sure, I’ll live with it and tolerate it, but I always felt that in order to embrace my problems, I would have to define myself as “sick”. I’m realizing more and more that that isn’t true at all. I’ve found since becoming an adult that there are more of us in the world who are chronically ill than I ever would have expected, and I’m not alone. Being chronically ill is not a deficit of character like I had felt it was when growing up. I’ve realized that the unspoken stigma around being chronically ill had wormed its way into my subconscious, and the way I thought about myself. I blamed myself for my symptoms, and kept pushing myself too hard despite how my body started to feel.

Even though you start to feel like you must be wrong, or you just want to give up on medical care and go home, your symptoms won’t go away. So, here I sit, writing this from a different city where I’m here to see different specialists. I gave up on my health for a couple years, and now I’m back. Maybe I’ll get some concrete answers and help, and maybe I won’t. I would normally try to end a post with some sort of happy optimism or advice, but I can’t really do that today. I don’t have the solutions. I’m also not going to be specific here about what I struggle with, because after having so much of your life be public, it’s necessary to keep some things private. I just write this in the hopes that someone will be able to relate. I hope that someone will read this and realize how important it is to validate people who are struggling. I hope that everyone reading this in good health will feel a little luckier today. And, of course, I write this hoping that it will ease my own stress. I’m a firm believer these days in not carrying more pain by yourself than you have to, and it’s important to unburden yourself every once in a while. If I know anything about chronic illness, it’s that it doesn’t go hand in hand with chronic stress. Remember to take care of yourself, everyone! Advocate for yourself within the healthcare system, and remember to listen to yourself. You deserve it.

Anger is a tough emotion for me. I’m not used to it, honestly. It makes me uncomfortable, and it doesn’t feel good. I’m sure you can relate. I saw a Mark Twain quote this week that said “anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured”. He’s a smart guy, and he was right. I knew that anger wasn’t very productive, and I didn’t have a lot of experience with it growing up.

That all changed in November 2014. Quite frankly, if I allowed myself to be angry as much as I want to be, it would eat me up inside. I even know how angry some of you are when reading about my story, because I get a lot of messages about it. I do try to stay positive. I try to remind myself that the love in my life outnumbers the bad about a million times over. But every once in a while, I see something that makes it boil over and I don’t know what to do with myself. Stupid comments about public sexual assault cases always get me. “Maybe if these stupid women wouldn’t drink and act like whores, they wouldn’t get raped!” That’s a classic. The fact that the “people also viewed” on my LinkedIn profile are always the immediate family of the guy who raped me, when the last thing I have ever wanted in life is to be connected to the people who helped to destroy two years of my life and have never shown an ounce of sympathy. Thinking about how much I used to love teaching young children, and trying to accept how impossible it is for me now. Seeing the former friends who threw me to a known rapist without warning me, and then continued to hang out with him until he went to prison, wanting to scream about how much I hate them for what happened to me. Of course, I can’t scream about it. (I could, and I have, but honestly, if someone is already being disrespectful to you, getting mad at them for it probably isn’t going to make them stop.)

The world isn’t fair. It’s not. 90% of the time, I don’t expect it to be. We’ve all been through some horrible things that we didn’t deserve. I can take a deep breath and remind myself that during most of my days, and be so so grateful for the good things I have. Every time I feel the need to vent, or to be angry about the situation I’ve been living in the last 2 and a half years, I end up telling myself that it’s not okay to be angry. I need to get over it, move on, and be the bigger person. I know that if I allowed the anger to seep out of me in inappropriate situations (interviews, everyday conversations), people would stop listening to me. They would assume I’m being irrationally emotional, and they would probably be right. Instead, I try shoving it down most of the time when it starts to rise to the surface, and eventually collapse a few days later when I’m by myself. It’s messy, but so is life I guess? We all have to deal with silencing certain emotions once we hit adulthood.

I have to say, though: completely trying to push anger away doesn’t work. Eventually, you have to deal with the frustration inside of you. Even if I only feel angry during 2% of my life, I can’t ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t happen. Emotions are here to tell us things, and this particular feeling is here to let you know that something isn’t fucking right. If I ignored my anger, I would probably still be stuck with the reputation I had a couple years ago. I would be unable to move on, trying to bury my intuition about how unjust the situation at hand at been. I’ve had to learn that it’s okay to let my anger out. Maybe not in public, but just allowing myself to get in my car and scream after a frustrating day has felt great. Writing out an angry letter at the world is also a good release. I’ve even considered taking self defense classes just so I can punch some stuff every once in a while. There are so many healthy, productive ways to let out the rage. Anger isn’t the only messy emotion that we’re all afraid to let out; sadness, grief, and jealousy all have their place in this as well. It’s much easier to deny that these feelings exist, but I’m going to advocate that we actually start acknowledging and dealing with them. Whatever is making you uncomfortable is real, and it’s better to tackle it and move on with your day than deny it until you have a meltdown.

I’m here to acknowledge today that I am not perfect. I am not some glowing, gracious rape victim who is always making the best out of a bad situation. Sometimes, I’m just pissed off about what happened to me. What matters is that I’m turning that occasional bout of rage into productivity. Nothing will cleanse your soul like taking total control of your life, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve gone from being completely closed off about what’s happening in my head, to airing all my worst memories on national TV and talking openly about how I feel about it. It’s…a weird way of coping. But honesty is good medicine for pain. I won’t suggest that you become one of those people who posts 15 Facebook statuses a day about their life problems (hey, more power to you if you are that person already), but I will recommend trying to cut some of the bullshit that you’re using to guard yourself. Be vulnerable. Be mad, be upset, be genuine every once in a while. It feels good.

This post was inspired by something that happened 2 years ago this month that was related to my rape. It was eating me up inside. I’m not ready to talk openly about it, but I finally shared the story with trusted people and was overwhelmingly grateful for the response. My challenge to you this week is to share something uncomfortable and painful with someone you trust – you can even just write it out and send it to me. I’ll listen. I want everyone to know that they don’t have to hide their pain forever.

I find it funny how people look at me these days like a model rape victim. I honestly get messages like that all the time. “You did everything right”, “I wish some of these other victims would take responsibility like you!”. These comments come from a place that means well, but are definitely misguided. The reason that I think this is funny is because I am not the “good victim”. When I think about the number of people who supported me pre-conviction and post-conviction, the difference is astronomical. The only reason I suddenly flipped over to being the “good victim” is because the guy who raped me is in prison. There’s a mugshot, and he’s a registered sex offender, so I’m a hero.

What everyone is forgetting is that I was the “bad victim”. I drank too much, there was evidence of me joking about sex and drugs on the internet, and I “didn’t act like a victim”. After it first happened, I reacted how everyone thought I should: staying in bed crying for days on end, not keeping food down, losing weight, dropping out of school. It made sense to people. But then I started drinking excessively, (somewhat) dating again, and trying to be social. That part made sense to no one. We all have this idea of how a victim of rape should react. None of it included anything that I was doing during this time. Sure, I ended every night hysterically crying and couldn’t function without a drink or a Xanax, but going out to parties? Even my therapist at the time told me that I was being irresponsible by trying to still go out and have fun.

I appreciate that so many of you see me as a “good victim” because I reported and eventually got justice. But I’m not a “good victim”, and there’s no such thing. People have reached out to me trying to defend men accused in other cases by disparaging the victim. They think it’ll get me on their side. “I totally support rape victims, but you’re a real victim and this girl isn’t. She’s still going out to parties and I even heard she hooked up with a guy I know before this happened.” These people don’t realize how huge the range of behavior is after someone has been raped. This is because anyone can be the victim of a sexual assault. There’s no such thing as a good or bad victim because any one of us could be victims, and how you react to it is totally up to you and who you are as a person. If you haven’t been a victim, you’ve simply been lucky. Every single one of us has been in situations that could have resulted in a sexual assault. The only factor that truly influences whether or not you’ll be raped is if the person you are vulnerable around decides to rape you. That’s it. It’s their fault and their fault only.

I want you to go re-read that paragraph and make sure it sinks in. I want you to think about every time that you’ve been drunk, asleep, or even just alone with another human being. I want you to remember that the only thing separating you as a non-victim is the fact that all of those people made better decisions than any of our perpetrators did. It is never, ever the victim’s responsibility.

This might sound repetitive to some of you. If so, I’m glad we’re on the same page. If you had never considered what I’m talking about before here, I don’t blame you. Our education around sexual assault isn’t great. If I could have any dream job, it would be to spend my time educating about consent and sexual assault, and I would start it much younger than we currently do. I don’t know about you guys, but my health class in high school barely touched on sexual assault during that entire unit. I remember knowing that girls I went to school with had been “raped”, or heard “I guess he doesn’t take no for an answer”. No one took any of that seriously. I knew girls who were bullied out of their school after they were raped. No one took that seriously either. I remember getting to college, knowing that most of my friends had already had sex, and thinking I had heard everything I needed to know. My friends were even laughing and making fun of the orientation leaders while they did a skit about consent. It just didn’t come early enough.

If you are a parent, or anyone who has influence with teenagers, I really encourage you to start talking about sexual assault to them. I know many people who were victims of rape or sexual assault in high school. The man who raped me was committing crimes long before he was 18, and apparently everyone knew. This isn’t the first time I had heard of a situation like that. It’s not rare, unfortunately. The best way to protect your children is to arm them with information, and the courage to step in when they see something unsafe happening to someone else. You might think they don’t know enough to be able to listen to you, but chances are, they’ve already heard about sexual assault happening to someone they know. They just might not realize what happened, depending on how they heard about it.

Most importantly, no matter how old you are, check yourself before talking about a sexual assault victim. If you’re talking about a case in the news, think to yourself “would I want a nearby survivor to hear what I’m saying about this?” I know empathy hasn’t been the biggest focus in the U.S. recently, but it’s more important now than ever. We aren’t the judge or jury, you’re right. No one should go to jail without evidence. But remember that the evidence in a rape trial often must surpass the evidence required in any other crime tenfold. If charges have been brought, or someone is even being investigated, that means ~98% of the time that there is a very real victim on the other side of it. Choose your words and reactions carefully. You don’t have any control over the legal outcome (unless you start pushing for better police investigations with your local department!), but you do have control over what kind of a world you’re making for everyone in the future. Are you going to be someone supporting victim-survivors, or tearing them down and questioning their life choices? I hope you choose the former. I hope you choose to be a part of the conversation that every survivor wants to have about how to change the world for the men and women who will be victimized in the future. We just want them to have a better experience than we did, and to create a more understanding world for everyone who will go through this after we have. We’d love to have you as an ally.

(If you have been the victim of a sexual assault or rape and are in crisis, please call 1-800-656-4673, available 24 hours a day)

I would be totally lying if I told you I wasn’t writing this post based on a particular recent incident in my life. I would also be totally lying if I told you that what I’m about to write is not drawn from a million separate experiences in my life, all with a common theme: tearing someone down who you should be supporting.

We all know the type. And quite frankly, we’ve all been the type. Scenario A: you’re a girl growing up, and another girl is making you jealous. You feel like she’s prettier than you, smarter than you, and it makes you hate yourself. She’s even drawing the attention of the boy you like. The easy, immature, go-to answer? Talk smack about her until you’ve made her feel pathetic and small. Most of us know by adulthood that this is not how to deal with insecurities. I look back with absolute shame on how I dealt with being jealous of other girls. I’m grateful for that feeling of shame, because it reminds me to keep my integrity strengthened and never stoop low like that again; yes, ages 7-19 are rough, but we shouldn’t have all made it even harder on each other like that. Bad move.

This brings me to a more recent phenomenon I’ve noticed in a new part-of-life group I’ve joined: survivors of sexual assault (I’ll add that I’m not talking about any specific group or organization of survivors here: I’ve seen this across the board). This group is a sad one to be a member of, and it’s full of men and women who have suffered through the unimaginable. I don’t blame anyone in that group for developing some bitterness, and I think that’s perfectly normal. What blows my mind is seeing that same cattiness I grew up with start to permeate my new circle, in a space that should be so filled with love and support. I won’t even bother describing the different times I’ve seen this happen; I’ve experienced it myself with a few fellow survivors, and I’ve seen it happen between others. I always cringe knowing where it’s coming from – a deep, desperately lonely emotional hole – and part of me wants to excuse the behavior.

Except, wait; I won’t do that. What I’m about to say might sound harsh, but hear me out: You cannot ever use your pain as an excuse for inflicting pain on someone else. I don’t care how low you feel; it’s not okay to climb over someone who is just as broken as you to make yourself feel better. We’ve all experienced being torn down by another human being, and we know how it feels. Now you’re going to do it to someone else? You might be reading this if you’re not a survivor of sexual assault and say that this doesn’t apply to you. But it does. We all have pain. We all have pain that no one else has been through or seen the way that we have. When you needlessly tear someone else down (whether it’s because you’re jealous, bored, or you flat-out enjoy excessive gossiping), you’re ignoring everything that that person has ever been through, just for a few seconds of personal relief. That is never, ever going to make you feel better or whole.

I don’t mean for this to sound preachy or judgmental. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there, and I’ve sunk into the easy way out – “I feel bad about my life, so I’m going to make this other person feel bad about theirs”. The fact that I’ve been cruel to people I should be supporting is exactly why I am so passionate about this. I didn’t feel my world open up until I made a conscious decision pre-college to stop being rude and petty. Sometimes it’s something as simple as seeing a coworker succeed when you haven’t been promoted yet. It takes more energy, but not allowing someone else’s triumphs to bring you down is always the better answer. On the flip side, mocking someone’s failures is also certainly not going to make you more successful. I would hope we’d all rather live in a world that’s functioning better as a whole because we help others pick themselves up when they fall.

It’s hard to figure out how to end this – do I finish up with a reminder to be a good person, or the quote from Mean Girls about how calling someone else fat doesn’t make you any skinnier? All I can do is apologize to anyone who has felt hurt by me in the past, and promise to do better in the future – because no matter what, no amount of pain any of us will go through in life will excuse hurting someone else.

(Disclaimer: this does not mean that if someone has hurt you, you have to continue being excessively kind to them. Do no harm, but take no shit. We’ll save that post for another day)

I’m used to being a workaholic. I worked full time most of my years in college, and while I was constantly sick, run-down, and miserable, at least I had a clear-cut purpose. But recently, I’ve been trying to take care of myself for once. I’m going to the chiropractor, actually scheduling appointments with specialists for my many weird chronic health problems I can’t seem to solve, and even getting a massage once a month. I also got engaged, which is definitely hyped up throughout your entire life as the-event-that-changes-everything (not that my fiancé isn’t absolutely amazing and life-changing, because he is, but we’ll save that for another post). I should feel amazing.

Instead, there’s this sense that I’m not accomplishing enough. I’ve somehow built up the expectation for myself that if I’m not absolutely killing myself working constantly and being hyper-productive, my life is being totally wasted. Maybe some of you can relate. Maybe you can’t relate, in which case, I’m jealous. I’ve always found it so difficult to open myself up to the whole light and happiness thing and just accept some self love (or even love from other people).

This has gotten me thinking a lot recently. I might not be able to fix my internal expectations for myself, or the harsh way I talk to myself, but I can try. From now on, I’m going to make a commitment to being gentle with myself. I’ve tried writing out ideas for this a million times, but it always ends up sounding like some cliché Pinterest-worthy quote that isn’t really actionable. “Love yourself endlessly.” Sure, once I figure out how that works, I’ll get right on it.

Instead, I’ve decided that every morning when I wake up (and probably every night before I go to sleep), I’m going to make a point of telling myself: “what you are doing is enough”. I won’t try to assign value to all the different things I’ve done, or constantly wonder what I could’ve done better, but instead I am going to tell myself that I am enough. This might be a totally weak move, but it’s where I’m starting out at, so I’ll be sure to let all of you know how it goes.

PS – if you’re strong on the whole self-care thing, please feel free to pass on some tips. I would greatly appreciate them and I’m sure anyone reading would too 🙂

I’ve done a lot of writing in my life, but for some reason, blogging has always felt awkward to me. I don’t really know why anyone would care what I have to say about things, and I’m such a natural rambler that separating my thoughts seems daunting at best. However, enough people who are close to me have told me how good this could feel, so I’m doing it.

Some of you know me very well, others just know of me, and some of you might not really know how you ended up reading this (hi!). I’ve included more about myself on my about me page, but I think the most helpful place to redirect people to is this article. It covers everything I don’t want to go over multiple times. I’m probably going to reference parts of this fairly often, but I just don’t have the strength or desire to write it all out myself.

Since this article came out, my already-busy life has gotten even more hectic. I’ve been really honored by the support, even though it was overwhelming at first (so overwhelming that I had to take a complete break from working and going to school). I don’t know if there’s a good way to describe what it feels like to have millions of people know all of the worst things that have happened to you. I didn’t really think that part through before deciding to share my story. It’s definitely been hard to watch everyone I went to school with as they graduate, get new jobs, start fresh careers, and be stuck feeling like my worth is tied down to this one horrible part of my life. But now that I’ve had some time to adjust to my new reality, I’ve realized that I need to do everything I can to help change our culture around sexual assault while I have the momentum to do it. It certainly wasn’t my original calling, but things happen in life that change our trajectory all the time.

With all of that said (even though I haven’t really said much yet), thanks for being here. If you ever want me to write about something specific, please just put it in the comments or send me a message. I’m probably going to expand on a lot of different topics, but I always want to be talking about what’s most helpful for other people – especially fellow survivors of sexual assault. It can be a lonely world for us, and I want to help make it feel more welcoming.