A Memory Of Rape Never Leaves You—However You Try To Forget It

July Westhale talks about her own experience of rape—an event she tried to forget for too long.

She was 17 and got drunk on wine mixed with drugs, blacked out and fell asleep with a single memory of her host (32) saying she was "a good girl". For years, she told herself that it might have been consensual, and she remembered too little to judge. She didn't want to remember.

Animals do not experience PTSD. Why? Because the moment they experience something life-threatening — the gazelle chased by the lion to near death, or the mouse narrowly escaping a naturally predatory cat — they find the nearest dark place to take solace and shake uncontrollably.

It is common for people to forget the trauma they have survived, which is too much for the human psyche. For some, it can take years before they can remember and process the traumatic event. It doesn't mean those people are not affected by trauma.

And yet, many want to reconnect with that part of them. For July, it happened in a moment—when she accidentally saw her rapist at a Pride event, holding hands with a girl many years younger than he was. It was then that she fully accepted what happened, what she has felt all along has happened—and shook, and shook.