Content Warning: This entry contains references to sexual assault. I would like to clarify that while I am referring to sexual assault, what happened to me was not rape. However, I choose to still use the term “sexual assault” because it is the legal definition of what happened. It was important to my healing to learn and accept that what happened to me was serious and by legal definition, sexual assault. I don't want the term I use to seem misleading; however, at the same time, I want the audience to understand that sexual assault has a wide definition and leaves a lasting impact in all of its forms. Thank you.

Whole

July 12, 2020

I’m standing with Kristen in front of her house late on Saturday night. The air is warm and muggy, the mosquitos out in force, and the stars bright overhead. It’s been a long day of flea market shopping, movie watching, and pizza eating. We’ve just loaded my score of the day - an antique desk chair - into my car and we’re saying our goodbyes. The leaving process takes like twenty minutes because I enjoy her company and am reluctant to say goodbye.

I’m feeling content in a way I haven’t before. This evening I told Kristen about the latest trauma that I’ve remembered and she responds in the best way, as she always does. And as I’m reflecting on the day and a thought weaves its way in my mind, “can I be whole?” It’s not asked in despair or despondence, but in hope.

In my twenty-five years on this earth, I’ve accumulated a vast and diverse set of traumatic life experiences. At two years old I was sexually assaulted by another child. At three years old my uncle was brutally murdered. At eight years old I had my first migraine. At thirteen years old my house was destroyed by a tornado while we were home. At sixteen years old I was sexually assaulted in public by an adult man I didn’t know. At seventeen years old I had my first court date on the assault. At eighteen years old I had my second court date on the assault. At nineteen years old I had my emergency brain surgery and my chemical meningitis. At twenty years old I had my first right rib removed. At twenty years old my legs stopped working and I was diagnosed with pernicious anemia. At twenty-one years old I passed out on my own and was diagnosed with hyperventilation-induced syncope. At twenty-one years old I was sexually assaulted a third time by someone I was interested in. At twenty-three years old I was diagnosed with an adrenal tumor. At twenty-five years old I learned of that first assault.  

I think that’s a lot.  

Two years ago I was having panic attacks. After months of that and after months of my attempts to cope kept failing, I called a counselor.

I was sitting in a tiny house Airbnb in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania when I pulled the folded piece of paper from my purse and smoothed the creases out with my hands. I was volunteering with my church’s resources team when I saw the slips of paper with DC Christian counselors and their contact information. I swiped one as I was unpacking the boxes one morning and when no one was looking. I didn’t want to ask for one outright because I didn’t want anyone to know how deeply hurting I was. Weeks later, after carrying around the slip of paper for too long, I grab my phone. The third name down on the paper sticks out to me, and I start to dial. After it rings a few times, my call is answered. I explain briefly why I’m calling and ask if she’s accepting new patients. After a pause, Anna says she is accepting new patients and that if I send her an email she’ll reply with her new client paperwork, that she normally would ask a few more things, but that she doesn’t usually answer the phone on Wednesdays and she’s not in her office, so I’ll get it in email or at the first appointment. We set a time and date and hang up the phone. I’m nervous, but I feel like for the first time in a while, I’m taking a right step.

It’s been a hard two years since that phone call. The intangible and deeply emotional work of processing through past trauma, of processing unfelt emotions is immensely difficult. It’s easier to ignore it.

I did ignore it, for a long time. I tried to be perfect to compensate for a self-perception of damage. I spent so much time striving to control myself and everything around me to prevent another assault or illness or tornado from happening again. I made a lot of future plans and expectations to try to outrun the past.

But as I’m standing here talking with Kristen, I see all of those moments order themselves in my life, I feel my heartbeat, and I ask myself, “am I whole?” 

I ask Kristen.

She gives me a hug and says, “of course.” 

My mom has a hope chest. It was given to her by her father when she was a teenager. It’s always been part of our home and it holds the most special things from my mom’s past, from our family’s past. Every now and then she’ll have something happen that reminds her of an item in the hope chest. She’ll walk to the chest, open it up, sift through its contents, find the item she’s thinking of, and share the story or significance with one or all of us. Sometimes it’s a joyful memory, sometimes it’s a painful one. It’s always handled with care and spoken of in love.

I don’t have a physical hope chest, but my soul holds a hope chest of its own. As I look back on every assault, every illness, every trauma, I gently lay them down in my own hope chest with care. I feel them, one-by-one, heartbeat-by-heartbeat settling into place in the hope chest of my history. A place where they can rest, where they’ve been healed.

I don’t feel defined by any one of them or any of them at all. I don’t feel my identity comes from one type of trauma. I’m not the woman who was assaulted three times or the woman who had two major surgeries and five diagnoses or the woman whose uncle was murdered or the woman whose house was destroyed by a tornado. I’m Madison Darling, the woman who loves God and is loved by God.

I’m me.

I have no damage to compensate for.

I have no past to outrun.

I have nothing to control.

I can lay it all down.

As I’m driving home, feeling the weight drop off me with every mile, with hope I think to myself, “I am whole.” 

It’s a beautiful, freeing realization. I had felt intact after placing a lot of my medical trauma in the context of my larger story, but I’d never gone past my medical concerns. I’d never looked at all of these areas as one life, as my life.

I do think it will take time for this to permeate every area of my life, for twenty-five years of habits built on a response to trauma or an effort to control trauma to be broken and healthy, new habits to form. I do think that there are more parts of healing to occur. As I move into different phases of life, marriage, family, career, and so on, there will be unexplored aspects of the trauma that could only be addressed when I was exposed to different conditions or a new experience. And there will be times I open up the hope chest to share with someone about an item that’s in there. There will be times that something reminds me of an item in the hope chest and I open it back up to revisit that moment in time. There will be more items to be added to the hope chest in the future.

But I’ve got a start.

When I got home, as I was looking at my to-do list and thinking about how nothing was crossed off today, panic started to grip me as I thought, “I’m running out of time,” And I stopped, let my heartbeat remind me I’m alive and let God remind me of who I am, and said to myself, “yeah, you are running out of time. It’s okay.” 

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