ameliasurvives-blog

[ameliasurvives-blog]

Today is ONE YEAR since I buzzed my hair!!! 💙💚 After having my hair short for over two years, and dying it all sorts of fun colors (the last of which being blue & green mermaid hair -- as you can see from the little sheen on my buzz) I was bored, my hair was damaged, and I was ready for some kind of change... 💙💚 So I grew out about a half-inch of natural colored roots, and then BUZZ BUZZ! Cut it all off! And then started growing out an entirely fresh head of hair. 💙💚 Buzzing off all my hair was scary. My hair has always been really important to me, and I was frightened of not having the femininity, or being able to hide behind my hair. But I'm so glad I went for it, and growing it out so far has been such a fun journey. Now I'm at a chin length bob and so excited to see where the next year takes me! 💙💚 Amelia . . . #bodyposi #bodypositive #bodypositivity #bopo #bopowarrior #boporevolution #recovery #bodylove #bodypositivepower #confidence #strongnotskinny #radicalbodylove #selflove #radicalselflove #selflovewarrior #edrecovery #edwarrior #losehatenotweight #effyourbodystandards #riotsnotdiets #selfcare #allbodiesaregoodbodies #everybodyisbeautiful #embracethesquish #lgbtq #buzzcut #haircut #growingouthair #hairtransformation #bob #throwback

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I am officially DONE with finals for the year! Yay! (Even though I'll still be working full time all summer...) 🌞📚🌼 Good luck to everyone still finishing finals, and congratulations to everyone already finished or even graduating! 🌞📚🌼 BELIEVE in yourself, trust your instincts, and rock it!!! 🌞📚🌼 Amelia . . . #bodyposi #bodypositive #bodypositivity #bopo #bopowarrior #boporevolution #recovery #bodylove #bodypositivepower #confidence #strongnotskinny #radicalbodylove #selflove #radicalselflove #selflovewarrior #edrecovery #edwarrior #losehatenotweight #effyourbodystandards #riotsnotdiets #selfcare #allbodiesaregoodbodies #everybodyisbeautiful #embracethesquish #lgbtq #school #college #finals #finalexams #graduation

[ameliasurvives-blog]

When I first saw this picture from the river the other day, I thought "unflattering." 🌊☉🌊☉🌊 My thighs look so wide. My hips aren't turned to a flattering angle. My chin looks soft, with a little double chin peeking out. My arms aren't posed. My legs look short. My ankles look wide. My face is all scrunched up and I'm not even looking at the camera. 🌊☉🌊☉🌊 But then, I realized how REAL this picture is. I'm laughing, freely, without pretending or "editing myself." I'm not posing or trying at all to look a certain way for the camera. I'm just laughing, smiling, being. Enjoying the coolness of the river rocks under my feet on a hot day, and the beautiful sight of the water, and the wonderful people I was spending time with. 🌊☉🌊☉🌊 Something I've struggled with a LOT is having a realistic perspective of myself. As I've gained weight throughout the course of my recovery, my perception of myself has been put through the wringer. How big am I? Or am I just bigger than before? When I go shopping for new clothes now, I have NO idea what sizes to look for (and the conversation about sizing being completely arbitrary and unrealistic is an important & related one, but I literally didn't even have a reference point to go off of). When I finally bought myself some new clothes for this summer -- for the first time in like, 2 years -- I googled size charts for the stores I was going to visit beforehand. And then I took a huge range of sizes into the dressing room with me. I actually apologized to the clerk for having so many sizes, but explained that I just didn't know what size I wear anymore. 🌊☉🌊☉🌊 So... seeing pictures like this, is really important to me. It helps me think about the different ways that my body looks and feels, in my new skin. But it also reminds me that what's MOST important... is how I felt, emotionally. In this picture I'm laughing, peaceful, happy, carefree. Now that I look at it again, THAT's what immediately pops out to me. Not the wideness of my thighs. How adorable my smile is. 🌊☉🌊☉🌊 BE YOU. BE FREE. Enjoy the cool fresh water and the beautiful views. Embrace the love in your life. 💗 Amelia

[ameliasurvives-blog]

I didn't get any pictures actually AT Pride today, because I only got to go for the first hour or so before I had to leave for work 😝 but I did some pretty fun makeup for the occasion!!! 🌈💖🌈💖🌈💖🌈 I came out 3 years ago on the day I went to my first Pride parade. I am bi, and I am PROUD. It hasn't always been easy but today I am happier than ever to freely be myself. 🌈💖🌈💖🌈💖🌈 If you're out today, I'm proud of you. If today is your first day out, I'm SO proud of you. If you can't celebrate publicly because it's not safe for you or you're not comfortable coming out yet, I am so proud of you and I am here for you. If you aren't sure exactly how you identify yet, I feel ya (I spent years "undecided" and flipping between identities and there's nothing wrong with taking the time to figure things out!) and I am proud of you. 🌈💖🌈💖🌈💖🌈 Pride is more than a celebration. Sure, it's a reminder of how far we've come, BUT it's also important that Pride serves as a reality check of how far we still have to go. Do not forget those who face criminal charges, the death penalty, abuse, corrective rape, bullying, discrimination, hate crimes, and all kinds of heartache and pain, for being who they are. 🌈💖🌈💖🌈💖🌈 I'm here. I'm queer. I'm not going away and I won't be silent about it! BE YOU. Love yourself, whoever you are and whoever/however you love. 🌈💖🌈💖🌈💖🌈 . . . #bodyposi #bodypositive #bodypositivity #bopo #bopowarrior #boporevolution #recovery #bodylove #bodypositivepower #confidence #strongnotskinny #radicalbodylove #selflove #radicalselflove #selflovewarrior #pride #pridemonth #queer #bisexual #pride2017 #pride🌈 #bipride #bisexualpride #queerlove #loveislove

[ameliasurvives-blog]

Brock Turner was released over three months ago. Had he served his entire sentence, he would have gotten out around the beginning of this month. And no, that would not have been enough. Not nearly enough.

If the Commission on Judicial Performance will not hold Judge Persky to higher standards, we must. Continue to make his name synonymous with misogynist, rape apologist. Do not ever make excuses for him. Brock Turner is a rapist. Light sentences and no sentences for the small percentage of rapists that make it to a prosecution cannot be tolerated any longer.

[ameliasurvives-blog]

December 11, 2016.

It’s been one year today since I finished my last final and left WWU, and on the 18th it’ll be a year since I moved away. It wasn’t an easy decision, but moving made me safer and prevented me from encountering my rapists wherever I went. Taking care of myself had to be more important than proving a point by staying.

A few days before moving, I wrote this in my journal about the conflicting feelings I had:

“… i didn’t want to feel like i was being driven out of this place/house/school/town, but maybe that’s the only way.

otherwise i’ll be driven out of this place/body/mind.

leaving doesn’t feel like a victory.

but staying feels like burning alive, slow and panicky.

…

Yes, leaving is the right choice. because obviously staying isn’t.

but i will never be able to say i was stronger, i overcame, i took back my campus.

When survivors are praised for those victories, i’m always going to look away.

i feel weak.

I was already the outspoken, tough, surviving, fighting for this cause, well aware of realities. So how did this happen to me?

And since it did, how am i not the one to respond with strength and staying?

…i can’t, though.”

I felt like I wasn’t allowed to speak out about being assaulted because I wasn’t doing everything to be the “perfect survivor” who stays and fights. After agonizing over the choice, and then initially feeling relieved and celebratory that I was finally going to escape, the sudden waves of shame surprised me. I’m so glad that I got through/over that shame. I’m so proud that I decided to start speaking out more, as I wanted to.

I journaled about a month after moving away:

“I just have this image in my head that in two or five or twenty years, word’s going to get out ... And I’ll see my own story somewhere, attributed to Anonymous.”

That is in reference to the fact that I spoke with the Title IX investigators anonymously. I wasn’t ready to claim my own story then, but I am now. Aside from that alone, I’m different and better now in ways that I think are obvious compared to one year ago. I hope they’re obvious. Perhaps most importantly, I am continuing to change.

No, leaving didn’t feel like a victory.

Living does.

[ameliasurvives-blog]

An open letter to Stanford survivor Emily Doe

Dear Emily Doe,

I want to thank you, so much, for all of your strength and courage. I want to thank you for the follow-up statement that you have released. You are showing the world that you are more than just one letter, one event. As you write, “victims are not … some fragile, sorrowful aftermath.” We are each so much more than what has happened to us.

You mention a feeling, the morning after the sentencing and right after your statement was published. Just wanting to sleep, feeling “exposed and vulnerable again.” I remember feeling similarly after I shared my story semi-publicly for the first time, and that was only on my personal Facebook page. There are pages in my journals from this summer that are covered in watercolors of quotes from your statement, because those were the words that made me feel like I could be strong too, those were the words that made me feel angry and believed and not alone and like going on was worth it. I’m thinking about how deeply your statement resonated with me, so very deeply, and how it must have resonated just as deeply with hundreds, thousands of people around the world.

You may be well known (albeit as an anonymous figure) for this, but I want to reiterate that you are more than this alone. While we go on about our own individual lives, you keep living. Just like every other survivor, whether no one knows or only the closest loved ones know or the whole town knows or the whole world knows--we keep living, just trucking along through each day, some worse than others, some more heavily fogged over with bad memories than others. That part of the story is not often at the forefront of the news, but it’s so incredibly important. I want to thank you for reminding everyone of not only what you live with, but how much MORE you are. I don’t know much about you, but I know that you are amazing, thoughtful, and articulate. I know that you are SO MUCH MORE than “unconscious intoxicated woman.” I know that your words stay with me, and that I have absorbed light from your words, your strength. I know that the fact that someone saved you makes me believe in goodness again, because no one ever saved me.

Thank you, Emily Doe.

[ameliasurvives-blog]

This is what survival sometimes looks like. 

[ameliasurvives-blog]

public post.

Below the line is the statement that I posted to Facebook on September 2, 2016. Before this most of my friends and family didn’t know. Responses so far have all been positive and supportive, so I’m starting this blog to have a place to put all of my other related ramblings and writings. Here’s the beginning. 

I have something to say. I’m speaking out because I want you to know why issues I’ve been posting about a lot recently hit so close to home. Because in a situation like this, anger can be one of the most useful tools, and right now it’s what I have to work with. Because silence is accomplishing nothing.

I’ve been saying for months that the reason I left Western Washington University was because of the academics, a lack of the specific program I needed, and so on. Those reasons did play a part, but that’s not the whole story. The main reason I left is that I was raped. It happened in March 2015, two days before the end of my first quarter at Western. The perpetrators were two students.

It ruined me. I couldn’t function. I didn’t call the police or report it, as a knee-jerk fear reaction. I was ashamed, felt stupid, felt used. I didn’t have good reason to trust that the police or university would do much to help, based on the consistent and widespread public failure to properly handle assault cases. After about two weeks, I got in contact with the on-campus sexual assault resources office, which consisted of one employee. Her compassion, amazing personality, and skills as a psychologist helped me hold it together through the rest of my time at WWU. Without her, I don’t know what I would have done. Still, the other administration that I dealt with was unkind and uncaring. I began the process of filing a report with the university--the kind that wouldn’t get the police involved, but could obtain an on-campus restraining order and other potential consequences. The decisions on these reports are made by a singular person, the Assistant Dean of Students. I met with him to begin my report and ask some questions. However, in our meeting, he behaved very rudely and insensitively, and strongly discouraged me with insinuations that my case would be dismissed with no consequences for the perpetrators or protections for myself. He presented himself as having made up his mind already, without ever reading my full written testimony of the events, and I had no confidence in his moral capacity to preside with sole authority over my case. Due to his behavior and my fears for my safety being compromised in the process, I never completed the filing of my report.

Instead, I suffered through two more quarters in which I encountered my rapists on campus, took more than one emergency leave of absence, and tried to heal. I met regularly with the sexual assault resources coordinator. I joined the therapy group that she ran for survivors. I tried to pursue individual therapy through the campus counseling center, but that was an absolute joke: they let me come in for a few weeks, then told me to find somewhere else to go. I retreated. I became suicidal. My grades took a nosedive. I skipped class most days to stay locked in my room, not eating, taking depression-induced naps, alternating between skipping my antidepressant meds or taking three in a day plus a handful of ibuprofen. I lost weight, cried constantly, became sick often, and still tried to maintain a perfect image. Because I didn’t know how to talk about this. I had no tools to talk about or deal with it.

The entire ordeal was an absolutely devastating experience which actively resulted in relentless stress and was eventually the primary reason I left. As a survivor, you can keep fighting and working your way up the chain of authority, trying to find someone who will take action, and you can keep coming back every day and re-traumatizing yourself, but it’s at a huge, immeasurable personal cost. Trying to fight through for the sake of fighting through is very important for some people, and I have great respect for that endeavor, because obviously I couldn't do it, but for me, it just wasn’t worth it. The academics had not been a stellar experience, and I never felt very connected with the student body; why would I fight so hard for absolutely nothing?

At that time, Western was already under investigation for Title IX civil rights violations (this had been set in motion before I even arrived at the school, I believe). When federal investigators came to the campus in November 2015, I met with them and shared my story. My story is a part of a federal investigation, which is still a little surreal to me. A major part of my reasoning behind sharing my story so openly is due to the long history of sexual assault victims being intimidated into silence, and it's not getting any better. The original perpetrators are the attackers, but by upholding and allowing such violence, the police and universities act as accessories. I’m speaking out because when I mentioned this idea to friends who are also survivors, they responded by saying that they wished more people spoke out like this, because it opens up discussion and invites action.

So it threw my whole world off course. So I am no longer where I ever imagined I’d be. So I feel the damage every day. I am moving forward. But while part of moving forward means learning to live and take care of myself on a daily basis without falling apart, another part of it is refusing to forget or forgive, refusing to stay silent. Never forgetting is not something that I get a choice in. I still have nightmares. I am brimming over with PTSD symptoms. My brain will be incapable of forgetting as long as I live. But never forgiving is my choice. My anger brings me strength. My bitterness makes me smile. Because I know it drives me to demand safety, punishment, accountability. Because it turns me from someone petrified with fear, to someone that they should be afraid of.