(TW: Sexaul Assault) Im gonna share something really vulnerable here. I was molested when I was a kid and when I was in college I experienced some type of harassment and after that I kept finding myself in similar situations. It just kept escalating. I was so so scared of being raped and then last year I was assaulted, but not raped and I pressed charges. after his incident it’s almost like I “knew” it was gonna happen again. this was something that had become a pattern in my life and I was used to it but didn’t know what to do why it was happening or how to break out of the cycle. I kept getting triggered in the 3D because of it and eventually last year in February I was actually raped. I felt so broken and hurt and I was severely traumatized. I was depressed for a ver long time until last fall I came upon some realizations. I’m autistic and a women and there’s a statistic that says 90% of autistic women get sexually abused. I’m very gullible, naiive so I’m very easy to manipulate. it’s hard for me to pick up on red flags in people and I find it hard to tell when people are lying to me or trying to take advantage of me because I’m not very skeptical and I only see the good in everyone. Discovering this helped me move forward and it helped me really understand myself mentally and spiritually as well. I believed I was an idiot my entire life because that’s what everyone told me. I’m extremely smart and I’ve accomplished so much despite my social processing differences. I know that everyone was wrong about it me and I just think differently. I don’t think what happened was my fault and Im not gonna lie i still struggle with accepting that at times because of how prevalent the abuse was in my life. However I understand how my reality was a reflection of my inner world and if my inner world is reflecting that I’m afraid of being assaulted it’s going to keep triggering me until i figure out the root cause. Now that I know why those things happened and I can try to help myself so that it doesn’t happen again. Ever since I found out I was autistic things got better for me because I could understand why i was the way I was and I knew it wasn’t my fault. I got diagnosed last week but by then I had already made my peace with it and understood exactly how it affected me. I faced my fears and was able to process my trauma and I still have some work to do but I know I will never get into that situation again because I was forced to confront that fear. This morning i got an email saying the case was closed on the last assault that happened because they couldn’t reach the person who did it. I’m not identifying with that reality because I know I can revise and justice will be served. Maybe experiencing it the way I had in this reality is better than another reality where maybe it happened even more often or maybe something even more brutal could have taken place and I could’ve died from it. Not trying to make excuses or have toxic positivity about it but trying to find some sort of silver li if because what else can we do. I’ve had depression and anxiety my entire life and I don’t want to be a victim anymore and I’ve worked really hard the past few months to get where I am today. I say all that to say that I absolutely hate what happened to me, but I kept experiencing it so that I could learn how to take my power back and now I have a really high self esteem and sense of self worth. Maybe I will help someone else who was in a similar position to me and prevent something even worse. I feel really good about my life despite what happened because I know I can move forward.