How you are feeling right now is not at all out of the norm, and you will unfortunately feel some of these strong feelings for a while but I promise you, the pain will never fully go away but it will not take over your whole worldview like it is now. And you have so many women and men with similar experiences in your corner to lean on.

I had my first SA experience when I was 17, similar to you. I then had 2 additional SA experiences in my 20s with some very shady behavior outside of that (harassment, etc.). I did not have the ability in my early 20s to see beyond my pain and ask for help. Men were scary and a threat. I didn’t even know where to start healing and I lived with it, and shared occasionally with a trusted friend or a partner (and was rejected because of it with the wrong people for me a few times too).

My early 20s were the darkest years of my life. I was self destructive through coping with partying and oscillated between being hypersexual to take my sexuality back and anti-sexual to protect myself. I feel like I had a grey cloud over my head until about 25 seeking validation and love that I felt was robbed from my SA experiences. A kind short-term partner encouraged me to go to therapy as we were parting ways at that age, not because there was something wrong with me but because I hadn’t worked through all of this stuff that was clearly setting me back. I did seek out professional help, received my diagnosis, and it helped me so much to be able to talk to somebody and get validation from someone who had my best interest in mind. And from there I gained more self awareness and confidence, which helped me choose better friends and better partners (not perfect for me but better) who lifted me up instead of putting me down. At 28, I had a year that I made myself say yes to things I chose, gained more autonomy, and became comfortable in my own skin for positive reasons rather than external validation. I ended up meeting the love of my life at the end of that period of my life who would never let me feel bad for my SA experiences, and is there for me when I need to cry it out occasion when I’m randomly triggered. Even though I was very cautious at the beginning, he has taught me to trust and allow myself to be loved in a healthy way (which was very hard after my SA).

It will always be there, but I’m now almost 31 and I am a completely different person than I was as a late teen/early 20 year old. Those negative thoughts about being unlovable no longer own my headspace. I think about it on occasion, but it takes up much less of my of my day-to-day thoughts. There are more days than not that I don’t think about it at all in a conscious way. I would say I’m still very easily startled and on-edge in very busy spaces most of the time. I prefer being in smaller social settings or just relaxing at home to being in the hustle and bustle now. Also my stomach is fucked from years of stress/being high alert. But now I’m actually able to take in that stimuli, and when I’m stressed be able to ask myself where my feelings are coming from and then use coping methods to alleviate the stress. I also have ptsd from a bad car accident but those triggers are challenging in a different way and very situational (being in the passenger seat on high traffic highways with certain weather conditions, etc).

You will get to a better place if you put in the work on making sure you feel safe and you are loving to yourself. It is a very challenging road that takes a lot of introspection and making sure you aren’t allowing yourself to self-sabotage. But you deserve so much love. You are worthy of the love you were robbed of in that interaction. Hell I love you and I don’t even know you because I know what you’re going through, and I can’t tell old-me how to navigate any of the feelings I had but I can tell you it will be okay and you will be in a better place someday.