It’s Over. At Least That’s What Everyone Keeps Telling Me.

“It’s over.”

At least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.

On April 30th, my attacker was sentenced to prison.

The legal process was over. The hearings were over. The waiting was over. After years of carrying the weight of what happened to me and navigating the legal system that followed, there was finally a guilty plea, a sentence, and what most people would call justice.

For years, I had imagined that day.

I pictured relief washing over me. I imagined finally being able to put down the weight I had been carrying. I thought maybe my body would finally understand that the danger was over.

Instead, something unexpected happened.

Everyone around me seemed relieved.

Friends congratulated me. Family members celebrated. Supporters told me they were proud of me. There was a collective exhale from the people who had walked beside me through the investigation, the court hearings, the waiting, and the uncertainty.

The case was over.

Justice had been served.

There was finally an ending.

For everyone except me.

While the world moved forward, my PTSD came roaring back.

My nervous system, which had spent years preparing for the next court date, the next hearing, the next unknown, suddenly didn’t know what to do. The fight was over, but my body hadn’t gotten the message.

For an entire month, I felt worse instead of better.

I was anxious. Hypervigilant. Exhausted. Emotional. I questioned myself. I wondered why I wasn’t feeling what everyone expected me to feel.

Wasn’t this supposed to be the part where I felt free?

As difficult as the month after was, I also want to acknowledge something important.

I know how rare my outcome is.

The reality is that most survivors never receive legal justice. Many never report. Many are not believed. Many cases never make it to an arrest, let alone a conviction. According to RAINN, for every 1,000 sexual assaults, only about 25 perpetrators are ultimately sentenced to incarceration. In other words, approximately 975 out of 1,000 perpetrators will never spend a day in prison for that assault.

I carry that knowledge with me every day.

I am grateful that my case resulted in accountability. I am grateful for the investigators, advocates, prosecutors, and supporters who helped me get here. I am proud of myself for enduring a legal process that often felt overwhelming and impossible.

Both things can be true at the same time.

I can be profoundly grateful that justice was served while also grieving the ways this experience changed me.

I can be proud of what I survived while still struggling with the aftermath.

I can celebrate the fact that at least one bad guy is off the streets while honoring the reality that my healing is happening on its own timeline.

One does not cancel out the other.

Justice gave me something many survivors never receive. For that, I will always be thankful.

But healing is a different journey altogether.

What made it even more confusing was that, throughout my life, I have always turned to writing when things felt too heavy to carry alone. Writing has been one of my most reliable forms of therapy. It has helped me process grief, heartbreak, fear, uncertainty, and some of the hardest moments of my life.

But this time, the thing that had always helped me wasn’t helping.

I couldn’t write.

I couldn’t reflect.

I couldn’t sit with it.

Instead, I did everything I could to distract myself from the magnitude of what had happened. I buried myself in work, projects, television, errands, and anything else that kept me moving. For weeks, I avoided the very thoughts I thought I would finally be ready to face.

After years of surviving, fighting, preparing, and enduring, I didn’t have the emotional capacity to process the ending.

I just shut down.

One of the strange ironies is that I am finally allowed to tell my story. Something I have been waiting for years to express.

I can write about the assault. I can write about the legal process. I can write about the investigation, the court proceedings, the years of uncertainty, and everything that came with it.

But I can’t yet.

Not because I don’t want to.

Because I’m not ready.

And that’s okay.

I think we often talk about justice and healing as if they are the same thing. As if a conviction, a sentence, or a prison term automatically creates closure.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes justice is a legal outcome while healing remains its own separate journey.

Healing is not linear. There is no finish line waiting on the other side of a courtroom door. There is no moment when a judge speaks and suddenly every wound disappears.

Healing moves in its own time.

If there is one thing I want other survivors to hear, it is this:

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay if everyone around you feels relief and you don’t.

It’s okay if what helped you before isn’t helping right now.

It’s okay if your body needs more time to catch up to what your mind already knows.

It’s okay if you’re not ready to tell your story.

Take your time.

There is no rush.

The people around you may be ready to close the book. You may still be sitting with the final chapter open in your lap. Neither experience is wrong.

Healing is not a destination. It is not a finish line. It is not something we achieve because a court case ends.

Healing is a relationship with what happened to us, who we were before it happened, and who we are becoming afterward.

And sometimes the bravest thing we can do is stop trying to be okay before we actually are.

With love and solidarity,

M