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Helplessness didn’t have to be my identity, I wasn’t condemned to it. I was willing – able – to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me – and to save me – but, back in the home where I’d learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

Aspen Matis

Helplessness didn’t have to be my identity, I wasn’t condemned to it. I was willing – able – to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me – and to save me – but, back in the home where I’d learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

Aspen Matis
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A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains.
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She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.
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In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.
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I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.
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I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.
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I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.
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If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.
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