The rest of that semester seemed like one giant blur; emotionally and mentally I was long gone.
I felt so numb to the outside world, physically I went to my classes but I felt like a complete zombie. I had absolutely no desire to associate with others, learn, or be apart of society whatsoever. I just tried my best to make it through the rest of the semester, because I was so ready to be done with the setting.
I failed to mention in the last post (Part 1) that just a few short days before Jared committed suicide, I had a huge trauma response when I finally started coming out of denial about just how messed up my sex life was with him. I was sitting in my Criminal Justice class listening to the lesson, my teacher was a highly-ranked guy well-known with the police force, and had been apart of that work force for many years. The topic of the lesson that day happened to be on Rape and Sexual Abuse, and just what that consisted of. Obviously I had heard of Rape lots of times before, and I thought I was pretty well-acquainted with what it meant; but I didn't realize until that class just how far in denial I still was about things between Jared and I. I don't remember the specific definition he gave, but after the teacher started explaining just what rape consisted of and what fell into the category of rape, my heart sunk. I kept asking myself, "Kelsie, why are you freaking out about this? This didn't happen to you!" But as much as I tried to talk myself out of those thoughts, or find reasons for why or how that couldn't be the case..all of the feelings proving otherwise were still swarming full-force within me. Eventually it got to the point where eventually I couldn't discredit them any longer, and I realized I had to face reality.
All of a sudden I was angry, sad, frightened, and emotional. It was at that moment when it hit me..."Was what Jared did to me Rape?" I always knew our sex life was messed up, I felt used, manipulated, hurt, scared, etc. But yet...since that was all I had ever known, I mistakenly thought that must be normal. For the first time it sunk in; I was used, abused, and what I now knew to be considered raped. I felt so disgusting and angry, I wanted so badly to scream at Jared; "How the Hell could you do this to me???!" "Who in their right mind would do this to a person??"
For the next few days following I had so many emotions circulating through me, I was experiencing a lot of trauma and emotion and wasn't sure what to do with it. Then a few short days after that realization is when I received the news that Jared committed suicide. (I had no contact with Jared between the time frame of the two events) So adding on top of the fact that this man that I was so close to, the one person that I felt like I really let into my life, into my soul, was now dead- I was also dealing with a million emotions already in regards to the realization of what he had put me through sexually/emotionally. The combination of those two huge things sent me spiraling.
I felt like I had no support, no one to turn to, no one who understood what I was going through. I felt so alone, so rejected, and so forgotten. Nobody wanted to address what was going on with me, they just didn't want to deal with the pain and sorrow, they couldn't stand the discomfort.
About a week after Jared's suicide, as I was making my way to class I got stopped by an old classmate (the same guy who called to inform me that Jared had killed himself) At first he asked how I was doing, I didn't have much of a response other than that I was hanging in there. First I was relieved that somebody was actually checking in on me, someone actually cared a little about what I was dealing with. Then his next response proved otherwise. He said, "You're not still upset about what happened, are you??" Basically telling me that I needed to forget about it and move on, that Jared was an ass, and I should not care that he killed himself. I was completely baffled, I had no words to say, I simply walked away. Here I was dealing with so much pain, shock and emotion from everything that had enfolded the past week, and the very person that broke the news to me, was now telling me I was a complete idiot for feeling anything. The pain and shock was immense, the toll it took on my mind and body were simply indescribable.
I wanted so badly to run, to escape from what I was feeling. But at the same time, I felt like I was completely numb anyways. I'm still not even sure how to explain it, other than my mind and heart literally felt completely frozen in time. And that's the state it would continue to stay in for at least the next couple years to come.
The one good thing that did come from these events, is I made a pact with myself and with a friend that I would never take my own life. To be completely honest, I wanted to go the route of suicide very much, so much that it was completely all-encompassing. But for the sake of my friend's sanity, I made the promise. After seeing/feeling the immense pain that the suicide of a loved one had on me, I could not bear to put someone else through that same torture with my own actions. I made the decision right then and there that I would trudge on, and press forward through the pain. Even though I had no idea how to, I knew I could not give up. As badly as I wanted to escape, I could not fathom inflicting this same pain on someone I cared so dearly for. I could not bear inflicting this pain on my family, or friends. So with that; the long, painful journey of holding on by a thread began.
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