The novelist and human rights campaigner JH Morgan’s life was turned upside down when she was violently assaulted as a teenager. Today, the mum-of-three has turned her life around and writes acclaimed fiction that draws upon her own traumatic experiences. In this exclusive first-person piece for Female First, she explains why victims can’t alter the past - but can change their future.
The Long Road Home
Exclusive By JH Morgan
Personal trauma is one of the few outside forces that can change a person so irreparably and so completely that you don’t recognise the life you end up with after the dust has settled. When everything you believed to be true is suddenly and without warning ripped away in an instant of violence or sexual assault, it leaves you on a foundation that’s been so badly damaged, you’re not sure if it’s still got the ability to hold you upright.
When we find ourselves teetering on the brink of personal destruction, we naturally look for coping mechanisms. Whilst the lucky few will have a strong support network, most turn to alternative means of sustenance, almost all of which can be self-destructive. This is understandable: it’s easier to take yourself out of your own thoughts than it is to deal with your new reality. For victims of personal trauma, everything ‘normal’ that came before their life-changing incident is tainted by the knowledge that they are no longer that carefree, ‘normal’ person. Whatever age a victim, from eight to eighty, those at the receiving end of violence and sexual assault lose an innocence they never knew they possessed. It is cruelly ripped away, often leaving them feeling exposed and ashamed.
It is not uncommon for victims to lash out at those around them and the world in general. There’s no question that this can help victims feel better, albeit temporarily. In the long run, however, victims need people around them. No one should have to try to come to terms with trauma on their own. I know it’s difficult to share the horror with others and that it’s easier to send it to the back of your mind, wrap it in a little box and pretend it never happened, but that box never stays truly closed. You can tape it up tight, put it in a lead-lined box and fill that box with concrete, but you will never stop those memories, those emotions from oozing out and tainting everything else in your mind. PTSD is real and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t allow the moments that changed your life define them. Get the help you need, and more, the help you deserve. By all means, do what you need to do to cope - yell and scream and shout and cry, if necessary - but don’t let what happened destroy the person you thought you were on your way to being when the unthinkable happened. It’s easy to pretend you’re okay, even when you flinch when someone touches you unexpectedly, or you don’t want to be alone one minute and can’t stand being around people the next. It’s easy to push it aside and tell people you’re a little jumpy. You can try to convince yourself of that fact as much as you like. But eventually, it will catch up to you. A fender bender could set you off, a fight, something you see on your favourite TV programme, or just maybe you’ll be getting out of your car at the shopping centre and you’ll see a face that takes you back to that moment. All of a sudden, you’re frozen in place while the memories rush over you like a torrential flood; you can smell, hear and even taste everything you had to live through.
But that’s the thing. You lived through it. You’re on the other side and while the other side might look so different to what you had expected and certainly not what you dreamed of, you’re still standing there. Your lungs are still taking in air and your heart is still pumping with purpose. Bravery isn’t hiding from your experience. It’s facing it. That’s the bravest journey you’ll ever take and probably the most painful. You don’t have to stand on the rooftops taking up the #MeToo cry and letting everyone you meet know what you went through. But you have to accept it. It sucked. It was awful, it was unfair and it never, ever should have happened. But now that it has, it’s up to you to make sure that you claw your way out of the self-destruction, depression, shame and anger and find a life worth living. Being a victim isn’t up to you, but becoming a survivor is. But more than surviving find purpose in your life is up to you. You don’t have to become an activist or cure cancer, but look for a new song to listen to that makes your heart skip a beat, go out with friends who still love you and watch their faces light up with laughter at something you say. You are loved and appreciated, you deserve to be, so don’t let that trauma take that away from you. You have a right to enjoy your life, you have a right to go to bed thinking you had a pretty good day. And it’s okay when some nights you go to bed and need to cry yourself to sleep, so long as you remember that you get another chance to have a better day tomorrow.
JH Morgan, a mother-of-three, lives in Swaziland. Her latest novel, The Long Road Home, a work of contemporary women’s fiction, provides an honest and unflinching representation of what being a survivor of trauma really feels like. It draws on her own life experiences, which include a horrific attack when she was just 14. The Long Road Home by JH Morgan is out now on Amazon UK priced £14.16 as a paperback and £4.74 as an eBook. Further information about JH Morgan can be found on her website, HERE