My life was destroyed when i got raped. I dont know how to move on. Please, i think u are the only one who will give me an honest awnser on what i should do. I know all the normal ones, "say something" "report it", but what should i do, what should i think, in my head?

I want to tell you something first: I’m sorry. I am truly so sorry that you were raped. No one, no one fucking ever, deserves that.

I don’t want to tell you all the normal things. I don’t want to tell you that it will take time, or that awful things happen to the best of us. I want to tell you, instead:

Imagine what happened to you is an abandoned house.

I want you to take a match and some gasoline, light the match, and burn that goddamn house to the ground.

I want you to know that this will never define you. Ever. If there were a dictionary somewhere in the world, and you were one of the entries, I would want you to rip the part of the entry that described your rape out and tear it to pieces. Cut it to shreds with a pair of scissors. You are not what happened to you.

I want you think to yourself: I am not less. I am more.

And so it goes.

I want you to be able to walk down a street by yourself at night without being terrified. I want you to be able to turn a corner and not worry about who’s standing behind it.

I want you to loosen the chains that hold you to the earth, and pull them out of the ground like so many weeds.

But most importantly, I want you to look back, years later, and think I made it.