Hey everyone, it’s Frankii. For those of you who don’t know me I’m a friend of Ripley’s, and I’m also a sexual assault survivor. Ripley and I have been able to relate to each other a lot lately, but that’s no surprise, so I wanted to talk about our differences for a minute.

Coming into all of this, I was terrified. Ripley was my inspiration to come forward about my story. I had separated what happened to me from my mind for around 9 months, so having to deal with this everyday now is very hard. In the beginning, we had shared a lot of the same emotions about all of this which really helped me cope with what’s going on. And we do still share some of the same emotions generally. I do hope that my rapist finds Christ, I hope he repents, and I hope that he changes for the better. Going through this with her has showed me how strong we can both be, I never knew I had this in me to be honest.

However, we are human so we are different in our own ways. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel somewhat pressured by society to act a certain way about all of this. But, people must understand that everyone handles things differently. I’m sure some people are wondering why I was able to hide this for so long. That does not mean that it traumatized me any less. There is no “right and wrong” when it comes to emotions. And that has been hard for me to come to terms with. Because, Ripley has gotten to a point where she forgives her rapist (Please read her latest post where she elaborates more on this), and I am just not there yet. But that’s okay. I do feel a pressure, like “Should I be forgiving him?” “Should I be feeling this way?” and the answer is no. This is my experience and I will feel those emotions when I am ready. I do hope to get there one day, I do want to forgive him for what he did, but right now I just can’t. I find myself to blame sometimes, but I know I shouldn’t. Time is everything.

My main focus of this post is that just because Ripley and I have united together during this situation, does not mean we are handling things the same. But there is nothing wrong with that. Being able to forgive my rapist is something I strive to be able to accomplish one day, and knowing that Ripley has done that already just continues to prove to me how strong she truly is. She is an inspiration to me and I cannot thank her enough for that. With that being said, you should never feel like you are supposed to act a certain way when something traumatizing has happened to you. Yes, I’m getting better every day, but every single person’s mind works a different way at a different pace. And that is something I have learned along this journey. So, to every sexual assault survivor out there, we are UNITED and we stand TOGETHER, but this doesn’t make us all the same. We all have different stories, and different ways of coping with them. And that is perfectly okay.