#trois nat

tw for discussion of sexual assault, rape, and suicide. please take care while reading and read to the end if you can <3

natalie as a character in killersnarl is important to me. it’s important to me how she’s seen, how she’s interpreted, because she represents a facet of myself. i need people to understand how natalie was not a fighter, she was not heroic, she was not aggressive, she was not violent. we may not know much about her or her narrative importance yet, but i do want you all to know this. natalie liked to lay down and die, that’s very important. it’s important to me because it encompasses my experience with coping with sexual assault, something that’s plagued her life how it does mine. i was sexually assaulted november and december of 2022 by someone who i thought loved me. if you didn’t know, which many of you don’t, natalie is a survivor of assault, and that’s a leading character aspect for her and why she behaves the way she does. i wanted to reveal these things about her poetically and vaguely like i do with every other character, but it never really wants to come out right. i feel like there’s never really a correct way to write a survivor, if they’re combative and aggressive you’re doing it wrong, if they’re reclusive and compliant you’re doing it wrong too. while neither of these are actually wrong, i never really see any depth attributed to these experiences. it’s a unique feeling, a very unique one that you will not understand until you’ve experienced it yourself. it’s not something you can feel through pure empathy, the tumultuous emotions and responses to what happened. natalie describes how i reacted to mine, the feelings i felt, and how i navigated life.

natalie lost her sense of self. she was stripped of her identity and personality and all the things she felt made her a person. when you see her, she’s always wearing this far away look on her face and her eyes are glazed over. she doesn’t express much emotion, or interest, or hobbies. natalie never says no but she never says yes either, she lets other people carry her throughout her life and decide what happens to her because she doesn’t feel like she has much of a say anymore. she doesn’t put much care into her appearance and she’s always dirty and her hair is always tangled. she lives in squalor because there’s no difference between clean and dirty to her anymore.

it’s important to remember sexual assault survivors can still make lives for themselves, they can still be happy, they can still heal and move through the world with all their hopes and dreams. i’m doing better now too, but i feel like it’s easy to forget the people that hope and pride don’t come easily to, the people who are tired, the people who might just want to lay down for years and years under a warm blanket and just breathe. i’m never going to forget the person that my experience made me become, and i wanted to immortalize that person in natalie. even in my infinite sadness and isolation, i was a person and i deserved to have someone look at me like one. i wasn’t a fighter and i always had my head down and i was so out of it and high strung people thought i was on something, but i was still a survivor. even when all i’d do was lay in a bathtub and stare at the ceiling, when i’d hide under my covers, when all i wore was baggy clothes and i hated seeing the outline of myself, i had people who came to me and they thanked me and they told me they loved me and they told me i was the strongest person they’d ever met because i was still living despite the misery.

natalie is me when id shower with the lights off, natalie is me when i couldn’t sleep in my own room because i was so afraid, natalie is me when i couldn’t look at dirty shoes without thinking of him, natalie is me when they wanted me drug tested because of how glazed over my eyes were from the countless nights of tears, natalie is me when i hugged one of his old best friends and he told me it happened to his older sister too and i was one of the strongest people he knew just like her. i made natalie because even nearly a year later, i still can’t sleep without waking up from nightmares every single night. natalie died because she couldn’t keep living, but she was still a survivor just like the countless amount of people who lost themselves to it the same way. natalie may not reflect your experiences and she may not be accurate to you, but please know shes a reflection of my own.

a girl came to me after i talked to the police, a girl who he did the same thing to. i didn’t like her much, i wasn’t sure if she liked me either, but she came to me. i knew she was the person who found out about what happened to me and told the police, which she never did for herself. part of me was angry at her for using my experience so i could be retraumatized and she could get some sort of justice through me, but i could never stay angry. i remember during a follow up i told the police that he did the same thing to another girl, and they asked if they needed to talk to her too. and i told them no, and i didn’t give them her name, because i wasn’t going to put her through the trauma of recounting the details like me. i was going to let her live through me even though it made me angry at first, i was going to let her use my assault to get some semblance of her own justice. we had nothing in common and our personalities didn’t match up and she told me she knew she wasn’t a nice person, but i told her it was okay, and we checked up on each other despite everything. i hope some of you can also live through me like she did.

its october of 2023 right now and i have an amazing life. it was hard and i thought id never see it through, but im alive and im well. the nightmares haven't let up and i still cant look at dirty shoes or long brown hair or purple lights or football games or tall people, but above all else im still here and i will be for a very very very long time. my heart goes out to everyone whos still living despite the pain and everyone who felt like they couldn't. all i can say is i want you all to stick around with me and feel the love i feel.