I hope you don’t hear from me tonight.

Tonight, much to my surprise, I will be put in exactly the same situation I found myself in a year ago.

With “visitors” in my own home, in my space, invited by someone other than me. The person who sexually assaulted and raped me multiple times over the course of the last year is coming over and spending the evening with my family members in my pool.

I didn’t invite him, I don’t feel safe with him here, and I don’t want to participate in any way. This happened multiple times over the past year, and tonight, I am terrified. I have no safety.

Where I thought I was safe, I wasn’t. I came into my house, into my room, to escape him. I thought I was being smart…being safe. But instead, I just unintentionally trapped myself in isolation with him, and he raped me.

Last week, I got confirmation that he “felt the same way he did last year” about me. Meaning…he “wants” me…or whatever fucked up way you want to put it.

I have suffered from PTSD from years of trauma and abuse, but the events that took place last summer have scarred me deeper than anything else has. I’m afraid to wear a bathing suit, I’m afraid to be in a pool. I’m afraid to go into bathrooms. I am afraid to have sex with my husband who loves me. Its…changed everything. And tonight will be the first time I will have to see him under the exact same circumstances.

Is he going to touch me? Is he going to grab me? Rub himself on me? Try to put parts of him inside parts of me? Try to isolate me and get me alone, like he successfully has all of those other times? It makes me so sick to think about.

I never know what to do. Every time I try to get myself to safety, I end up in harms way. Do I stay inside, in my house alone, waiting for him to inevitably get to me? Do I stay outside with the group, including him, where he’s always been so bold as to assault me even in front of others? Assuming they won’t notice?

It seems like there’s no right answer, no right way.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. It might as well have been. I’m scared. I don’t want to do this, but I don’t know what I can do to really be safe in this exact situation, where my home, my safe place, clearly isn’t safe.

I don’t know exactly what my husband knows, but he does know a little bit. He said something to me just last week. “Great, now I have to go through another pool season with him and worrying.”

I hope you don’t hear from me tonight. I hope I don’t find myself writing, blogging in a panic, committing to memory what has just occurred. Validating what has happened, so I have no room to doubt myself. Last year I quickly learned that accurate documentation was the best and only way to give myself the permission to believe that it really did happen.

I hope you don’t hear from me. I am so, so afraid. And I don’t know how to be safe from him, from this.

The fawn effect is so strong and overpowering, made even stronger by my failed attempts at fighting back.

If you hear from me tonight, it means I’m in trouble.

So I really, really, hope you don’t hear from me.