A year ago today, I was living in absolute bliss — of the ignorant sort, of course. I was dating a boy I was sure would be putting a ring on my finger before finishing college. I was having the time of my life with my high school best friends before shipping off to college a whole 35 miles away. And, most importantly, I was in absolute denial about a total invasion of my body, dignity and humanity.

As of today? I’m sure you guessed my not-so-adorable naive views of my high school sweetheart were cut quite short (less than two months into the school year). I maintained some of my friendships, but most of them turned into distant memories and once-a-month hugs resulting from grocery store run-ins. One good thing — the word "good" is used very loosely — that has changed is I was able to get over my totally screwed self-victim blaming and come out with the truth of my rape. Not that it really got me much.

Actually, here’s exactly what it got me at the time:

1. The Facebook Status "Single."
2. A lot of people I viewed as my friends who used my pain as a source of classroom gossip to buzz on about whether I was telling the truth or not.
3. A lot of awkward conversations over texts or calls because I didn’t have the heart to look into the eyes of the people closest to me while telling them what I was too afraid to tell them months before.
4. Guilt. A lot of guilt.
5. A double dose of meds, a bi-weekly meeting with a new therapist, a Title IX Case that frustrated the school's employees more than it helped me, and 10 pounds easily shed off.

BUT...and, yes, there it is, the big, black, bold "but"… I could not be more thankful that I opened up.

Last summer, I shed off my good-girl theater kid exterior and opened myself to a new world. I spent Saturday nights gripped to my Malibu bottle as if it defined me. I watched Pennsatucky's rape scene in "Orange Is The New Black" with my boyfriend, crying into his shoulder muttering comments like “I can’t imagine,” “I don’t know what I would do if that was me,” “Poor girl.” Those summer days I thought could not go any slower turned into ones spent at my new home. It wasn’t exactly what I had expected. Who knew the first few months of college could be so horrible? Not me. I was expecting the time of my life and I received a horrid wake-up call.

Those first weeks were spent with fights (lot and lots and lots of fights) with the one person I had put everyone aside for. Spent with questioning and reflection and a full flesh unburial of some baggage I could no longer keep to myself. Spent losing consciousness and waiting hours in the ER pretending that my day problems didn’t exist. Well, they definitely did exist and they were consuming me to a breaking point. So, I came clean. I started to tell a few trusted souls — my mom, my then-boyfriend, and his sister — about what had happened. Then the relief I was expecting to feel wash over me like a cool dip in a chlorine puddle on the first day of summer was nothing but a tear drop on a parking garage barricade of concrete. After the breakup, I was a mess. Not a usual Elle Woods month-long sob fest, throwing chocolates at the TV and missing my manicure appointment kind of mess.

No, my rehabilitation from my little truth-telling and heartbreaking made last summer's Malibu bottle look like a freaking glass of granny’s lemonade. I kissed boys at parties like I was shaking their hands, I stepped outside my comfort zone, I got plastered drunk that weekend and I thought I was never going to look back. I dated a couple other guys, lived the college experience: indulged in the frat boy trash punch, stayed out 'til 4 a.m., skipped class, made a mistake, or two, or 10. But, damn, I felt good. Those boys I flirted with, that older guy I dated for a couple of months who called me his girlfriend to no one else but me, that friend I kissed when I was bored, none of them could hurt me. I was invincible. I was in college, I had been through hell, skipped the grieving process, and was on over 150 combined milligrams of anti-depressants: I was being safe and still having so much fun — I was totally fine.

Winter break was hard — being home, spending Christmas without a boyfriend, realizing just how much my friendships at home had changed, not being able to just go drink a glass of wine and watch a cheesy illegally downloaded movie at my friend’s apartment if it was a hard day. But, I was still fine. I was good. I’d be in my dorm soon, I’d be going to frat rush parties, and I’d be able to look in the mirror and not hate myself again.

The second semester came and it went. I was sexually assaulted again. Attempted rape. Right outside my dorm. My safe haven became a new hunting ground. This time was the only kind of assault America likes to believe happens: random, behind a dumpster, drunk gross guy I would never usually talk to. Yet it was my second perpetrator — the previous being to a suburban pretty boy I was dating. Of course, it was finals week. My anxiety was no longer controlled by the medicated dopamine and serotonin a pill was supposed to provide me with. My life flipped upside down. I failed three of my finals due to not being able to concentrate, anxiety attacks (one so bad I had to leave the testing facility), and a variety of other PTSD symptoms. I filed a complaint with the University Police Department, which was never recorded. The school and the students were never notified and I was never followed up with. I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my school, law enforcement, my brain, humanity, God, myself, everything and everyone that surrounded me. I didn’t want to talk about it. I said nothing. I said I was struggling but nobody needed to know what happened — I was embarrassed. Isn’t that disgusting? Two-time victim, survivor, and I was the one who was embarrassed? For what? Having an asthma attack and going outside to breathe? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Being a freaking human being who was defiled and tossed aside a dorm dumpster like scraps that flew out of its trash bag?

Both of my perpetrators are students at the same school as me and there is nothing to be done about it that won't be a lost cause and only bring more pain.

So I wake up every morning, wipe off that disgusting layer of post-traumatic shame off my skin and take on the day. And no, it isn’t easy. And yes, I cry a lot. I curse at the sky. I get angry. I throw internal fits. But the thing is none of this was my fault. It is not my job to feel like an animal, like filth, it’s theirs. Instead, it is my duty to no one else but myself, to not “get over it” or “move on” like everyone loves to advise, but to grow from the s**t God left at my doorstep. To take my baggage every day with a grain of salt and do my best to prevail. To not let my trauma become my life. To not throw myself a pity party but to not ignore everything that has happened to me, changed me, scarred me. To survive.

Surviving. That’s the key.