The anniversary is looming, a week today, and this has been playing on my mind more than I expected.

It has been seven years since I was first sexually assaulted.

The same year our Mark died.

Sometimes people separate those events in their minds.

I can’t.

They live in the same year. The same body. The same nervous system.

The assault fractured my sense of safety.

Mark’s death fractured my world.

He died before he could see justice for us.

That matters more than I like to admit.

Because when someone hurts you, and the person who made you feel safest in the world is suddenly gone, the ground never quite feels solid again.

People know what happened.

What they do not see is the double trauma.

The assault did not end when it was over.

Mark’s death did not pause the impact of it.

Grief and fear layered themselves on top of each other.

And justice did not move in the way I once hoped it would.

Justice systems are slow.

They are procedural.

They require patience from people whose nervous systems are anything but patient.

Waiting for updates.

Receiving unexpected contact.

Hearing that progress is being made but not yet complete.

It keeps something open.

It keeps something unfinished.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from harm followed by grief, followed by years of uncertainty.

It is not just about accountability.

It is about closure.

It is about feeling that what happened mattered enough to be acknowledged properly.

When justice feels incomplete, safety feels incomplete too.

For me, that has meant hypervigilance that still catches me off guard.

Hesitating before opening the front door.

Listening too carefully for noises outside.

Feeling my body react to official correspondence before my brain has processed the words.

Anniversaries are not just dates.

They are physical.

Sleep shifts.

Chest tightens.

Irritability rises.

Fear hums in the background without asking permission.

Seven years is a long time.

And I have told myself countless times that I should be further on.

But how do you measure progress when two life-altering events happened in the same year?

One took my safety.

One took my person.

And the process meant to deliver justice has never felt fully closed.

That unfinished feeling still sits in me.

I am not trying to fix myself anymore.

For a long time I believed healing meant the fear disappearing.

Now I understand it means living alongside it.

Grounding when my body reacts.

Staying home when my nervous system is overloaded.

Allowing small days without shame.

Accepting medication when needed.

Letting the cats anchor me back into the present.

The impact is still deep.

Still raw in places.

Still fearful.

But it is not weakness.

It is the residue of harm, loss and unfinished process colliding in the same year.

If you are still affected years later by something someone else did to you, especially if grief followed closely behind, you are not behind.

You are carrying layered trauma.

And layered trauma takes longer than people realise.

Seven years later, I am still here.

And even when justice feels incomplete, that survival still counts.

This is me.