Aún aquí: La historia de Gracie

I don’t know how I got here. And I don’t know if I will ever understand why things like this happen to people.

In July 2023, my life changed forever. It was the night my room was broken into by a stranger. The night I thought I was going to die.

The next day was a blur of flashing blue and red lights. I watched tears roll down my face in the reflection of the cameras clipped to police officers’ chests. I sat with my mother and father and told them the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

If I knew then what I know now, I don’t know if I would still be here. The worst was yet to come.

I moved home from my college house. I took my first shower a week later because I would scream when anything touched my body. Eating and drinking felt like impossible tasks because my body could not leave its state of panic.

In September, I got the call that my attacker had been found. In December, I got the call from my lead detective that they had enough evidence to raise the charges to felony-level rape and burglary charges.

That is when my investigation started.

Now, I want you to imagine something. You are a senior in college, getting ready to graduate. Everyone at your school knows the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Your detective is calling people in for interviews to gather details about what happened that night. You are in upper-division classes, going to therapy twice a week, going to court once a week, and trying to be a friend, a sister, and a girlfriend.

These memories weren’t cheap. They cost me my will to live.

The days had gotten so dark. The memory was so painful that I didn’t think I could make it to the next day. I would lie in bed and pray that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. Because I had met the devil, I knew there had to be a God somewhere out there listening to me.

In June 2024, I graduated from college. My trial was set for July. Two weeks before it began, I attended a hearing. As I sat on Zoom with my parents and my sorority sisters by my side, I received the news that broke me all over again.

The judge decided to release my attacker to house arrest for the two weeks leading up to my trial.

Within 24 hours, he cut off his ankle monitor.

I am writing this in May 2026, and he has not been located.

I know what you are thinking: how did that story just keep getting worse? I ask myself that every day.

I was living in constant fear and pain. I was left to pick up the pieces of a soul I did not crush. I wanted so badly to feel anything: sadness, anger, fear, literally anything. But I couldn’t. I had been living in a state of panic and pain for so long that my body stopped feeling altogether.

The night I awoke to a stranger in my bedroom, I thought I was going to die. Sitting in front of a judge who released my attacker to house arrest, I thought I was going to die. Lying in bed at night having panic attacks, I thought I was going to die. Smiling through the pain and telling people “I am fine!”, I thought I was going to die.

But my story is not about the bad things that happened to me. It is about my second chance at life.

In October 2024, I knew something had to change or I wasn’t going to be around much longer. I started seeing a new therapist, which is terrifying for people who have gone through significant trauma at such a young age. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, depression, and anxiety. My life felt unmanageable and uncontrollable.

Therapy was not a quick fix. It was intensive, exhausting, and at times, unbearable. I had to sit in rooms and say things out loud that I had spent months trying to survive by forgetting. I had to revisit the darkest parts of my life, untangle the fear from the truth, and learn how to live in a body that no longer felt safe. Healing was not graceful. It was long, emotional, and deeply painful. But I did the work. I kept showing up, even when every part of me wanted to disappear. And slowly, I began to understand that surviving was not the end of my story. It was the beginning of learning how to live again.

To this day, I work to manage hypervigilance, intrusive memories, insomnia, panic attacks, dissociation, and emotional distress triggered by certain events and environments. These are things I will likely have to manage for the rest of my life. But today, I have a will to live. I have a reason to keep going.

I was miserable for so long because of something that was out of my control. Something that should never have happened.

Through the help of my amazing therapist, my parents, my siblings, my friends, traveling, and reconnecting with spirituality, this wound started to heal. I decided I was no longer going to allow delay to live in my timeline. People need to hear my message. Every moment I wait, I am betraying my destiny.

You deserve to be here, even when it hurts.

The thing about being numb for so long is that you find peace in feeling hard emotions. The ability to feel is beautiful: anger, sadness, grief, hope, love. Life is short, and every day is a gift. I carry grief and sorrow in my bones with every passing day, but getting through hard things makes you gentle to the ways of the world.

Life is worth living despite the never-ending cycle of starting over.

My assault did not take my life, but it did take the person I used to be. Carefree, brave, courageous, independent, trusting — these are things I have to work for now, rather than things that flow naturally. But for everything I have lost, beautiful things have filled the space.

I love deeply because I know you truly never know what somebody is going through. I seek joy every day because I know life is short. I don’t let anyone rein me in because I know I can do anything I put my mind to.

I have lived a lot of life in my 22 years. I pray nobody has to go through what I did. But unfortunately, others will. Life after sexual assault is hard, and it will always be. Many more painful things will happen during my life. But many beautiful things will happen, too.

I have found a deeper well. I stopped spending time doing things that don’t fulfill me. “I love you” is the most-used phrase in my vocabulary. There are cracks in the crystal ball, and sometimes bad things happen to really good people.

I will find myself in a courtroom again. This time, as an attorney.

I am in law school, and I absolutely love it. I am surrounded by friends and family who make me feel safe. More importantly, I feel safe with myself. I learned to love myself again. I learned to love life again.

Life is hard and painful, but it is so beautiful. Getting out of the darkness makes the colors of the world so much brighter. I wake up every day seeking joy. I didn’t deserve the bad things that happened to me. You didn’t deserve the bad things that happened to you. We are still here. Life is worth living.