Rape victims are doppelgangers; ghosts that haunt their victims. It spills out when you’re drunk and vulnerable, when you’re losing it.

Whenever I was weak, I felt myself being split in half. I felt myself; the strong person, constantly duelling with my other self; the rape victim.

She was wild, an animal. And as time wore on, I found myself feeling weaker more and more often.

Your brain works in layered patterns, building walls and dams and complex back alleys, humming powerlines, overpasses and aqueducts to divert you from traumas that stop you from facing the horrors of the past. These protective neural wirings can be helpful — there’s a biological purpose to memory suppression. It helps you to survive stressful periods.

But eventually these imaginary cities begin to collapse.

I have always considered myself tough, street smart, self-assured and verbally powerful. I came from a family of lawyers and writers and thinkers who taught me that I could communicate my way through any obstacle. I understood and hated rape culture, and I stood beside all victims from a young age.

Victimisation was not part of my narrative, my personality. So I also held a secret and toxic belief that “being raped” is something that could never happen to me.

My time with my rapist was intimate; that is painful to admit. I became obsessed with “not holding onto toxicity” and blamed myself for not forgiving him.

Your brain will build whatever pathway it can to stop you facing your fears. I ran from the truth at full clip, like a gazelle in a field being chased by a pack of lions. I continued to injure myself, over and over again, as I ran.

That he drugged my drink without me knowing and encouraged me to drink the poison, and that I trustingly did it at his behest, is predation I will never be able to comprehend.

But that is only the beginning.

I remember it all. Crying. I remember being asleep and being awake. I remember feeling like I passed through lifetimes and lifetimes before the sun rose — and it still not being over then. I remember the next day I shivered with nausea and drug-addled confusion. I acquiesced with myself. I felt certain that was the day I would die.

ONLY 4% OF REPORTED SEX OFFENCES RESULT IN SOMEONE GOING TO JAIL

I limped towards recovery. Trauma is an animal response and the thoughts that riddled my mind were deeply embedded. At their peak, they coursed through my mind with electric relentlessness.

Everything disturbed me — I panicked every time I spoke to a man. I still feel these feelings, but they are less overarching. I have slowly become one person again, my shadow yoked to my real self.

When I started talking about being raped my therapist often told me: “You are not a victim, you are a survivor.”

But after all these years I disagree. I feel much more like an animal with scar tissue. I walk with a limp; each day it becomes less discernible.

Phoebe Loomes is a Sydney-based writer and journalist.