Survivors Story –

Look At Me, Standing Here

They built the system
like a maze of locked doors,
each one labelled
with a different way
to doubt me.

I learned the rules early:
speak softly,
do not shake,
remember every date and time
while your body is still
trying to remember
how to breathe.

I watched files grow dust
where my name should have meant urgency.
I heard professionals
turn my pain into paperwork,
my fear into “historic,”
my future into “not enough evidence.”

For a long time,
I thought it was me.
Too emotional.
Too calm.
Too much.
Not enough.

But even a system
designed to fracture me
could not stop
the part of me that refused
to disappear.

One day,
a different kind of uniform
met my eyes
and did not look away.

A sergeant
who pulled up a chair
instead of a checklist.
An officer who said,
“Take your time,
we are not going anywhere,”
and meant it.

 

They listened to the silences
between my sentences,
heard the years
I could not fit into one report.
They asked,
“What do you need
to feel safe?”
and wrote my answer
as if it mattered.

Grassroots women,
community workers,
people whose offices
are church halls and side rooms,
held out clipboards and tissues
and cups of tea,
translating legal words
into human ones.

They sat beside me
in waiting rooms
thick with fluorescent light,
reminding me quietly,
“You are not the one
on trial.”

Slowly,
trust shifted.
The word “police”
stopped tasting like fear
and started sounding like
Phil’s steady voice,
Nash’s patient questions,
Zara’s insistence
that my safety
was not optional.

They did not rescue me.
I rescued myself.
But they built a bridge
where there had only been
a drop.

When the system said,
“This is just how it is,”
they said,
“We can do better,”
and then they did.

Today, I walk into this house
of stories with my head high.
I speak in my own name.
My file is not a forgotten folder—
it is part of a pattern
that will not be ignored again.

If you are reading this,
know that somewhere
a sergeant is learning
how to really listen,
a DI is challenging
an old way of working,
a chief superintendent
is making room at the table
for voices like ours,

and grassroots sisters
are holding the doors open
so we can walk through
together.

Look at me now:
not a case number,
not a cautionary tale—
a woman standing
on ground
we built between us.

And to those
who chose to stand with me:
you turned uniforms and job titles
into something rarer—you turned them
into trust.

By Naz