The Truth Behind Being The Strong One: My Story
The Exhaustion Behind Being “The Strong One”
Trigger Warning: mention of rape
Being called “strong” is usually framed as a compliment.
But for many women, strength is not a choice it is a survival strategy.
I didn’t become strong because I wanted to be.
I became strong because I had to.
I was raped on New Year’s Eve.
For a long time, I struggled to say that sentence without doubt following close behind. I had been drinking. I didn’t remember everything. And when memory is fragmented, people are quick to fill in the gaps in ways that make them more comfortable.
That night, I was at a friend’s house celebrating the New Year. After midnight, she left while I was heavily intoxicated, leaving me alone with two men I didn’t know. Her children were asleep upstairs. Another friend and her child were also asleep in the house. Everyone was asleep except me, my friend, and the two men.
She later said she tried to get me to go to sleep, but I was too drunk to listen. Frustrated, she left and went to her boyfriend’s house. At some point, I must have gone to sleep, because I woke up in a bedroom with the children and my other friend, who had been looking after me earlier that night.
The next morning, my body knew something was wrong before my mind could catch up. My face was swollen. I couldn’t open my mouth properly or speak clearly. My knee was severely injured swollen to the size of a basketball, and I could barely walk. When we tried to piece together what had happened, it was dismissed as a joke. I must have fallen down the stairs while drunk. No one remembered anything clearly. The friend who owned the house still hadn’t returned.
All we could do was wait.
But in the bathroom, that explanation collapsed. I found evidence that wasn’t mine. Panic rose in my chest. I said out loud, “I think I’ve been raped.”
No one believed me.
When our friend finally returned a few hours later, we asked her what had happened. She said she couldn’t remember much, only that I had been a mess and wouldn’t listen, so she left. She insisted I hadn’t looked injured when she went out and suggested again that I must have fallen.
Then the doorbell rang.
She became excited, saying one of the men was back. When he walked in, something in me shifted. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t make eye contact. A deep, sinking feeling settled in my stomach the kind of knowing that arrives before logic.
He went straight into the kitchen, laughing and joking with my friend as if nothing was wrong.
Slowly, my other friend began to remember pieces of the night before. She leaned over and whispered to me that he had tried to touch her sexually and she had pushed him away. In that moment, everything clicked. I had been alone. I was heavily intoxicated. Both men had stayed behind after my friend left. There were children sleeping in the house. There was no alcohol, no drugs, and no reason for them to be there once the person they knew had gone.
I confronted him and asked what had happened.
He became defensive and aggressive, insisting nothing had occurred and that he left because I was “doing too much.” I knew he was lying. His presence made me feel physically sick. I shouted for my friend to make him leave. He refused at first. Eventually, he did.
I went to the hospital, still hoping still praying that my friends were right and that this was all just a drunken accident.
I was referred for a forensic examination that lasted over seven hours. I chose to do it anonymously partly to protect my friend’s children, partly because I didn’t expect anything to come of it. By then, I had already started convincing myself that everyone else must be right. That I was just drunk. That I was mistaken.
Three months later, I was called back for my results.
By that point, I suspected the truth, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to hear.
The results showed two separate DNA profiles.
I froze. I was trying to process the reality that I had been raped by two men.
After that, I disappeared from my own life.
In the years that followed, trauma didn’t show up as chaos.
It showed up as capability.
I became functional, productive, emotionally contained. Falling apart wasn’t an option, so I didn’t. Strength stopped being something I did and became something I was.
Psychologists note that behavior such as hyper-independence, emotional suppression, and over-functioning are common trauma responses. They are not personality traits they are nervous-system adaptations developed in response to prolonged stress. Strength, in this context, is not empowerment. It is protection.
And protection is exhausting.
I lived with depression, PTSD, and social anxiety. I didn’t feel safe around men. I didn’t feel safe in my own body. When I tried to pursue justice, the friend whose house it happened in chose not to testify. The men were her friends. She didn’t want to cause trouble.
That silence broke something in me.
Chronic trauma can keep the nervous system locked in hypervigilance long after the threat has passed. Rest can feel unsafe. Stillness can trigger anxiety. Productivity becomes a coping mechanism, not a preference. Survival stops being a phase and becomes an identity.
Strength also carries a gendered cost. Women are disproportionately expected to carry emotional labour regulating emotions, maintaining harmony, supporting others while suppressing their own needs. Strength is praised more than it is supported, leaving many women relied upon but rarely checked in on.
Wellness culture often frames self-love as a mindset shift, but trauma is not just psychological , it is physiological. When safety has been associated with control and alertness, slowing down can feel dangerous. Self-love isn’t resisted because it’s undeserved; it’s resisted because vigilance once meant survival.
For me, healing began quietly.
Resting without justification.
Saying no without apology.
Listening to my body instead of overriding it.
Trauma disconnects us from ourselves.
Self-love is the process of coming home.
We often confuse resilience with endurance.
But true resilience isn’t about how much you can carry.
It’s about how well you can recover.
Strength is no longer emotional silence.
It is honesty.
Strength is no longer doing everything alone.
It is allowing support.
You were never meant to be strong forever.
You were meant to live.
Written by Denero Richards
