A continuation
The incident happened on a Friday, and I gave my statement that same day.
The officer who took my statement had already witnessed a similar incident involving the same individual, so there was no explaining or convincing. He understood what I was describing because he had seen it himself. What stood out even more, though, was something he said to me in that moment. He noticed that I was staying present — that I wasn’t dissociating the way I normally would have — and that I could feel what was happening in my body and stay with it. He said that mattered, that it meant something in me was already shifting.
I didn’t fully take that in at the time, but it stayed with me.
Over the next couple of days, I knew I needed to get out of town for a bit to settle myself. Before I left on the Monday morning, I stopped at the RCMP detachment. It was meant to be a courtesy — just to let them know where I would be in case they needed to reach me — but I didn’t expect to stay. I ended up sitting there for several hours.
By the time I sat down with the sergeant that morning, I was still unsettled, but something in me was different. There was no rush, no pressure, and no sense that I needed to present things a certain way. I wasn’t being managed or moved along. I felt met, listened to, supported, believed, and understood in a way that felt steady and real.
We talked for hours, not in a dramatic or overwhelming way, but in a grounded, steady way that allowed things to come up and settle at their own pace. There was room for what I was feeling without it becoming too much. But more than anything, there was a shift in how I was holding it. I wasn’t bracing in the same way, and I wasn’t leaving myself in the middle of it. There was a quiet sense that I could stay.
Given my past experiences with the RCMP, walking into that building was not a small thing — and it carried more weight than I fully understood at the time. Trust didn’t come easily in that environment, and I didn’t take it lightly. Which is why that moment mattered in the way that it did — not because it was the only support I had, but because it was the first time I could fully receive it.
Looking back, I can see that something important happened there. Not in a dramatic or obvious way, but in a way that created space — space for my system to settle, space for me to stay present, and space for something in me to begin shifting without force.
A few days later, I had the dream about the bolt cutters.
And when I think about that now, it makes sense, because something had already changed.
It wasn’t one moment, or one person, but it was the moment where I stopped leaving myself in the middle of it.
And that mattered more than I realized at the time.
Because once you know what it feels like to stay with yourself, it becomes very hard to go back to leaving.