Bella Thorne: How The Mind Of A Sexual Trauma Survivor Really Works

I’ve been wanting to write about Bella Thorne for a while now, but never got the chance to. The timing just didn’t feel right. But she’s been on the news recently and I’m in my Disney era, so I figured, ‘’Why the f*ck not?’ The actress and singer was in the news because she slammed the Ozempic ‘craze’ taking over Hollywood and making her feel insecure about her own body. Thorne told US Weekly, ‘We’ve [made] so much progress in the body realm of self-love and what is beautiful and what makes beautiful. It just feels like we’ve taken so many years, so many steps backwards with a craze. I just don’t think it’s good,” she added. “Whatever age you are, but especially a lot of the younger generation growing up, those are the times where they’re first understanding what beautiful means and how people perceive beautiful. It’s just so incredibly unfortunate. I’m hoping that that really dies down and goes away, and we can go back to the progress that we’ve made accepting all types of bodies.’

And last month, Thorne posted a video on Instagram sharing more of her disgust with the drug and how this ‘craze’ has affected her mental health. In the video, she said, ‘So, I haven’t been feeling good about my body for a while. And especially with everybody on Ozempic, it’s like setting all these crazy beauty standards that nobody can keep up with unless you’re on Ozempic. I have swam every day, and I have sweat out everything possible, and I have walked everywhere. And, I’m finally feeling good about myself, OK? I’m finally feeling good, so Ozempic, you can…’ And the camera flipped off.

Ozempic has been promoted in the news and media heavily as of late. The drug, which is a semiglutide injection, was approved by US Food And Drug Administration to treat patients of Type 1 Diabetes. As of late, however, we all found out that it’s been used for reasons that aren’t medical, but for weight loss. Khloe Kardashian has previously said that had Ozempic been around when she struggled with her weight, she would’ve used it instead of her original methods. It’s a dangerous statement to publicize considering her fan base. Luckily, Bella Thorne isn’t the only one with common sense. Celebrities like Any Shumer, Oprah Winfrey and Sharon Osborne have all spoken against the use of the drug.

Ozempic aside, though…Bella Thorne is a singer and actress. She appeared in movies such as ‘The Duff’, ‘The Babysitter’, and ‘Midnight Sun’. Most notably though, she starred in Disney’s ‘Shake It Up’ with Zendaya between 2010 and 2013. And I say most notably for a very good reason. Disney is known to be very hard on its employees. Their employees are the kids. Hilary Duff was one of them. She was the subject matter in a previous post where I wrote about sticking up to your vision when it comes to a project at hand. She starred on ‘Lizzie McGuire’ between 2001 and 2004. She also starred in its 2003 movie, where Lizzie and her class go to Italy.

All the kids who were employed by Disney had to do awkward ID intros. They involved the magic Mickey Mouse silhouette. Duff, on her part, certainly knew they were awkward AF. She opened up to Pop Sugar in a 2017 interview, ‘You know they put in all the animation in later so you’re just having to imagine it’s real. And you do it hundred times and a million different ways. And all of us were like kids working adult hours so I’m sure we were kind of fed up. They’re like ‘And be happy!” and you’re like, ‘Hey, it’s the Disney Channel!’ You know what? I did this straight-to-video movie called ‘Casper Meets Wendy’ that was my very first job. I had to do the whole movie to nobody. To a ghost that was all put in in post later. So I got pretty good at talking to myself.’

In hindsight, that’s about the most innocent, unproblematic issue the kids of Disney ever had. Bella Thorne was involved in a Disney “controversy” when she was 14 years old. During an episode appearance on Emma Ratajkowski’s podcast, ‘High Low With EmRata’ podcast, Thorne opened about that time in her life. She said, ‘One time I almost got fired off the Disney Channel because I was 14, and I wore a two-piece on the beach. This stylist that I was hanging out with put this chain on me that’s, like, a body chain. I don’t know? I don’t care. There was a fan, they got a photo of me on the beach. I almost got fired. It was all over the media, it was literally viral in that time. It was, ‘How dare this little girl do this? This is so disgusting.’ They (Disney) were like, ‘Hey, we’re getting a lot of heat for this. Everyone’s getting heat for this because you’re in a bikini on a beach, so she needs to make sure she goes out in boy shorts and a loose t-shirt next time she’s at the beach.’’

During that same interview, Thorne opened up about what had happened years prior when she was just a 10 year old girl. She said, ‘I had a director give me feedback once and I was 10. The casting director calls my agent and the agent calls my mom, and they’re like, ‘So she’s not moving forward because the director felt like she was flirting with him, and it made him really uncomfortable. What the fuck are you talking about, man?! I don’t give a f*ck what the f*ck I said! I don’t care if I said, ‘Eat my p*ssy right now!’ I was 10 years old. Why ever would you think that?’

Disney was specifically hard on its female child stars. The company expected them to be perfect, and it’s a lot of pressure for girls as young as 10 to 16 to 20. These are a young girl’s formative years. Part of life’s learning curves is to make mistakes. Even in our 20’s we make mistakes. Miley Cyrus was scrutinized during her Disney days for not maintaining her ‘perfect image’ while ‘Hannah Montana’ was airing between 2006 and 2011. Just like Thorne, Vanessa Hudgens was almost fired from Disney when her nude images that she sent through her phone, assuming to her then-boyfriend, Zac Efron, were leaked to the media. She was forced to publicly apologize for taking those photos.

But Bella Thorne’s story during that time involves more than just her time on Disney. Let’s just say the girl’s been through a heck of a lot, and according to Thorne herself, what she’d gone through in her personal and family life made her days at Disney seem like a breeze. First, Thorne’s father passed away in a traffic accident in 2007 when Thorne was just 9 years old. That in itself is a hard pill to swallow. Thorne is one of four children, and was the breadwinner of the family after her father’s death. She got into acting because she was told that it was what she was supposed to do when her family was on the brick of poverty.

But, again, her work life, particularly during her Disney days, and her being sexualized at work was nothing compared to what had happened to her in her personal life following her father’s death. In 2018, the actress wrote posted a beautiful, vulnerable photo of herself and wrote in the caption, ‘I was sexually abused and physically growing up from the day I can remember till I was 14..when I finally had the courage to lock my door at night and sit by it. All damn night. Waiting for someone to take advantage of my life again. Over and over I waited for it to stop and finally it did. But some of us aren’t as lucky to get out alive. Please today stand up for every soul Mistreated. #timesup.’ She then added on Twitter, now known as X, ‘I never knew what was right or wrong growing up..I didn’t know the person sneaking into my bed room at night was a bad person.’

Thorne never revealed who the abuser was, but did reveal that she was molested between the ages of 6 and 14. Thorne’s mother, Tamara, revealed she never knew of the abuse that went on in her home, and she also revealed she would be going to therapy for this. Thorne’s maternal uncle, James Beckett, also chimed in on the matter. He said, ‘Delancey (Thorne’s father) would never stand for that. My sister would never have allowed it. We had never heard about any of this before now. Bella and her sister Dani always slept in the same room. Dani would have to know about this, too. Me and Delancey would joke that we’d need an extensive gun collection to deal with the boyfriends when the girls started dating. He was very protective.’

After she revealed her story, Thorne posted a video on her Instagram account thanking her fans. In the video, she said, ‘I’m on Twitter reading about all the people sharing sexual abuse stories with me from mine and I just want to say I’m really proud of all you guys. Stay strong, peace, I love you guys.’ But when she was asked why she opened up about her sexual abuse story, she revealed that it was nothing she ever planned to do. When appearing on ‘Under The Influence’ podcast in 2019, the actress revealed, ‘I was just very sad. I remember I was laying in bed and the first thing I tweeted was — someone said this stupid f—ing comment that said, ‘Was it Disney or were you just molested?’’

I can totally see her opening up about her trauma on a whim. I can even picture it happening. I started opening up about my own experience with sexual assault because of stupid comments myself. Not on social media, but rather in person, and those comments came from people who I thought were close to me. Me being raped by someone who I thought was a friend when I was 18 used to be my darkest secret. He obviously wasn’t a friend. On the contrary, he was someone who used and abused my vulnerability, and I recognize that. What I had trouble with was recognizing mistreatment and abuse I experienced from the friends that I’d made in the years that followed.

There were three people in particular who wronged me just the same as my rapist did. I’m not even going to call them my friends. They don’t deserve that title; just the same as my rapist didn’t deserve that title. I thought that after years of struggling to find ‘my people’, I finally did find them in the people that called me their friend. But they weren’t my friends. They were just people that called me their friend for their own benefit, because how they treated me throughout the years that we knew each other wouldn’t be defined a friendship by any standard. You’ll understand what I mean when I tell you what they did, and I’m sure you’ll be surprised I lasted so long with these people in the first place.

The first person I thought I could trust had publicly told my darkest secret to her friends while drunk. I was so furious that I was ready to throw everyone’s beer at her. When she saw my frustration, she attempted to joke around with me to get me to laugh with her. When she saw that it didn’t work, she furiously got up and left. The next day, she texted me with an apology, but we all know that an ‘I’m sorry, but…’ is not an apology. The second person that I thought I could trust would continuously laugh at me and make fun at my expense. He’d make a joke, or even two, when I’d shared my story of abuse. He’d tell me he was laughing because it was all in the past. ‘No, sir. Nothing of the matter is in the past even if it happened in the past,’ I’d say. But he still continued on to laugh and make fun. It got to the point where his mistreatment towards me led me to have a mental health breakdown. And finally, the third person I thought I could trust would act like I needed saving or protecting from my demons, and she thought she’d be the one to do that. She thought she’d be the one to solve all my problems. Of course, no one could solve any of my problems except for me, and when I finally set boundaries with her after years of tolerating her sh*t, she got mad and ghosted me. I saw her again a couple of years later at a mutual friend’s birthday party after I had my son. She acted as though nothing happened and expected me to hug her and kiss her and act like old friends.

But there was also a fourth person, and that person, to me, is considered to be the OG of them all. He wasn’t even someone I considered to be a friend. He was a friend’s boyfriend. I never actually liked him. I tolerated him as I still wanted to have a friendship with the person who chose him as a life partner. It proved to be absolutely impossible. Thankfully, I never told him about my sexual trauma. He gave me many reasons not to trust him. He’d obsessively want to get to know my life as a disabled person, and he’d constantly want to ‘help me’ in ways overbearing ways. He even wanted to pay for my student loan. Though this particular person had nothing to do with my sexual trauma, he had everything to do with getting my writing career started. He was the one who motivated me to get my writing out there for the world to see when he got me my first professional writing gig to write Top 10 lists for a magazine. I say he’s a sh*tty person, but I’ll give credit where credit is due.

I obviously lacked judgement in people. I couldn’t comprehend and accept that I was surrounded by people that were practically no different than my rapist. Part was due to my epilepsy diagnosis, as well as the effects of the endless anti-seizure medications that I was taking over the years. You really wouldn’t believe the side effects of these medications. They turn you into an unrecognizable person that’s absolutely unbearable. They make you weak. They make you depressed. They make you feel like your brain is about to explode. And with all that being said, you still have seizures even though they’re called ANTI- seizure medications.

But it also has to do with the fact that I’m a sexual assault survivor. Even though I consider myself a survivor, and proudly so might I add, at the time I had the mindset of a victim. You have to understand that your body and your mind completely changes when you go through something such as rape or any other sexual trauma. I look back at pictures of myself from before and after that fateful night, and it almost seems like I’m an entirely different person. I became a much darker and closed off person. In the mindset of someone who’s been through sexual trauma, there are a lot of ups and downs involved. For me personally, I didn’t trust anyone. I was too afraid to make friends. That’s why I became the person that I did. I didn’t want to bring any newcomers into my life because I didn’t want to get hurt.

It was a completely different story sexually speaking, and yet, at the same time, all the very same. I wanted to feel good so badly. I wanted sex to feel good. I was desperate to feel so much more than what I felt that first time. That’s why I had sex left and right with different people – men and women. I just didn’t care. I didn’t want a serious relationship. I didn’t even want a relationship. That’s why I went with either one night stands to no longer than a 6 month courtship. It was a ‘ I don’t need you, Buh-Bye and F*CK off forever’ type of situation. All I was ever interested and invested in was the sex, and not because it ever felt good, but because I wanted it to feel good. Those are two different things. And even when I finally did get into a serious relationship, the sexual part of our relationship was…problematic. I treated sex like it was a one night stand even though it wasn’t. It was a years long one-night stand. I call it ‘many night stands.’ But I finally feel at peace with myself. It took many years of hard work and determination, as well as a lot of help from my partner, and I’m f*cking proud of my journey.

And if we look at Bella Thorne’s love life, we see that’s it’s pretty messy. Now that we know her history, we understand the ‘why’ in her life choices, as well as her mentality. First, she carelessly publicly cheated on her boyfriend, and then she was in a non-monogamous relationship with a man and a woman at the same time. She was even engaged to Avril Lavigne’s ex-fiancé, Mod Sun, who’s much older than her. She was previously engaged to Italian actor and singer Benjamin Mascolo, and is now engaged to producer Mark Emm. And you might say to yourself that it’s crazy and f*cked up, especially considering Thorne’s young age. She’s only 26 now with such a dating history. I, on the other hand, think it’s beautiful, and I totally understand her sense of needing adventure when it comes to her sexuality. I even understand her being engaged 3 times by the age of 26. She’s a young woman who’s just trying to survive.

In 2019, Thorne spoke with Logan Paul, who’s a close personal friend of hers, on his podcast, ‘Impulsive’ about her abuse. When he asked what it was like growing up in Hollywood, Thorne said, ‘I think it was probably one of the reasons I felt so drowned and I was in such a dark place growing up, and I contemplated suicide. I think it was because it was such a crazy thing of everyone knows everything about you but there’s this one thing that’s so big and makes you literally who you are, it’s literally changed me as a person completely. It just made me feel like I was literally encased in this, not a doll, but this thing, like a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, beating on the inside. It literally made me feel like I was completely drowning.’

She appeared on the podcast to promote her book, ‘Selfish’. When she spoke of why she wrote the book, she said, ‘am selfish because I won’t just put myself through the pain of describing every story in detail that I’ve spent so long trying to forget. And have reworked my mental brain so I don’t have flashbacks all the time and to go back there again, over, and over, and over. Like it might break me, in a sense, you know. And I call it selfish because it just seems very selfish and I have to give myself a chance not to be selfish. I really want this book to help me mentally and open my brain. I guess I’m always searching for an answer, and thinking maybe this book will be it. I don’t know.’

And when she was asked what advice she’d .give to someone going through sexual trauma right now, she said, You can’t really give advice to anybody on this scenario without knowing. There’s so many lines, you can’t really give advice as everything is so unique. You could say to somebody, oh tell your mom. Well what if you mom doesn’t believe you or what if your mom beats you for it? Or what if your father does this to you for it?’ But it just is. It is every single time. And after you get beaten down again, and again, and again, you have to just keep fighting. Even when you feel like it might kill you. You hate yourself for it, you feel disgusting. But you are not a bruised fruit. You are fruit that is still beautiful.’

It’s safe to say that Bella Thorne is my spirit animal. Or shall I say, she’s my spirit fruit. Everything she said and wrote about what sexual trauma entails holds true, at least in my own personal experience with such trauma. When some like this happens to you, it lives with you everyday. Everything about you changes. When the people you surround yourself with don’t know of that part of your life, you feel misunderstood. Even if they do know, you feel misunderstood. It’s that one part of your life that keeps you grounded. It’s that part of your life that defines you. I have cerebral palsy and epilepsy, but me being a sexual assault survivor has affected my life than both disabilities combined. Practically every decision I’ve made since then, good and bad, has been redirected to my sexual trauma. Even now it seems to be the case. As much as I want to say to myself, ‘I’m fine, it doesn’t affect me anymore’, it’s just not true.

I recently started watching Netflix’s ‘Homicide: Los Angeles’ documentary. Season 1 episode 5 had serial rapist and murderer Arohn Kee, who raped at least 7 young girls and murdered 3 of them, as the subject matter. During their interviews, the detectives who worked on the case made some very interesting conclusions about the mindset of a rapist. One said that rape isn’t about the sex, but rather about power and control. Another called rapists weak. I got shivers as I listened to their testaments. It made me look back at my own story. I immediately thought of a particular scene from Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’. It’s the scene where Spike attacks Buffy and attempts to rape her. She screamed with horror, but nevertheless, stood strong and showed him she wasn’t one to be defeated. And so, I had an epiphany…

I had it all wrong…

I’ve been the strong one the entire time.

My rapist is the weak one.

He was.

He is.

And always will be.

And me…

I’m brave.

I’m a survivor.

I’m a thriver.

I’m a f*cking badass.

And just like Bella Thorne, I wrote about my experience with sexual assault. Just like Thorne, I did it not for the public, but for myself; for my own sanity. It’s called ‘12 YEARS A WOMAN: MY JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS’, and it’s available on Amazon.