The Story I Never Wanted to Tell

I never wanted to write this story. I still don’t. I’ve started and stopped and put it off and reconsidered it a thousand times. For weeks, I’ve watched one expose after another come out detailing horrifying incidents of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault. I’ve had this heavy sickness coursing through my blood stream, clotting and congealing and pooling in my lungs and my gut until I felt like I couldn’t even breathe. I’ve cried. I’ve raged. I’ve tried drinking and not drinking. I’ve tried being perfectly poised and polished and skipping the shower for too many days in a row. I’ve obsessively read article after article. I’ve ignored everything and pretended it would go away. It won’t. What will people think? Worse, what will people say? Will people think I want sympathy? I don’t. Will people think I want attention? In this context, I really couldn’t want anything less. Will people try to force me to tell them more about it? Will people gather their torches and pitchforks on my front porch? Yeah…that’s just the kind of spiraling my brain has been doing. I don’t know if any of those fears are going to come true. What I know is that this heartsickness is happening because I’m supposed to tell this story. I don’t know why and maybe I never will. All that’s left to do is let go and be free of the whys and the what-ifs. I didn’t want to write this story, but it’s mine. I can’t change the past. I can only influence the future.

Let me preface all of this by saying that my story is just mine. My experiences, beliefs, and feelings come through my own lens. Everyone is different and I pass no judgments and harbor no expectations regarding how anyone else ‘should’ act. There’s no ‘right’ way to deal with the things you never thought you’d have to feel. Let me also say that there will be cursing and grammatical rules will be broken. I’m tired of being poised about this shit. I always wanted to write it with a glass of whiskey in hand to bring myself down a couple of notches. Well, I’m out of whiskey, and I’m not watering it down.

Now, having started with the slow peel and having found it even more painful and uncomfortable than confronting the issue more directly; let me rip off this Band-Aid. I was raped. It wasn’t like the movies. It wasn’t some evil, knife-wielding stranger in an alley. I didn’t immediately crumble and collapse into a heap of tears. I pretended it didn’t happen. I called it a gray area and pretended the coat of slime I felt viscously dripping down the walls of my insides came from something else. I blamed myself, but not in a dramatic or even conscious way. I all but ignored it for about a year.

I was a virgin until I was 21 years old. I had intended to stay a virgin until I got married, but I did toy with the line. The guys I had ‘hung out’ with over the years knew my boundaries. Underwear stayed on, always. I didn’t do any form of sex. One night, the guy I “hung out” with more than the others showed me just how much I had been playing with fire. I’m not saying I was to blame. I know I wasn’t. I also know that I put myself in a situation I shouldn’t have. Sure, it was someone I knew- but not someone I trusted. People told me. My heart told me. Once I even had a dream that I really believe was God telling me to walk away from this guy. Those dalliances (never dating, because that was beneath him) continued on and off again over a span of a few years, even when I knew they shouldn’t. A victim is never to blame, but I put myself in the hands of an untrustworthy person. Literally. Eww. Did that weak attempt at comic relief work? Probably not.

In any case, we were “hanging out” and he kept pushing. I kept pulling away. I even said no. In another attempt to stop what was happening, I scolded him (keeping my tone light and charming, because I was afraid to ruin the moment). I used to journal back then. The next day, after receiving a text from him that said “we had a lil sex last night. I feel bad :(“ (yes, he was a real prize), I wrote that he “went ahead and slid it in.” I wrote that it was halting and momentary. I wrote that I didn’t know if I would really even call it sex. And I replied to his ridiculous text by saying “I’m not counting it.”

The next time I wrote about it, a few days later, I said “I hate that it’s a fine line between messing around and getting in over my head and ______ actually forcing me into something. I said no, he went ahead with it anyway. It’s difficult to call it rape because I should have just stopped everything instead of trusting him to stay in check once it was getting dangerously close to being ruined fun-wise and was becoming so much darker. Dramatic speech, dramatic speech- he’s a selfish asshole.”

Yes, I didn’t think I was allowed to call it rape even though I had said ‘no.’ Yes, I treated my complex emotions with sarcasm and told myself I needed to lay off the dramatics. I even postulated that some effed up part of me really did want it and asked what was wrong with me that I had been so passive...That I, who had always been strong and intimidated the boys; that I, who claimed I would kick someone’s ass who tried to hurt me, was more concerned with being liked than protecting myself. Why didn’t I kick or scream or do something besides try to say no twice and then freeze up and pretend it wasn’t happening? You do NOT know what you are going to do until it happens. You can have every plan and every roundhouse kick choreographed in your mind and then when it happens you realize that it can be so subtle that it traps you. You’re like the frog sitting in a pot of hot water until it boils to death. I’m speaking from experience. So if you’ve ever responded to someone’s story with “I would have…” kindly shut the hell up. You are a fool- like I was.

In the next weeks, as I forced thoughts of the incident out of my mind, I began to think and overthink about how weird it was for me to be a virgin still. What was the point, anyway? If it was already taken from me, why should I treat the vestiges of my virginity like it was anything special? What if I met and fell in love with someone who didn’t want to be with a 21-year-old virgin? None of these things had bothered me before, but suddenly that sexual identity had me suffocating. So a little over a month later, I officially slept with the same guy who assaulted me and pretended it wasn’t a big deal. I wrote about it later, saying that I had a heavy feeling about it, but it just needed to happen. Back then I had all kinds of excuses why, but I think I know now that I was trying to pretend it was my idea to lose my virginity. I was trying to reclaim it and do it on my own terms. I just didn’t know it at the time. And for a long time I was completely disgusted with myself for my choice of partner, even as I lied to myself about whether he really was a rapist.

For a while after that, I didn’t think about any of it. I hung out with the guy a couple more times. I put myself in one other terrible situation that filled me with shame- this one with guys I barely knew. Don’t know to this day if that one was an alcohol-soaked, temporary insanity version of consensual or if someone drugged my drink. After all, there were many drinks I willingly had- but they tried to offer me some kind of club drug earlier in the evening. Not really into drugs, so I don’t even know what it feels like. Anyway, though that was an offshoot problem and thickened that internal coat of slime and the external coat of shame that I wore, I believe that it happened as a result of my completely screwed-up mental state. I was caught between knowing in the back of my mind but refusing to know in the front of my mind that something terrible had happened to me.

A few months later, I met and started dating my future husband. I don’t know the exact day the reality of what I’d been through hit me in the face. It came about because my rapist happened to be around us all the time. My husband didn’t know about any of it and so he and this guy became friendly. I was so angry all the time. I felt crazy. I felt betrayed by my boyfriend and didn’t know why. I lashed out at everyone around me and really acted like the worst version of myself. I nearly ruined relationships that are now so dear to me. One day I started thinking about my complete hatred of this person and his sphere of influence on the people around him. I finally tried to research the source of it. It’s weird to have to research yourself, but before I really got a handle on understanding my emotions I used to do it all the time. I’d go back and read my journal entries and reprocess what happened. I thought, ‘is it because I didn’t actually want to have sex with him and he made it happen?’ I still didn't call it what it was. I thought I was being dramatic again. After all, that was my thing.

I went back and read the journal entries. I had completely blocked it out until that moment and it hit me like a tidal wave. I said to myself: “he raped me. Oh my god, he raped me.” I screamed and I sobbed and I threw things when I was alone. I let it simmer below the surface when I wasn’t. After some days, I did finally tell people close to me. I told a few more in the coming months. It made a difference and it helped me heal in ways I couldn’t on my own. It helped me stop letting the nameless bitterness create strife with innocent parties. Six years later, I still have to learn to breathe sometimes…but that fire inside of me, that God-given heat, has burned out most of the poison.

So fast forward. Why haven’t I publicly named him? Well, first of all, that is my choice. It is one I have to live with. I think one some level that he knows what he did. I think on another he really doesn’t. I don’t want revenge. I don’t want to dredge up what happened then- for me and for him. I never want to speak with him again. It took a long time to completely get him out of my life and even a few more attempts to pretend to be friendly. While trying to move on and navigate the soap opera in which I had become embroiled, I let him betray me (and my husband) in new and different ways (general douchebag stuff rather than sexual betrayal). Sometimes I am afraid that I have let it happen to someone else because of my silence. Like I said, it’s something I have to live with. All those regrets are.

The weird part of me that still has a level of compassion for him feels guilty for not informing him, if he really didn’t know, so that he wouldn’t have to live with doing that to another person. The part that hates him thinks he doesn’t deserve that level of honesty from me. Occasionally, I pray for him. Occasionally, I fantasize about beating him to a pulp. I once encouraged him to be the man he was raised to be. I once ignored the signs of narcissism and nihilism because I thought he was just in pain, like I was at the time that I met him. I thought he could rise above it. Now I don’t know. I keep striving to believe in redemption for everyone, but even now (from a distance) I can see him falling further and further. I don’t relish it. Maybe I should. I keep trying to forgive him and myself. Maybe I shouldn’t.

Sometimes I’m still afraid. I hate being touched by people I don’t know (and many I do). I’m suspicious of men. When I recently had to travel alone, I bought pepper spray, date rape drink testing strips, and a personal alarm. I carried two knives as well. People told me I was being paranoid. People can bite me. Sometimes I’m fine. Sometimes I feel completely sick or angry or numb. I never know when it’s going to get worse. Sometimes things that make it worse actually make it better, too. Hearing “Til it Happens to You” by Lady Gaga or “Praying” by Kesha, watching Jessica Jones, or reading news headlines can all set it off in good and bad ways. It can trigger distress, anger, or just a release where I allow myself to feel and to cry and to get stronger through it again. Mostly it triggers in me a sense of compassion and of justice. I will never again discount someone else’s story or choice regarding a matter like this one. I will never be helpless again. I will never trust someone with my body and my safety who is undeserving, unkind, and unconcerned with (even enjoying to flaunt) his demons. And I will NEVER shut my mouth when someone needs to be fought for- even when that person is me.