Seen and Not Seen
(I posted the link earlier but decided to post all the text when bee reblogged.)
I was date raped when I was 17.
I don’t say that to shock or elicit sympathy, I say it because it’s a fact. Earlier I read this and have since then had a few conversations that saddened me. I heard about how it was odd that someone would know so many rape and sexual abuse victims and I heard from two friends quiet confessions of how they had been sexually abused or taken advantage of, stories of how when they told someone in their lives, their stories were ignored or taken lightly. This makes me sad and more than anything, it makes me angry that we live in a society where rape and sexual abuse towards both men and women is overlooked and ignored, where victims are made to feel somehow responsible for the violence forced upon them. It’s hard to be a survivor when your proclamations are seen as invalid, or even worse, not listened to at all. As in many cases I’ve heard from friends and acquaintances, I was raped by someone I knew. It was a guy I had been dating for just a few weeks and we were at a party at a friend’s house. We were spoiled private school kids and we drank every weekend while maintaining perfect grades and the right extracurricular activities to get us into the best colleges. This guy and I ended up in a bedroom at this friend’s house while everyone else danced to the loudest, most obnoxious music imaginable. I felt dizzy and wanted to lie down for a little while. We kissed playfully but when I tried to close my eyes and rest for a second, I felt his hand up my skirt. I pushed him away and told him I didn’t want to do anything. He ripped off my underwear. His breath smelled stale from the alcohol and he felt heavy against me as he kept on kissing me, his hands roaming between my legs. I was nauseated and said no. He held me down, his knees against my legs as he unzipped his pants. With that action, all the adrenaline in my body rushed through me and I screamed my head off. No one could hear me, or maybe it was just that no one gave a shit at that point. I struggled, trying to free my wrists from his large hands, thrashing as he forced himself inside me. As soon as he did that, I became aware of the fact that this was happening. I was being raped. It was everything my mother had always warned me about and here it was happening. I felt like I was watching myself outside my body, watching myself fight the entire time. I fought because I knew that I was being raped but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of giving in. I fought the entire time. When he tried to kiss me, I bit him, hit him with my head; I yelled at him the whole time, and when it was over, it looked I had had the shit beat out of me. He rolled off of me and I jumped up, pulling my skirt down, fixing my shirt. I found my shoes and ran out of the room. He tried to follow me and I shoved him as I ran outside to my car. I drove home, still technically drunk but more alert than ever. I entered my house quietly and tiptoed to my room. I grabbed a towel and took off my clothes, shoving them into the back of my closet. I walked into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at my body for the first time. I had bruises on my wrists and arms, my thighs were black and blue, my ribs felt sore. My mouth felt swollen and I could feel his skin under my nails from where I had scratched at him. I suddenly looked so small in the cold bathroom light and everything hurt from the inside out. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and stood under the water, my face into the stream. I couldn’t tell when I started crying, my tears mixing with the water until I was on the shower floor slamming my hand against the wall and sobbing. The water eventually turned cold and I got out, wrapping myself in the towel. I put on a long sleeved shirt and pajama pants and climbed into bed, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke up the next morning to several missed calls from him. I deleted them from my phone and ignored him. I never spoke to him again. Something clicked in my mind, I still don’t understand it. Perhaps I went into survival mode. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I figured that he was going away to college in a few months and I would never have to see him again. Something in my head just wanted to put it as far away from me as possible. My friends asked me why I had stopped seeing him and I brushed it off. I ignored it in my own mind because if I had to really think about what had happened in that bedroom, I wasn’t sure if I would ever get out of my bed at that point. So I didn’t say a word for the next two years and went through the motions in a lot of respects in my life. The first person I told was my ex-boyfriend. I was 19, and it was close to the holidays, and I started having bad dreams. I woke up from a nap one Thursday afternoon and I couldn’t stop crying. My boyfriend held me in bed until I stopped hyperventilating and then he waited patiently until I told him what was wrong. He held me for about three hours and just when it seemed like I wasn’t going to say anything at all, I told him. He held me tighter and let me talk and cry in his arms as the sun set outside. He and I broke up a few months later but his support in just being able to choke the words out led me to go to therapy and talk about it. Talking about it felt powerful. In time, I told my friends and my family. I held my mom when she cried at the news, and I reassured my best friends that I was okay. That was the biggest thing I wanted them to understand, I wasn’t a weakened, crippled victim. I was a survivor, I am a survivor. I was raped and I’m changed because of it. I am made of more resilient stuff than I ever thought possible. He has changed me but he has not broken me or destroyed me. I was raped and I am a person, I have a face. I’ve spoken on panels at my college about rape and violence because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some asshole keep me ashamed. I was raped and it wasn’t my fault. This happened to me but I’m not going to let it keep happening to me every day; my life is too valuable and too short for that. I talk about it now because I couldn’t talk about it when it happened and if I can help someone, anyone, feel like they can be honest about something that has happened to them and share it and report it to the proper authorities then I have done a small part in battling a huge problem. So please. Recognize that rape and violence and sexual abuse are things that can happen to anyone, men, women, children. If someone in your life wants to talk to you about such an issue, don’t brush it under the rug, don’t make them feel at fault. Listen and support them. Talk to them about it. The smaller, more silent survivors are made to felt, the bigger the problem becomes. You do not have to be ashamed and you do not have to be silent. In my experience, you never forget but it gets easier, it gets better, and you’ll thrive. I promise.
