Today I am coming clean. After nearly 1,460 days of silence, I am finally telling my story.

Four years ago I was pinned down to the floor of a bathroom stall and raped.

It took me nearly a quarter of my life to tell anyone that this had happened. Fueled by society’s negative stigma towards rape survivors I remained in silence, sealing myself away from the world around me.

In isolation I lost everything that was important to me. I lost all of my friendships, I lost my relationship with my family and I lost myself. I sat through 35,040 hours in black despair, spiraling deeper and deeper into depression until the day four months ago that I finally broke down and told my parents about what had happened.

2,102,400 minutes of my life were spent waiting for someone to come tell me that everything was going to be okay and hoping that they would assure me that none of what happened was my fault. But that moment never came. Instead I watched as society told other girls who had been sexually assaulted that they were the ones to blame, and I found myself internalizing all of the misogyny I was seeing and directing it back towards myself.

Victims of rape are told that we deserve everything that has happened to us because we “taunt” grown men with our scandalous outfits and nonverbal agreements established through body language. But the night that I was raped I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I clearly said “no” and asked my attacker to stop. I did not ask to be raped and neither did any other girl who has experienced sexual assault. But I did not know that. I believed what society has force-fed every single one of us, and because of that I tortured myself over what I believed that I had caused to happen. But now, I am ready to stand up and make a change.

To anyone else out there who has been a victim of sexual assault: It was not your fault. And, although I wish that this was not the case, there are thousands of other people out there who have been through the same thing. You are not alone in your struggles, and there is a whole community out there of survivors who are eager to help you get through this dark time. Do not shut yourself out from the world, even if it hurts to open up. We cannot change anything if we do not stand together through this.

When people laugh at you for jumping at loud noises and getting uncomfortable when someone touches you unwarrantedly, we are here for you. We understand that you are not hearing the projection screen snap up unexpectedly-- you are hearing your head being slammed against the floor. We understand that the friendly touch on the arm can sometimes feel like unwanted fingers crawling all over your body, refusing to stop even after incessant pleading. We understand, and we are here.

Sexual assault changes you. I have heard so many times that I am not the same person that I was when I first walked into high school. But how could I be? I have experienced so much more than the small freshman who walked into her first day of high school in 2012 with a huge smile on her face and endless dreams. I have experienced pain that no one should have to go through. But unlike that little freshman girl, I am strong now, and I am okay.