He was 15.

I was 13.

When I was 13, a male classmate sexually assaulted me in a movie theater. I’m gradually learning how to talk about it — and trying to make myself whole again. It took me a few years to learn how to talk about it because I refused to come to terms that I was actually sexually assaulted.*

I remember messaging a friend on IChat that it was going to be like a date from an anime I saw because we looked so similar to the characters. I told my parents first, my mother especially on the phone. I think it was easier that way because I didn’t picture her face, only her voice in my ear, pressed against the speaker of my black flip phone. She was the first person I told about everything, but mistaken it for innocent kissing and touching.

My voice was visibly shaking, closing my eyes and trying to pull myself together by breathing in and out so I wouldn’t have a panic attack. People were walking in different directions and he was still in the movie theater, watching without me. The movie was 2012. We wanted to go see New Moon to make fun of it, but it sold out.

I couldn’t grasp why I was upset because I didn’t know why yet, what the purpose and source of my sadness was coming from. I wasn’t upset that I almost had my virginity taken away from me by a boy. It was because I almost let him get away with it that puts me in a serious depression and fits of anger.

I still remember all the details…it was right after our Language Arts midterm. I got a C on it. We were all so tired and emotionally drained from it, which I believed a movie would be a nice way to take away from it. It was Portchester Movie Theater; I had gotten a large Diet Coke, chicken fingers, and fries. He asked me out by writing it down on a piece of paper, “Will you go to the movies with me?” Me, being inexperienced with love, happily nodded yes and he said that he would call me after school.

It hadn’t felt good when he did it; was it because I zipped up my jeans, only to have them open again? Was I upset because this was the first time I kissed someone of the opposite sex?

My mother kept her distance away from me and forgot the incident ever happened. She said that boys would be boys, so shake it off and go back to school. She went back to work with her teacup in her hands and left me to sink into a deep depression. We were learning about eating disorders, depression, and cutting in health class. Go figure, because that’s exactly what I did. Each holiday break, I would starve myself, eating only one meal a day, which was dinner where my family came together and we talked about our days. I had to eat then, I was given no choice, but all I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and sleep, or cry for a while.

I was so angry that this silence was my family’s coping strategy, that nothing was resolved... that I wasn’t allowed to report my assault. Why couldn’t I accept that I had done this to myself? That I was this empty shell of a human being with fragments of my remaining soul? I chose to cut myself when no one was around and hide the tiny marks with a Band-Aid or two and feel happy for the first time in days. I took my existential crisis for normal teenage hormones. I brushed it off as puberty. I was damn wrong.

I realized in sophomore year of high school that a boy didn’t just touch me. I was assaulted, raped people would argue. It happened in November of '09. I remember what I wore: navy blue sweater, black and white tank top with white polka dots, jeans, and tennis sneakers. I remember it was cold in the theater. I remember a little boy-whispering vagina. It didn’t matter. But I remember his age. 15 years old. I remember him saying as he sucked my neck, “I love you so much.” I remember thinking, “Is this really love?” I remember hearing my button of my pants being undone and my zipper pulled down, my underwear being invaded with his cold, pale hands. I think he got the idea from when we read about an attempted rape scene in a book we read in class or he had just discovered porn and wanted to try it out on me.

My eyes widened and he kissed me again, stroking the lips of my genitals. I remember this… pang in my chest and how much it hurt, how it was so unfamiliar. I remember looking at the light of the movie screen, audible voices of the actors screaming inside my head from every direction, my fallen food. I still can't wear that shirt. The confusion swirling in my ears sounded deafening. I don’t remember any thoughts I had. I remember one hand gripping my sides like he wanted to rip my ribs out of my body, and pressing another on the back of my neck, pressing hard to his lips. I felt like I knew the definition of the word disgusted. I stood next to him near the theater, steading my racing heart. I remember thinking, “Don’t be rude. Don’t tell him how little you care about anything he has to say to you. Don’t walk away. Don’t cry. Don’t move. You have to be polite to him.” I wasn’t raised to be rude. He tried to give me a hickey on my neck, but I told him I had to use the restroom. I felt time freeze inside of me. I heard him talking, but it came out mumbled and slurred in my head. I heard people’s silence, but I couldn’t feel myself. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. I couldn’t feel my breath trapped in my lungs. I sped walked out of the movie theater, turning a corner and pulled out my phone. My heart was racing, tears were forming, but I didn’t cry. I dialed home.

He came out of the movie theater shortly afterwards, as if his radar went off for sexual prey. He asked me if I wanted to go back in. I politely declined, telling him I was going home. He shrugged, and said that I could have told him no. I felt my heart break into a million pieces when he said that. I shook my head and apologized. Yes, I apologized to my assaulter. My father asked me on the phone if I wanted sushi when I got home. I shook my head, cried upstairs, and sat in the darkness as I searched for a numbness that I would cling to for years. I never reported it. It never crossed my mind to, besides, my parents refused to let me. Why would I report this when I had put myself in this situation...? How do you report someone for harming you when you feel like you deserved to be harmed?

When he saw me in class, he tried asking out one of my friends. He previously wrote a note asking me for forgiveness.

In sophomore year, I named what he had done to me. I had finally accepted and owned my bisexuality. I was messaging the girl I thought I loved at 9 p.m. Let’s call her Sally. Sally was telling me about her favorite anime scene. I’ve never cared about something less than I cared about Sally’s anime scene, but I let her ramble about it. I could use the good distraction.

We switched topics, to random shit then about love. She told me about her new boyfriend and how they were so in love, always kissing and telling them how much they loved each other. I think I almost threw up in my mouth. It made me think of my one horror story but I felt so nauseous to tell her about it, but I gathered up the nerve. I realized while typing that what I had gone through had been nonconsensual. I realized someone who had touched me didn’t consider me a person. I realized that a man in ways I had only heard about had ripped me apart in hushed voices on TV.

I told Sally I had been assaulted. We discussed it for 5 minutes. She called me an attention-seeking whore and went back to talking about anime. I didn’t bring it up again. I didn’t tell anyone else what I had realized for months. I don’t remember most of the last half of that semester, my first semester of high school that sophomore year. I remember crying in the bathroom, struggling to pull myself together. I remember vomiting in the bathroom, going to the school’s therapist, only to be sent home because they couldn’t help me.

I was even evaluated for mental hospitals a few times. I kept trying to figure out the way to tell people who thought I was fine that I wasn’t. I couldn’t find the words to tell everyone that a man had ripped me to shreds and I couldn’t stitch it together. I wanted to be an untouchable bisexual girl with a heart of steel who couldn’t be tamed by the shackles of mental illnesses and learning disabilities. I felt as if I was losing myself every day.

I talked about it for the second time in July. I told a boy online while we were roleplaying. My character stated she was assaulted and the truth came out. He told me that he was going to stay by me no matter what. I was falling for that idea and his hopes that he and I could be together, despite being eight hours away… Let’s call him Alex. I shared more of myself with Alex than I had ever shared with anyone. When I told him about how I had been torn, he understood. I felt heard. Alex made me ache in a different way than he had. When Alex touched my sides in the role-play, I constantly flinched. But after a couple of weeks spent talking with him, I felt a new sensation with a man. Safety.

After Alex I could finally speak. I found the words I needed. “Nonconsensual.” “I said no.” “I told him I wasn’t ready.”

I slowly started telling people what happened. It began trickling out of me in conversations. I started mentioning it in a quiet, offhand way. People seemed totally nonplussed by this. They would continue our conversations without really saying anything. I learned not to trust those people.

I told my friend Elizabeth a few weeks before seeing her at a choir concert. Even though she had a lot on her plate, I could feel her rage. I could feel her sympathy and her pain in the vibrations in my pocket, as she is one of the few people who can see through my façade.

I found ways to tell new friends about it. I found ways to weave it into my narrative. I was trying to figure out my sexuality. I wasn’t myself. I was at a private school for learning disabled kids. I was straight until I was 17. Some days I got so anxious I couldn’t begin to imagine a future that didn’t involve me dead. I was sexually assaulted. I was a writer.

It became a part of my landscape. I allowed it to be a dead tree that sometimes poisoned or a thick shadow that followed me relentlessly.

The GSA group at Manhattanville was the first group I told. I remembered telling them the entire story, my voice shaking, how I could barely look at anyone without feeling like I wanted to cry and curl up in a ball. I remembered seeing people almost crying. I remembered making my voice not quiver but it was just so hard not to. It was the first time I didn’t have to feel so ashamed of feeling like I was going to break down crying.

I’ve felt their sadness on the quad when they felt bad for me. I’ve felt my own anger grow because that wasn’t what I wanted. Sally, who called me attention seeking previously, hugged me. I wanted to slap her because I knew she was doing it for the sake of attention. Some days I feel as if I cannot look at men. Most days I am terrified of them for even giving me a high five.

They have inspired me to demand better from every man who ever speaks to me. They inspired me to be able to tell my story. They have inspired me to strive for a greater level of self-love. I often have curled up on the couch and I replayed the story of my assault for my dog and pillow. My dog looked at me with hurt, nuzzling me with his nose, as he wanted to share my pain. He stayed with me and silently apologized to me but I shrugged it off. This had become a part of my life. I lived with it every day. Some mornings when I woke up I felt it looming inside of me. Other mornings I woke up without it crossing my mind even once.

I didn’t realize that part of me had been terrified of making a man feel unsafe. I realized that I was scared of hurting others the way I had been hurt.

It’s been six years. It happened in 2009. I feel like a person most days. I don’t spend my mornings in the shower gripping my sides and trying to cry quietly so my family doesn’t hear. I can stand to eat chicken fingers and french fries again and I have been to the movie theater where it happened once after that. Although I have been plagued with nightmares, I have strategies now. I spent a couple nights crying in bed because I remembered the way his face felt against mine. Most nights I actually do my homework now. I don’t find myself wishing I were dead as much as I used to.

I told my therapist about November after six sessions. It’s getting easier. My ribs are getting stronger and so is my heart.