Warning: this could be triggering sexual assault survivors/victims/beings. However you want to identify yourself after assault. I'm not sure that I would say that I am necessarily a survivor because I live with the PTSD and emotional stress every day, but I wouldn't say I'm a victim either.

This is the first time I have written about my assault for more than just myself - it might make you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable, in fact, the assault took my comfortability away from me.

My assault happened a year and four days ago. I was working in Scotland at the time and out with some friends, and the rest of the story is pretty much what you hear about when you hear about sexual assault.

There was alcohol, there was me dancing with a man, there was me blacking out.

I don't remember going upstairs. But I do remember telling this man "no." A "no" that I meant, and a "no" that I repeated multiple times until I no longer could because I had passed out. A "no" that I had to yell as I kicked this man off of me after waking up to him possibly penetrating me. He said the whole, "girls who wear that kind of underwear are asking for it." He told me that I wanted it, and that I was being a tease. The inside of me was bleeding after everything.

And then came the aftermath of someone maybe raping you when you're in a foreign country.

A) I had to cancel the rest of my trip - I planned to go to Greece, Rome, Austria, and France two days after the assault. My emotional well-being was obviously more important and I needed to be home.

B) I was met with a lot of questions. "Why put yourself in that situation?," "Maybe this is a lesson not to drink too much." "Did you report it?" (Which I didn't, and it took a while to not feel guilty or helpless about that)

C) I couldn't shower without crying. I couldn't be naked by myself. I couldn't sleep alone, but I also hated being touched. Everything felt dirty and dark.

D) Pity and ignorance. It was a lot of hugs, which were fine but also made me feel like a lost puppy (which I already felt enough like), and it was also a lot of confusion, isolation, people telling me to "get my mind off of it."

E) The trip to the Dr.'s after returning home. Take a second to imagine, and really fucking try to imagine this: you woke up to a man 6 years older than you possibly raping you, and you have to take a thirteen hour plane ride home only to immediately go to your gynecologist where you have to spread your legs again for someone to look into the part of your body that you feel ashamed of. There was scraping, blood tests, and tears.

E) Every day. I get scared. I have panic attacks. For a long time, I felt like my sexuality had been taken away from me as well as my ability to be close to someone without feeling like I was weighing them down with my emotional and sexual "baggage." I know better now, but it's hard. It's always going to be hard.

This might seem graphic, but this is life. And in comparison to how graphic it could be, this is light.

This article is mostly for myself, and for every person who has not experienced sexual assault because it's more than likely that someone you love has.

This is for the dad of the Stanford swimmer defending his son when it was his son who made a woman have to engrain "rape" into her identity and into her livelihood. You do not know what it is like to have to do that, and I hope that no one else will. However it is statements like that, and people like that that perpetuate the rape culture we live in.

And to the rape victim, you are so damn strong. Your strength has empowered me to share this in a public space without shame.

This is also to the people who think that gender neutral bathrooms are going to cause more incidents of sexual assault - look at the statistics, look at what rape looks like. here are trends and there are commonalities, and transgender people being able to go into the restroom that they feel safe in has never been apart of that discussion. Take a bystander intervention course of you're concerned about rape and sexual assault, or go to the Rape Recovery Center, or become an advocate for sexual assault survivors/victims. Do not further marginalize people and their identities because of crimes that are committed by bad people - regardless of gender. People rape and assault because they do, not because of their gender orientation.

And on an ending note, also to BYU's Honor Code because how could you ever institutionalize victim blaming? Without loads and loads of shame?

But again, this is mostly to and for myself. And also in hopes that more safe spaces can be created for people affected by sexual assault so that we can talk about it without feeling silenced by other people feeling uncomfortable.