A few things happen when you become the victim of a sexual assault.

For some, they stifle the feelings of guilt, shame, and hate, and slowly, over time, they lose a sense of themselves and their identity. For others, the weight of what happened places them on a path of destructive decisions that eventually lead further down a downward spiral, until they are somewhere they never meant to be, or become someone they no longer recognize.

For me, I did both. I stifled feelings for as long as I could remember until suddenly, years later, I looked back and couldn't remember how I got to where I was, or who I was anymore. It's amazing how much one person's actions can rob you of your self-worth and identity.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones. No one told my story to the whole wide world. No one outed me as a victim. I was able to tell my story on my terms. I was lucky enough to be able to get help, gain a new understanding of my circumstances, and begin to heal from the things that happened to me. I can only hope that happens for others, and I have made it part of my life efforts to help other victims of sexual assault. That's why I had to write this. Speaking as a victim of sexual-assault, your piece was inappropriate at best.

First of all, how dare you out a victim. Fine, you can come to the realization of your actions, and yes, you should own up to those. However, you should not be putting it out on the internet for the whole world to see. You already took away the choice he should have had, so how dare you take away his choice to have his story out there. Let me ask you this: Did you ask him before you published this piece?

Don't get me wrong -- I understand what you were trying to do. You were trying to share a personal experience in an effort to spread a message about the issue of consent in a relationship. But truthfully, you failed. Your piece ended up being full of excuses and blaming the victim for the circumstances you two were in. How dare you.

In one article you managed to out your victim, and tick off a lot of others who have been in similar situations.

Let me be frank--I have been in that situation, but I was the victim. It's terrifying. You feel like you have no voice, no power, and you feel guilty for even attempting to say no. That's why he never said anything. Stop blaming him for not speaking up, and come to the conclusion that he should have never been in the position to have to speak up about it in the first place. You put him in an impossible situation, so you don't get to play the victim card when he finally brings it to your attention.

Your friends had no business telling you that what you did was OK. And they most definitely should not have said it was OK because "you didn't know." Are you serious? That's a dangerous line...you mean to say it's OK to do something just because you didn't know you were doing it? Murder for example? Or is it just OK when it's sexual assault? People should not be enabling this type of behavior. End of story.

You admitted to knowing you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing. You said yourself, you had a feeling it wasn't fine and that you had done something wrong. You even talked about how you asked him over and over again if he was mad. I guess I just don't understand why you had to post this for the whole world to see, and in an attempt to make it go viral and have tons of people see it.

I can only hope you have reached out to him, had a genuine conversation, come to terms with what you did and owned up to it, and sincerely apologized to this man. And I hope he has the strength to heal from this.