“Something happened to me when I went out last…” is always how I start it, because I can’t use the actual words. It makes it too real. So I just say, “something happened.”

I was the one who drank too much. I was the one who just couldn’t handle happy hour. I was the one who wanted it and was talking dirty; at least that’s what he told me in a text message, after the fact. I was the one wearing the provocative outfit. I was the one who got myself into the situation. I should have more control. This is my fault...is what I told myself, after.

I felt like I could never be clean again. Like I could scrub and scrub at my skin, but it would never wash off. I must live in this skin and walk around in it for the rest of my life. The skin that’s now tainted. I must live with this.

I feel like when I explain it, I have to tell the full story and give detail, proof, that yes, it actually happened to me. Me, one who’s been educated, one who “knows better”, one who has read about this, endless stories, and now it’s my story.

It’s a story that is beyond difficult to tell. One, because frankly, it’s difficult to remember. Two, because I don’t want to remember. It consists of blurry and linked images. Some of it is vague, other parts are crystal clear. But the memory is detailed enough to cause scarring.

Now, I stand among all other women who have experienced this. I am a member of a new club. I’ve been initiated. However, the evil spirits attacking my mind keep telling me that my membership isn’t legitimate, that my story isn’t worthy. That I don’t belong because mine wasn’t brutal or violent enough. Or perhaps mine was not as big of a deal as other women's experiences. Mine isn’t important. It doesn’t matter.

It’s hard to use the actual word, the r word. If I use the word, that means I’ve accepted what’s happened to me.

“I just wanna go home...I just wanna go home,” is what I remember pleading to him. I was a ragdoll, lying limp for his convenience. I was wearing a mini skirt from Pink and a lacey crop top. It was only natural that he couldn’t control himself around me, right? My outfit was screaming for attention. The skirt was a mistake. I wish I had worn pants with 80 zippers and buttons; at least it wouldn’t have been so easy for him that way.

Sometimes I feel heavy. This weight will always be there. I feel incapacitated to move it. My choice was taken away. But I have the choice to talk about it and write about it now. I have the choice to take back my story and share it.

Parts of me were bleeding the next morning, literally and figuratively. I thought I had started my period, when I realized that the stain in my underwear was a result of a farther behind orifice.

I awoke wondering, “Was that what happened to me? Is this it?” I convinced myself otherwise. “He didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t in the wrong. I was.”

But everyone I told didn’t agree. “This is not your fault,” they would say. That is hard to digest and believe. If it’s not my fault, why do I feel the shame? Why do I feel the disgust?

My body is a pillaged place. My mind is an evil vortex.

Sometimes I feel like I can put it away, like it doesn’t exist. Other times, I realize that’s a lie. It’s part of my design now. It’s embedded.

I’ll never get rid of this.

I was rap...something happened.

I still can’t say it.

Maybe one day.

I wrote this passage a week after it happened. Today, I reflect on this event three months later. I went to happy hour, or not-so-happy hour in my mind. Later that night, I was raped by someone I knew.

That night, my phone died. My friends and I unintentionally split up so I was left alone with him which didn’t scare me. I wanted to be there with him. At this point, it had only been three months, almost to the day, since my ex-boyfriend broke up with me. So I was still vulnerable. I was craving attention. It felt nice that a male was showing it to me.

I was very drunk. We were wandering around Soho area and he called a friend to pick us up. Now, thinking about this, I wish I had been able to leave the area and ask someone to borrow their phone. I wish I could have called an uber somehow. However, later I realized that the only phone number I had memorized was my ex-boyfriend’s and my father’s. And neither of them lived in my city.

I fell asleep in his car, which I realize could have been very bad. They could have taken me anywhere. I ended up at his apartment where I immediately went straight to a bed to lay down. I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. I remember him periodically leaving the room and me falling in and out of sleep. I felt helpless. I was basically unconscious. Then, I remember him lying behind me as if to spoon me. I didn’t want his hands on me. I remember being penetrated from behind and I lurched forward in pain saying “ow.” I begged through slurred words, “I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home. Please.” I didn’t realize what was happening but I knew that I didn’t want it.

Finally, he brought me home. I went straight to my room to throw up. I plugged my phone in because I knew my friends must be so worried about my whereabouts. But I was too tired to wait for it to power on to text them and I fell asleep.

The next day, I woke up to my friends knocking on my door and rushing in to see me. I looked at my phone and saw tons of messages and missed calls with voicemails. They sat on my bed with me and asked me what happened. As I began to tell them, I realized more and more how it sounded. I almost tried to make it sound "not as bad" because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was making excuses for my poor behavior, or that I was trying to "play the victim." The expressions on their faces began to transform as I continued the story. I began to sob and hold myself, feeling ashamed and dirty.

I went to go to the bathroom when I noticed crimson stains in my undergarments. At first, I wasn’t alarmed knowing this to be a normal womanly process. Then, I noticed that the blood was coming from too far behind. Seeing the water in the toilet bowl dyed red made my stomach flip upside down. Embarrassed, I asked my friend who is a CNA to examine me for any abnormalities.

I really still did not want to claim that I was a “survivor” or “victim” or that rape was actually what had happened. I have told some people but not many. For three months, I have not known how to feel. I didn’t think to go to the authorities because I didn’t want to accept or think that I was a victim of a crime. I told myself that, “I never technically said no, so it couldn’t be rape.” I didn’t want to call it rape, because I didn’t think it was a violent attack. This happened right around the time that the Brock Turner case had blown up on social media. I thought to myself, “Oh, my story is nothing compared to what she must have gone through.”

For awhile, the event didn’t seem to bother me that much. I kept thinking I was supposed to be more upset or crying more. I tried to feel everything. I told myself not to run away from anything, and to allow myself to feel it. I went to my priest. I read about it. But I still didn’t notice any drastic changes to my life.

However, recently I have started noticing changes, triggers. I heard someone say the word “enemy” in my presence, and his face popped into my head. This caught me off guard, because I didn’t think I felt hostile towards him. Sometimes I still feel guilt and shame and wonder if I could have done anything to stop it, but I’ve been told that’s my coping mechanism--the way I try to take back control.

I have begun seeing an advocate. She told me that subconsciously I probably did try to bury this experience but now my body, heart and spirit are telling me that I’m ready to move through the process of healing. Now thinking about it, within three months of each other, two traumatic events happened in my life and I’m not sure if I have actually made a conscious effort to heal from them yet. Yes, I’ve tried making myself happy and “focusing on myself” and most of the time, I do feel happy and fulfilled but I have not really gone through the process of healing.

So this writing and my choice to finally start using my resources to talk to professionals begins my healing journey. I did not write this to seek sympathy. I don’t want people to be weird around me or pity me. I just want people to know. I want people to know that this happens, to way more people than they think because many can never talk about it.

For a while it was extremely difficult to admit and talk about. But now, randomly, I get this urge to blurt it out. It’s like I’m trying to take back my control that was stolen from me. I equate it to perhaps someone of the LGBT community ‘coming out of the closet.’ They don’t just do it once; they do it 1,000 times, every time they have to tell someone new. Sometimes I just wish I could announce it over a loudspeaker. And sometimes I want to keep it quiet because I wonder what people will think. I never know how to feel. But I’m working on it. I’m just trying to do what I feel will help me process and move on, and writing has always been what I’ve turned to.

If anything, I just want to speak up because I want people to understand more about rape. Rape is about power. He took my choice away and decided that what he wanted in that moment was more important. I was made to feel less than human. I couldn’t speak up then. But now I can and I want people to listen.