Being a woman is a wondrous thing. While I am much more than my gender, I am able to appreciate the aspects of femininity men cannot understand nor impersonate. However, I cannot forget that along with being a woman comes certain burdens, especially the burden of sexual assault.

This is not to say that men are not victims of sexual assault. In America alone, "About 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime." In no way do I mean to diminish the pain and suffering of the men who have been victims of sexual assault. You are survivors. You are strong.

That being said, being a young adult woman is terrifying. If we look at statistics, "1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime." That is horrendous, and if we look at the statistics for women between the ages of 18-24 we see that "Women 18-24 who are enrolled in college are 3 times more likely than women in general to suffer from sexual violence. Females of the same age who are not enrolled in college are 4 times more likely."

I can't speak for the other college-age women out there, but the possibility of sexual assault has me constantly on the lookout for drugged drinks, sketchy guys, and any other warning signs. I am almost overly cautious in that I find myself feeling terrified more often than I used to and probably more often than is necessary for my safety.

I wasn't always as alert about this issue as I am now. I've read and heard the statistics over and over again, but until you experience the fear of a potential sexual assault or watch someone in your life experience it, it isn't as real to you.

While I am fortunate enough to have never been the victim of sexual assault, nor have I had any of my closest friends go through that experience, I do know men and women who have dealt with this issue. But until I lived through a potential dangerous situation, the fear was not as real for me.

This past summer I spent six weeks studying abroad in Spain. I had an amazing time despite all the difficulties that people conveniently forget to mention when they describe studying abroad. Unfortunately, one of the worst parts of my trip was the feeling of fear I felt while in the streets at night.

To explain, here is my description of my most terrifying night in Spain.

"We left the discoteca and started to walk towards the other when something happened. Not even 2 streets away from the club, we passed a man who was farther away and moving in a direction away from us. As we passed and he spotted us, he took another look at us and turned around. He immediately got on his cell phone and began to walk in the same direction as us.

Right away we knew something was wrong. Call it intuition or just plain common sense, but something about the situation was very off. We had been speaking Spanish to each other all night and about 5 seconds after he got on the phone we said “Alright, we are only speaking English right now. A communication delay cannot happen.” While none of us were intoxicated, we were not 100% sober anymore. That’s not saying we didn’t know exactly what was happening or how to react. We were being safe. All three of us had immediate reactions and knew we needed to get ourselves out of there. We hadn’t been loud, we weren’t drunk, and we weren’t by ourselves. Nope, we didn’t do anything wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that we were 3 young, pretty women without a man walking with us. Not our fault. Simply circumstance.

We whispered to each other to walk quicker. Without saying anything, we all agreed we needed to get back to our school as fast as possible. We turned left down a side street and a woman was there walking her dog. This side street was laid out where you could still see the street we had been on.

Not even 10 seconds after we had walked up to her, the first thing she said was “call the police.” That’s it. She didn’t need to take a second look. After seeing the situation, she had come to the same conclusion we had. This was trouble and we needed help. We asked her if she thought we could sneak left past him and she said we had to try.

We turned left and briskly walked up the street. At the intersection to the way we needed to go we didn’t see the man, but we didn’t slow down. Less than a minute later we saw him behind us, still on the phone and walking much more quickly towards us.

“Run.”

I don’t even know which one of the three of us said it. Maybe all of us. Doesn’t matter. We sprinted up three blocks. My heart was racing. We didn’t know if his contact on the phone was going to be waiting father up the street or not but we knew it would be a 2 minute run to the school.

I could barely hear anything over the racing of my heart. We stood waiting at the door for 20 seconds before it opened. We may or may not have heard footfalls father down the road, but honestly, that could have been my overactive imagination or a little alcohol talking. We rushed inside and profusely thanked the man who had opened the school door. We told him the story and he was just as worried as we were. He asked us repeatedly if we were safe and it was a relief to be able to say “Yes. We are safe. We’re back. We’re safe.”

I was lucky. I got back safely. Not everyone does.

I knew that night had affected me, but I didn't realize how much that night had changed my life and my sense of safety/security until I watched Lady Gaga's "Til It Happens To You" video.

If you've been on the Internet at all you've probably heard the buzz about this video. It's a necessarily graphic video that poignantly showcases the pain and lasting hurt that accompanies sexual assault. It reminds viewers that sexual assault (especially on college campuses) can happen to anyone and that we must all be supportive of each other during these sad occurrences.

While watching the video I could feel myself becoming frightened. I had goosebumps and it felt like the temperature had dropped 12 degrees in a minute. I could feel the terror in my throat. It was like it wanted to escape, but I couldn't convince myself to make any noise. When the video was over I had to sit and take deep breaths for close to five minutes. I had been shaking, the pen in my hand wobbling over the Spanish homework I could no longer focus on.

You see, when that man in Spain got on the phone and started following us, all three of us immediately thought “sex-trafficking.”

It sounds unrealistic even to my own ears, but that’s the American in me talking. That’s not to say Americans don’t participate or that this doesn’t happen in America. It does. But the warnings abroad about sex-trafficking are much different than back home and much more terrifying.

When we saw he was on the phone, we knew there was a possibility he was calling for more men to come and corner us off. They could have been in a car or on foot. It wouldn’t have mattered. If we hadn’t made it to our school or his friends had shown up, we probably would have been kidnapped. Maybe not sex-trafficked, but there was a high chance. We weren’t trying to be dramatic or make up some story. That was our immediate concern and it felt (and I think it was) very very real.

Once I calmed down after watching the video, I started to think about the ways in which I had changed since my Spanish experience. I realized I've been so afraid since then. Every time I'm on campus at night I'm worried. I look around for potential attackers even when I'm only a 2 minute walk from my dorm. It could be 9 o'clock on a weeknight and I'd still have a chill run down my spine on the walk back from my best guy friend's dorm.

Any time I walk alone at night on campus I am terrified. It sucks. I feel ashamed about it, and I feel weak. I don't like asking my guy friends to walk me back to my dorm even though I know they would do so if I asked. It seems like such an inconvenience when I feel like I just need to woman up and get over myself.

That's what fear does. It creeps in and changes how you look at the world. True fear is cunning. It is slow to move but so effective.

I live my life differently and I see the world around me differently because of this new fear. In part, this is a good thing. I am so much more aware of the dangerous possibilities around me. I'm probably safer because of it. But a life lived in fear of the world is not truly a life.

No one, neither male nor female, should be relegated to a life of fear, especially not because of sexual assault.

We as a community need to be on the look out for dangerous situations. Sexual assault can happen to anyone and no one brings it upon themselves. Lady Gaga's video has continued the trend of open discussion of collegiate sexual assault. Now, it's on all of us to speak out about our fears so as to help protect others and maybe even help us move past our fear.

You don't understand the fear til it happens to you.

*All quoted information and statistics in this article come from https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexua...