It took me three years to realize I was sexually assaulted. And even as I'm writing this, I find myself shaking. Paranoid. Worried that someone somewhere will see this and tell me I'm making it all up. Tell me I'm lying. But I want this out on the table, for myself and for every survivor who's keeping their story locked up inside them.

My paranoia has some weight behind it. I was seventeen, right at the end of my junior year in high school. A boy had threatened me with animal abuse and told me he kept chloroform in his basement. I was terrified. He wouldn't stop asking for sex, no matter how many times I said no. I wasn't sure what would happen if I kept saying no, so I did what he said without a word.

I didn't even realize what had happened. I just knew that it didn't feel right, that I couldn't stop shaking and a shower was the only thing that felt like it might help. (It didn't.) Long story short, I ended up alone, scared and thinking I was pregnant. When I finally tried opening up to someone two months later, they told me (and everyone else) that I was lying.

I lost all my friends in an instant, most of them believing my assaulter and taking his side. I was told it was my fault. Was called a bitch. Everyone was intentionally isolating me and it didn't take long for me to start blaming myself. It made my senior year easier to deal with when I felt like I deserved it -- for awhile, anyway. But all the while, there was a little voice in my head telling me, "I was assaulted."

Things naturally got harder and I can't remember a day where I didn't end up in the bathroom crying. A girl from my class followed me once and asked if I was all right. I lied and told her yes, but that was the most care I had been shown all year. Thinking about it now makes me want to cry. I'll never forget it.

I found solace in music. My iPod was practically an extension of my body. Unless I had to pay attention, I drowned out everyone else. By November, it was hard to go to school. Every day was more difficult than the last until I finally didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. But I did it anyway. I showered, drank coffee, put on makeup (while crying, which was pretty difficult) and got myself to school.

There was a framed print on my bookshelf that helped, one that said "Be brave." I looked at it every morning, took a deep breath and told myself to get up and face everyone. For my eighteenth birthday, my dad redesigned the print and I got it tattooed on my hip: a permanent reminder of the things and strength that I'm capable of.

It got to the point where I lost all desire to go to college in New York state. I didn't want to leave my parents, but I couldn't put myself through four more years of school with the same kids who treated me like a ghost. I had to force myself away from everyone I loved and everything I knew just to survive. And it killed me. My life and plans were turned upside down, and all because I could no longer find safe footing in a place I called home.

That's how I ended up six hours away at Champlain College, the place where I finally had enough space to realize, for myself, that I was sexually assaulted. The college started a See Say Do campaign during my sophomore year and I wanted to get behind it. I started to do research, trying to figure out what the campaign actually was and what I could do to help.

I came across an article about sexual coercion, an overlooked form of assault in which consent isn't present because the coerced person feels pressured, guilted and is afraid to say no. I fit into that category, almost too easily. And I suddenly wished I hadn't repressed that voice in my head.

I still wonder what would have happened if I had listened to it, if I had tried harder to open up to people and get them to listen to me, because it's three years later and I can't do anything. But I'm hoping that by writing this, it will raise awareness about the reality of sexual coercion and about what that kind of guilt can do to victims' lives.

To anyone from high school who may read this: I don't care what you have to say. I don't hate you, but I don't want to know you. I don't want apologies or questions or sympathy or justification. I just wanted to say this, to have the truth out there and to provide comfort to other survivors who come across this.

There is so much I want to say to other survivors, but I think this is most important: victim-blaming is the most harmful when it comes from within. Sexual assault isn't a cookie-cutter crime. You are not alone. I am not alone. We are not alone. There is strength inside all of us. We just have to find it.