It seems that every time I click the home button to light up my phone screen, a news story appears with “… has been accused of sexual assault.” I never thought seeing these things would resonate with me.
I never could have imagined that I would share the same experience.
I never would have imagined that I would be raped by the age of 20.
The word "rape" itself scares me. I rarely find myself using it. Instead, I mumble, "that one time" or "when I was with that guy."
For the longest time, I was convinced what had happened to me was how things were supposed to happen the first time.
When he had come up behind me that night at the bar, I thought, "this is how it is supposed to go." When he asked me to go home with him, I thought that he was a nice guy. When he locked the door to his room, I thought that he wanted to make me feel safe.
When he took my clothes off without asking, I thought that he was taking the lead.
When he didn’t ask me, "are you sure you want to do this," I thought he wasn’t supposed to ask. When I said, "I can’t do this," I thought he would stop. When he kicked me out in the rain with no way home, I thought, once again, that this is how one-night stands go. When I woke up the next morning on the hard floor of my dorm hallway, I thought that the reason my body hurt was that I slept on the floor all night.
When I felt my innocence slip away that morning, I thought it was my fault.
I let myself think that it was my fault, that I lost my virginity to a guy who I would never be able to recognize again. I let myself think that what happened that night was OK. I let myself think that what he did to me was how sex was supposed to happen.
I believed all of this until the day someone asked me “have you ever had something done to you, that you did not want to happen?”
I didn’t know how to respond.
I didn’t think that what happened that one time had an effect on this answer. As I slowly explained that I told him that I didn’t want to have sex before going to his house, I began to feel chills resonate through my body; I felt lost in the small room where we sat.
As I looked up at the person’s concerned face, I heard the words that changed my life, “this may be hard to understand, but I need you to know that from what you have just explained, that you were, in fact, raped.”
At that moment, I felt foreign in my own body; I didn’t know whether to empty the contents of my stomach or to fall into a fit of hysterics. I just sat there with my feet flat on the ground, with my hand in lap, and said nothing, because at that moment there was nothing left for me to feel.
In the days following, I had changed — I was a different person. I would lie awake at night imagining him hovering over my naked body. I would cry in the shower before I left for class, because I felt so vulnerable. I would shake out of anxiety while I walked to class because I was surrounded by people who I did not know.
I still struggle with these things day-to-day in my life, but they have become manageable. I still don’t know how to live with what has happened to me, but what I do know is that it was not my fault.
