Thoughts & Opinions: Musing on Sexual Trauma

On rape. Written in October, 2014. Written about May 5th, 2014

Before you go thinking that this is something I need to do to pour my own emotions out because "Oh god, they're so hard to handle, I need to rip my heart out and put it in words just to handle everything," stop yourself right now. Yes, I'm doing this for myself, but I'm doing it more to prove a point to myself. This isn't a statement for the world, though sending it to the world does help. This is something that happened to me and affected my outlook on life, and it's dark and personal and maybe you don't want to read anymore, and that's okay. Like I said, this confessional isn't for you anyway. It's for me; I deserve something for me, don't I? I don't want your pity or extra attention, and don't you dare shoot me looks that tell me that I'm broken in your eyes, that I'm less than whole.

So to begin, a few months ago (actually five months to the day yesterday) on May 5th, I was violated and raped. It was by a friend that I trusted and in a place that I once felt safe - but otherwise I don't want to go into the details or give a play-by-play because that isn't what matters. I have been in pretty low places in my life but the last five months have by far been the worst undoubtedly. You want to know the truth of it all? About rape and how it happens and what it does to a person? It isn't how the media portrays it, with dramatic movies and love stories gone wrong and gore and all the melodrama that we eat up every day. It's brutal but not because of the bruises, which are all too easily hidden away; it's uncensored and bleak beyond what I was ever prepared to handle but I'm here now and handling it every day. Until now I've honestly felt it to be this burden that I would have to carry around, because that's the only way you ever hear of people handling it; but why should I have to bear it as such a shameful burden? The world sees victims as having undergone some sort of a punishment, and until now, I adhered to that belief too. But fuck that, it isn't my fault. I'm relinquishing that burden, because it's too crushingly heavy.

The entirety of the week after the incident, I didn't eat, I barely drank, I didn't change my clothes, I never left the couch, I didn't watch TV or listen to music or read. For one whole week I stared at my bedroom wall caught halfway between sleep and wasting away. The first time I did move was by actual force of two friends who had been present at the time of the incident in the first place, when after a week of thinking I'd vanished from the face of the earth, they let themselves into my house and lifted me off the couch. I didn't know if I wanted it or not, at that point I don't think I wanted anything in the world. Unfortunately for me though, the world had pressing obligations and responsibilities shoved down my throat; I had to go back to college for summer semester. That all went by in a blur of hiding away in my dorm room, staring at the wall in there - really a good change in scenery, I suppose. I've spent so many months hating myself now, hating what happened, and blaming myself, but also unknowingly and slowly gaining the strength to build myself back up again.

Okay, so you want more truth of the actual incident itself? I promise you, this is it: I don't remember if I cried while it happened or if I just laid there with a blank face. I don't remember if it hurt or if I felt nothing at all because I wanted to make myself numb. I do remember though not wanting to scream because of the shame I felt, and I remember the terror. You don't know what it is to no longer own your own body. You don't know what it is to not willingly give yourself to someone, but rather have them take everything you are despite all your own protests. It is horrifying and I would never wish it upon anyone, because you are your body, and to have someone take your body from you is to have them destroy who you are as a human being.

And now? I've let myself be a part of the world again. I'm not who I used to be, and I'll always wish that what happened never did, but I can't change that anymore than I can return to who I once was before everything. I haven't even changed for the better. That's one thing that no one tells you after trauma: you don't change for the better. You survive, you keep on going with life, not because you'll come out stronger afterwards, but because you'll come out a different person entirely. This new person that I am is no better or worse than who I used to be, in reality you can't even compare these two people because they're on entirely different planes in life. This person that I am now accepts what happened, not because I'm at peace with it, but because I know it will only hurt me further trying to reject the reality of it all. It won't define my life, even if the rest of the world will define me by it (another thing they hide about the truth of it: the world judges you, no matter how accepting your loved ones may be).

A few more truths before I end this vignette - should you choose to hide what happened from the world, which is a choice anyone is free to make (I feel you should be given more freedom in choice after having all choice ripped away from you), it won't leave you any better off than shouting to the world your proclamation of injustice. Should you hide from the reality, it still eats away at you, and every day the world tears you down in its subtle ways that stab you through and through, the only difference is that when the world talks about rape and sexism, you can't speak out against it so enthusiastically without revealing the truth you're dying to hide from. Should you claim the truth of it all and confess to everyone you can what happened, they will judge you the way people do. You will seem broken and incomplete, filthy and tarnished and damaged beyond repair, and when the world sees you that way and you are as vulnerable as you are, you also see yourself that way.

Maybe I was broken, maybe part of me had been ripped away when everything was said and done. Maybe the scratches on my legs were where the person I used to be leaked out, and maybe my attacker, once a friend, stole that part of my life from me. But I'm whole again, just with a new scar with a new story that has scabbed over. It won't ever go away because there is no way to make it an untruth, but it can become that cut on your arm that you forget in a year or two, or the place on your foot where you once needed two stitches and nowadays you can't even remember which foot it was that was hurt. I'm a different person, no better or worse off than I once was, but I'm different and that's the truth of it all.