Trigger warning for mentions of sexual assault, rape, and suicidal ideation. Viewer discretion is advised.
I’ve tried for years to write about my sexual assault but I’ve never been able to make it poetic or aesthetic enough for the world. I’ve tried poetry, I’ve tried prose, I’ve tried painting and video form but I can’t ever seem to make it palatable. Because the tragedy, the pain, the assault of a woman can only ever truly be mourned if it lends itself to pinterest boards and tumblr quotes. Even writing this I’ve already censored myself once by not saying rape, because I don’t think it was rape even thought it felt like it. But it wasn’t violent, it wasn’t loud, I was never drugged or attacked, I didn’t even scream so there was no need for a hand over my mouth. So it’s not beautiful enough to be cared about nor is it violent enough to be deemed rape, even though I felt violated.
I keep going back and forth with that idea because it’s never truly felt like I can claim that word for myself, that perhaps if I did I would be discrediting the people who have been raped with force, who have been drugged at a nightclub and woken up with their underwear gone. I don’t want to discredit the pain and suffering of those who have had it worse but, I don’t know where that leaves me.
In fourteen months it will have been ten years since it happened, because of course I remember the date, and I wish I could say I’ve gotten over it but I haven’t—nobody ever really does. So I just live with it, day in and day out. It’s why summers are harder for me. It’s probably why I despise the heat so much, the humidity of summer clings to my wrists and it reminds me of how he touched me. Ten years and I have nothing to show for it.
I guess I have healed in some ways. I can sleep in my own bed again and the dark isn’t as scary anymore. I don’t get panic attacks when a man stands too close to me. I can talk to men at all which is a huge step up from where I was in the months after it. But some nights, when it’s eerily quite and the heat creeps in through the cracked window I curl up on my side as tightly as I can until I’m sure I’ve gone so numb I can’t feel his hands on me. I still cross my legs a little too tight, I can’t sleep with underwear off, I pick at my skin a little too much. Sometimes my showers need to be scalding hot so I can truly, finally feel clean. I’ve switched to exfoliating gloves because they make me raw, they’re so abrasive it feels like I’m peeling back my skin.
Scared kids hide under the covers of their bed when they feel danger swooping in, a habit that stands the test of time but I don’t even get that. I don’t even want to confront the idea that this man took so much from me he took my bed, my room, my covers, the sheets, the pillows on which I collapse onto at the end of a long day. I can’t even have that anymore. My bed, his bed, the bed.
I am alone.
Because I can’t talk about this without being pitied, without being boiled down to my victimhood.
I am mad that I can’t let this go. As hard as I try it’s replaced my shadow. Doomed to follow me everywhere I go, touch everything I do, experience the life I hope to build soon. The pitying looks in peoples eyes, the denial on others lips, I can’t seem to win. I am too fragile for some, to gory for others, not horrid enough for the real snooty, and not enough for myself. I keep asking myself when will I be done with this? when will it ever be over? and as the years stagger on I’m afraid it never will be.
I’m worried that this will be a part of my story until I die. I worry this is all I will ever be to people, to myself. But most of all, I worry about having to listen to those who say one day I will make it to the other side—because I won’t.
There is no ‘other side.’ This is all I get, these memories, these phantom touches, and a plethora of apologies from those I share my story with.
I’m exhausted.
I am tired of loosing sleep over this. I’m tired of explaining it to people. I am tired of those that don’t get it pretend to. And I am most tired of those who beg me to let go of my anger because it will ‘do me no good.’ Despite the fact that this resentment, this spite is what has kept me going. I have healed in spite of what happened to me. I have changed and grown in spite of them all. This searing anger has kept me alive. Because I refuse to give up my life for someone who so casually took my soul. My joy. Because I deserve to live in spite of what he did not because.
I have always wanted to write about this. Make it easily digestible, comfortable. I’ve wanted to tie it up with a dusty rose bow to make sure the audience can still clap once the curtain calls. I’ve wished to make it meaningful and culturally relevant like those lolita references on peoples substack or perhaps attach it to a good old Americana vibe. Perhaps if I could successfully make my story beautiful it would matter.
I cannot end this with a deeply insightful thought. I have given my life to healing from this so I apologize if I cannot give you my beauty now.
Will this essay ever see the light of day? I don’t know but for the first time since it happened I finally feel I have gotten my story right.