The Worst Night of My Life

I have been seeing this hashtag all over the place lately, for good reason. It is wonderful that so many are stepping forward to bring to light situations that have happened to them. To be honest, I never planned on telling my story. I saw all these other people talking about what happened to them and I thought to myself, “There are already enough people talking. I don’t need to.” That felt like an excuse, though. Now I do not think anyone needs to share their story; if you aren’t comfortable with it then do not feel as if you are required because you aren’t. For myself, though, if the only reason I had to not share was just that I thought enough people had, then that didn’t feel like a good enough reason.

If I am honest, I have had more than one unwanted sexual advancement directed at me, but I only want to talk about one — the time I was raped by a friend of a friend. I remember everything so vividly that it is difficult to remove from my mind. For the longest time, I went back and forth blaming myself for trying to rationalize it to believing it wasn’t really rape. Over two years now, I finally don’t try to do either anymore.

I tried to blame myself by saying I shouldn’t have gone to his house, I shouldn’t have been alone with him, and I should have been stronger in saying no. Maybe if I did something different it wouldn’t have happened, and yes that might be true, but he shouldn’t have done what he did, to begin with. When a woman says no, it means no. It doesn’t matter if she said yes at first or not; the second she tells you to stop you need to stop.

The rationalizing came from the fact I had never been in that type of situation before and I didn’t know if what had just happened was really rape. All I knew was I was very uncomfortable with what had happened, and I hadn’t wanted it. I had said no to begin with but then things had escalated, and I wanted to fight but I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. The hand around my throat didn’t give me much ability to protest either.

So, how did it lead to this? I had started talking to this friend of a friend and he seemed decent enough. He was nice and had a lot of similar interests so when he asked if I wanted to come over to his house and watch tv and play video games, I didn’t think anything of it. So, he came over to my place and picked me up in his car. We went back to his place and started watching some movies. It was fine, to begin with. He eventually kissed me a little and that didn’t bother me. Then it moved into uncomfortable territory. Things went way farther than I was comfortable with and then I was stuck there. All I could think was that I was not going to fall asleep here, but I didn’t want to call anyone because I didn’t want to escalate the situation. He thought what had happened was perfectly fine while I was sitting there in fear of my life. Finally, he drove me home, and acted like we were friends. I ran inside and cried.

My trust in people was forever changed. At this point in my life, I wasn’t a stranger to unwanted attention, but it had never gone that far. I didn’t know how to process what had happened. So, I did the one thing I knew how to do: I forgot about it. I attempted to lock away all the memories of that event and act as if nothing had ever happened. Some of my friends didn’t buy it, though, and knew something was wrong, and a few were successful in dragging the truth out of me. One person was very adamant about me calling the police and they stopped talking to me for a long time after I refused to report it.

While all this emotional turmoil and loss of a friendship was going on, this guy continued to contact me. I tried to be nice, for a reason I still don’t know. I kept refusing to hang out with him and finally, I got to the point that I blocked his number and Facebook information. That was a big step in moving on and starting to recover from what happened. I still have difficulty from that night, but I am strong. Healing must come from within, and you can get support from others, but they cannot do the healing for you.