April 1 is known to most as April Fool’s Day. It’s characterized by friends and family having fun with each other, organizations and institutions playing practical jokes on their patrons and one day out of the year for humans to be allowed to take the seriousness out.
This April 1 was different for me. As it approached, I didn’t find the jokes funny or clever, but instead irritating and unpalatable. The smiles and laughter felt distant, like I was locked away from them.
April 1 hasn’t been April Fool’s Day since last year. For the rest of my life, it will remain the day I was sexually assaulted by someone I thought I could trust.
I wondered if it was true or if I made it all up. There was no way it could have happened to me; I refused to acknowledge it. I felt like maybe I actually had nothing to be upset about. What if I were a liar?
I racked my brain for the bits and pieces of the story I couldn’t remember as evidence. But, late at night, it would come back to me, and the feeling from that day would wash over my body, freezing me beneath the cover of my sheets. It couldn’t be ignored, no matter if the part of me wondering if it had happened was actually me hoping that it didn’t.
It was only a month before my freshman year of college ended when it happened. I packed up my room in Beaver Hall with hands that shook, even when my head was quiet. I went to the last days of my classes with a pit in my stomach and tear stains on my sleeves from the droplets I couldn’t blink away.
As I went back home for the summer, my body began to physically be unable to handle the stress, causing me to break out in cystic acne like I never had before. I couldn’t accept that my body had been regarded as nothing more than a tool for someone else to use. I bottled up my words until they spilled out in red splotches on my skin.
I wondered if I had said “no” loud enough or firm enough. I wondered what more would’ve happened had the fire alarms not gone off in his room, allowing me to get out. I wondered why.
I felt ashamed and guilty to still exist beneath my own skin — the skin that he had touched and disgraced. I fell away from my friends and pretended the thoughts in my head weren’t vile. I didn’t realize it then, but the light had been taken from me, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
My friends worried when I stopped talking about my first year in college, dancing around that day, even as memories resurfaced and the words burned on my tongue. The sun was out, and his blinds were closed, but the shadow of the tree outside his window was being played with by the wind projected onto the beige curtains.
It’s burned into my memory like an image left up too long on a television. It was my only escape behind that locked door, but I couldn’t form the words to describe the experience. My silence was deafening to the people who have always known me as bright and bubbly, but it grew too cacophonous in my head to find the pieces of the sentences I needed to let loose.
For months, I lost myself. Even as I started therapy and began opening up to my loved ones, I couldn’t reach the parts of myself that pushed me to be motivated, hardworking and optimistic. I was hopeless.
I was angry I had let him take so much from me. I was angry that every time I closed my eyes, or when the warm air had a chill to it at the end of the breeze, I could see myself walking out of his building, my heart racing and hands shaking. It was like the day never ended.
I knew I wouldn’t be the same, but I didn’t have to stay who I became right after I was assaulted.
Life moved on around me even while I stayed frozen in place, but maybe that’s what I needed. When the thoughts became too loud — when they threatened my livelihood — I focused on my friends accomplishing their dreams, my dog sniffing the summer air and my parents celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. I saw the life that I was still a part of.
My best friend once told me, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” I had a choice to make. I mustered the last of my energy to refuse to let him win.
He didn’t have to take from me anymore, so I took control back. I went to the doctor and asked to start an antidepressant. I talked to my friends about the sadness and anger I felt. I stopped hiding behind the trauma of my past and decided to embrace the future I will walk into.
For months, life ended on April 1. As April 1 rolled around this year, it certainly wasn’t easy to swallow. But then April 2 came, followed by April 3. It’s not over for me. I’ve accomplished the first steps of my lifelong goals, setting myself up for a future I can be proud of.
I was never alone. Even when I thought I had no one, there have been countless other women and men who have gone through the same stages of grief for the person they were “before” that I had.
Even if you don’t think you’re allowed to hurt or that you’re overreacting, your gut feeling isn’t meant to be ignored. I believed that I was wrong for hurting, but in the end, allowing myself to feel the hurt led me to be able to heal.
As we near the end of Sexual Assault Awareness month, ironically occurring in April, I realize now that life didn’t end on April 1 last year. I won’t ever be free of the memory, but finally, I have reclaimed the days I lost. It won’t consume me any longer. I won’t let it.
I never thought I would come this far, but really, my journey has only just begun, and I’ve never been more excited to see where the world will take me.