Learning to heal from my rape after not knowing it had occurred until months later.
(Trigger warning: this article discusses sexual assault and rape.)
When talking to those who have been raped or examining rape culture as a whole, I think the general perception is that when someone is raped, they immediately know what has happened to them, they understand the trauma that they have experienced, and instantly share a visceral response. I think that’s what many of us think of; at least, I know that was how I thought of rape and sexual assault. The constant fear that overwhelmed me as a woman would translate if, God forbid, I ever was sexually assaulted, I would know, and I would respond as someone who has feared it most of her teenage and adult years. That’s not how it went, though–I was sexually assaulted, and I didn’t comprehend this or realize it until six months after.
I thought that I would be safe with someone that I trusted and loved; I felt that my first love would be one that would last a lifetime. I thought that the boy I loved first would be one that would teach me to love, teach me to be in a relationship, that when I had my first sexual encounters, he would ensure that I was safe and show me how it all works. I was wrong, and honestly, I didn’t know then what I did now. Your first sexual partner, in a lot of ways, shapes how you approach sex and love. As was the case for me, a lot of the time, one doesn’t know anything in their first sexual relationship. I didn’t understand how my body worked, or how my partner’s did, I didn’t understand consent or coercion, two things that I would realize months later were a part of the relationship as anything else. 23% of women are sexually assaulted by partners or ex-partners, and I am one of those women.
It started out small, simple things like telling me if I didn’t suck his dick, he would never be able to have children, that blue balls were so painful that he would throw up, he wouldn’t be okay if I didn’t please him. I knew no better than what he told me. I knew no better than what my first love, the only boy I have ever slept with, had told me. I was coerced into sexual acts that I did not consent to several times. Without realizing it, I was raped countless times. Some time into our relationship, I woke up drunk to him touching me; I kept telling him no, telling him to stop until I woke up to him inside of me. I laid there, half awake, drunk, wishing to be anywhere else, and once it was over, an awful feeling coated my body, one that no one could see, including me, yet one that I felt for a long time before realizing what happened to me. Eventually, the relationship ended, something that devastated me. I had lost my first love, and despite this, the love lasted for months later. Along the way, the awful feeling that had coated my body became part of it, coping through the ebbs and flows of hyposexuality and hypersexuality that many rape victims experience, and something I would not comprehend was experiencing until long after. The feeling was one that I assumed was due to the loss of love after the breakup, but around the beginning of the fall 2021 semester, I realized what had happened to me.
I realized that I was sexually assaulted; I thought about what had happened as someone who was no longer in love with my rapist, as someone who had found a new love. I found love in myself and in another man, one who had treated me better in the two weeks of knowing me better than the boy had after being in a relationship with me for seven months. I read another woman’s story, another woman who had experienced sexual assault from someone with whom she had been in a relationship. And suddenly, all of it clicked into place. All of the moments in which the awful feeling had surrounded me without my complete comprehension, I realized I was sexually assaulted.
I would be lying to say that at this point, I learned everything. It would take months before I realized that I had been coerced into sexual acts countless times, and a year before I was able to say I was raped and not just sexually assaulted; I realized I wasn’t sure if he used protection when he raped me. One year after my rape, I was able to tell my parents and my family. And now, after a year and two months, I told my story. I think that brings me to the purpose of this article.
I can only hope that someone out there reading my story may be benefitted; maybe they will see something in a different light, perhaps they will understand their own story better, maybe they will find the strength to tell their story and heal. All I can say is writing this has been recovering in itself.