In honor of Teen Dating Violence Prevention and Awareness Month, we have chosen to feature an anonymous submission from a Grinnell student who experienced sexual assault while in high school. It is our hopes that this article does not instigate blame games but rather initiates a much-needed dialogue about a subject that is too often shrouded in shame and silence. Please repect the privacy and dignity of this author and all victims/survivors of sexual assault.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual harrassment or assault, please know that you are supported and that you are not alone. Call (641) 260-1615 to speak confidentially to a Grinnell Advocate, and visit Grinnell’s resource page to find additional information about available avenues of support.
Warning: The content below may be triggering.
I was barely 16, and he was wearing a bright blue sweatshirt and khakis.
It was the first time a boy had ever touched me. Before I had risen from my knees, he called his sister to come pick him up. I was very still, woozy from the alcohol but somehow calm. His sister has my first name, I thought, repeating this new knowledge over and over in my mind as if by doing so for long enough I could will myself to disappear.
After the headlights flashed in our direction, he had backed away apologetically, fumbling with his zipper. I curled up in the mulch and sobbed.
“This can be our little secret,” he had said, shoving my hand down his boxers and covering it with his own, rubbing furiously.
He was unattractive but popular, a varsity lacrosse player who had until that night been a casual acquaintance, someone to whom I had nodded in the hallways and occasionally smoked with on the trails behind our high school. On those weekend afternoons and evenings in months before, I would fumble with the carb and sip a concoction of my father’s Tanqueray and bourbon out of a Poland Springs bottle, thinking to myself: “This is it, these are the best years of my life.”
I never paused to consider whether I actually felt this way or merely parroted a vision of teenage life gleaned from watching too many John Hughes movies, for to pause in the pursuit of adolescence– that magical period of life which is equal parts clammy and glorious– to pause would be to admit weakness and thus defeat.
Given that defeat was not an option, I steeled myself to enjoy it, damn it, because that was what kids who had it all together did, and I was as desperate to pass for having it all together as I was terrified that my innate fraudulence would somehow be revealed.
But I digress.
When it’s all over, you awaken to find yourself initiated into the strange underworld of “after” that hides in plain sight. They tell you, and you learn by experience, how to navigate its terrain. Well-intentioned people and institutions help somewhat, if at all. The judgment is the worst, whether it is expressed with overt disdain or deafening silence. Meanwhile, life goes on.
There were phone calls to parents and school administrators, orchestrated by my divorced mother and father. From the sidelines of my life, I silently screamed in defiance to no avail; not to tell, it’s not a big deal, it doesn’t matter, I don’t matter.
Meanwhile, life goes on.
There were meetings with guidance counselors and vice principals where I stared at the knickknacks on their desks and imagined myself floating on the ceiling, pausing momentarily to contemplate the scene before flying out of the room and out of my body, out of my self. The power to disconnect my mind and body was fascinating, and developing it became my secret project. It was a seductive obsession; both painkiller and narcotic, my kryptonite disguised as my saving grace. How could I manipulate and perfect the outer shell so that the inner self was impenetrable?
“Penetration” is the definition of rape in my home state; it is a bright red line that aims to distinguish among types of offenses but often obscures as much as it accomplishes. Technically, the interaction had met criteria to be classified as such, but wearing the mantle of “rape” felt uncomfortable, thrust upon me forcibly when all I wanted to do was run away away away until I collapsed, out of breath but finally safe. Safe, silent, weightless, anonymous.
But women cannot just walk out of their lives. What is worse, in the real world of social politicking and bureaucratic aftermath, nobody tells you how to deal with the guilt. Self-doubt, self-denial, self-sabotage, unrelenting shame: these are the overwhelming feelings that propelled me into apathetic impulsivity. There are many days and nights when I have been equal parts irresponsible like a child and cynical in the way that one only becomes after seeing too much, too soon.
I wish someone had told me then, not only that it really, truly, honest to God wasn’t my fault, but also that I did not have to police my fears. If you frantically shove your darkest doubts to the corners of your mind and mask them with layer upon layer of premature platitudes and stolen security, they fester, tumorous, often disguised but eternally poised to initiate self-destruction.
See yourself, and then forgive yourself. Forgive yourself as if your life depends on it. It is the only way.