The first time a hookup with a guy went “horribly wrong” I was 16. I called one of my closest friends and immediately told her what happened. There were a couple of details I kept from her out of fear she might see me as weak. As I continued to talk on the phone with her, I was hysterical and bawling my eyes out. She asked me whether I said “no” while he was doing things I didn’t like. I hadn’t, it was like my brain froze and it wouldn’t let me speak but only cry. I told her towards the end of it I screamed “no” and “stop,” and he got off me just as his girlfriend, whom I didn’t know about, walked in. My best friend, my best friend, told me it was just a bad hookup and I’d get over it in a day. And that it wasn’t that big of a deal, and I didn’t say “no” earlier so technically it was fine, and he didn’t do anything “rapey.”
She was wrong. A day went by, and I felt worse. I woke up the next morning trembling. I left that university program early to fly home. When I got home, I didn’t leave my room for a week. I couldn’t explain to anyone, especially my family, the reason I felt the way I did or what feelings I was feeling. It was like my physical body was there… but in every other aspect, I wasn’t. My days began to mold together into an endless time loop of sleeping, watching TV, and being forced to eat by my parents. I watched TV to constantly distract myself, but it wasn’t enough to stop my mind from wandering off to the worse memories. During the night, the hours I spent with him replayed over and over again in my brain as if I was watching a security tape that was on a constant loop with no eject button. Some nights I cried more than others. But I couldn’t understand why I felt this way. This is gross. This is nothing. I tried to find answers on the internet as to why I felt this way. All those “answers” scared me more than just staying in the emotional fog bubble I was already trapped in.
Funny how I thought my friend was right about what actually happened, for so long. It wasn’t till my parents took me to a psychiatrist that I was told point-blank that what happened was sexual assault. This appointment took place in January… a full seven months after the original assault. For the entirety of those seven months, I believed that I was the reason I felt icky and sad. I believed I did something wrong.
Countless therapy and psychiatrist appointments later, I didn’t feel any better. Retelling the same traumatic story weekly mentally drained me. I stopped going to school and stopped being able to function like a normal teenager.
Since everyone expressed how deeply they wanted me to be the way I was a year before the assault, I began to push it further and further down into my psyche. I forced myself to be numb. A shell of the person I used to be. But I figured if it was out of sight, it would be out of my mind.
I went with my friends to parties, concerts, dinners, and malls and carried on “life as usual.” They would occasionally ask me how I was doing, but I never gave them a real answer. And they knew I didn’t want to talk about anything remotely close to the assault including my feelings surrounding it and the aftermath of it. So, they just let it slide. Which I don’t blame them for. In fact, I entirely understand why they didn’t approach the topic if they could avoid it.
One of our close guy friends, let’s call him Eric, told me he liked me the October after the assault. We hooked up multiple times in the months to follow but I was never really there when it was happening. I felt like I was just watching from outside my body. But I thought that if I kept getting with guys, the hole that somehow formed within me, or widened, would be filled and I could feel whole again. I had “lost” something. Something that I couldn’t seem to name. But I yearned to fill it constantly. I carried this charade until early March. I was at this party and had drunk a lot. So had all of my friends. I got with Eric later on in the night in an upstairs room from where the party was happening. I started to feel tired and woozy 10 minutes into hooking up. Then I became startled by a certain smell. A deodorant? Maybe a cologne? I was instantly transported back to the academy where my assaulter pinned me down on his bed while he lay on top of me. I began to cry and shake viciously. Eric got off me and tried to comfort me. He tried to touch my shoulder and I screamed and moved as fast as I could to the floor on the other side of his bed. He ran to get my two closest friends, let’s call them Cora and Harry. They came bursting into the room and found me huddled in a ball in the corner of the room. I cried in Harry’s arms for a couple of hours. I couldn’t feel safe but he tried his best to change that.
After that night, I realized I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. I couldn’t just hide under the made-up notion in my head that “maybe nothing happened and I am just being dramatic as usual.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I still find myself questioning whether I was assaulted or if I am just overreacting. When people find out about this specific part of my past, they always tell me how “it wasn’t my fault” and that “he is a disgusting person who should feel bad” and that they are “so sorry this happened to me.” Despite being told this hundreds of times, I still feel at fault. I mean, I had to do something for him to choose me to hurt. Was I an easy target? Maybe I flirted with him too much. I willingly went to his room so maybe I put myself in that situation. Now, more than 2 years later, I still have this tiny voice in the back of my mind telling me these lies. But a bigger voice in my head tends to trump that voice saying, “he is the asshole who decided to violate another person.” Though a simple sentence, keeping this in my mind has kept me grounded in reality. Especially because I am telling myself this, not a stranger or a loved one or someone who wasn’t there.
To the 97% of women in society that have experienced any form of sexual assault or harassment:
I know this is coming from someone who hasn’t experienced exactly what happened to you. But I do need you to know that I see you and I believe you. You did nothing wrong. And you have every right to feel the way that you do. I have faith that one day you will heal. And can I just say, I am so immensely proud of you.
Oh ya. And to all the people that have ever decided to take advantage of a person and touch them without consent… f**k you.