Scrolling through my social media timelines and seeing girls who I’ve grown to admire and care for post #MeToo has been heartbreaking. I’ve been sitting in my room for nearly three days now, wondering if I, too, should update my status. Wondering if it’s part of my duty as a woman to let them know: Hey, I know exactly what you’re going through.
And so here it is. My declaration. #MeToo.
The first time, I was fifteen. I was a sophomore in high school going out with a senior. I thought I was flying. We had been “dating” for four days – four days – when, after school, he grabbed me by my wrist and shoved me into the darkest corner he could find. He cornered me, stuck his hands under my shirt, bit me, and unzipped my jeans. As his hand made its way under the fabric, I let out a screech so horrifying that at first I didn’t even realize it was coming from me.
Then he stopped. I thought it was because of my scream, but he calmly took his phone out of his left front pocket and answered. It was his mother.
I cried when I got home and saw the bruises on my body.
The second time, I was maybe nineteen. I don’t remember a thing.
I cried the next morning.
The third time, I was twenty-one. I was leaving a club during my trip abroad. I stopped halfway down the stairwell to wait for my friends. In one swift movement, the man next to me reached his arm around my neck and pulled me into a headlock close to him. He slobbered all over me. I bolted down the stairs after his friend came out of the bathroom, stumbling so drunk, he almost vomited right then and there.
I cried in the taxi cab on the way home.
But I don’t think I ever cried more than I did after the first time. When the sheriff at the high school asked me if I’d like to see my perpetrator arrested (he wasn’t, by the way), I cried like I had never cried before. The first thought that entered my mind was I don’t want to ruin his life.
I didn’t even consider how he had just destroyed mine.
And yet, as another writer so eloquently put it, I don’t really know if I have the right to post #MeToo.
I’m doing okay now. These experiences haven’t hindered me academic wise. I’m in a relationship with a man who loves and respects both me and my body the way we deserve. I’m seeing a therapist, sure, but in all our sessions, I’ve probably only mentioned these situations once. So is it really my place to make this declaration?
The answer is yes. This is precisely why I should be adding my voice to this. And that is why #MeToo is so important to me. Every woman has the right to speak up against harassment and sexual assault. No one should ever have to feel like their experience wasn’t harmful enough, wasn’t damaging enough, wasn’t traumatizing enough to be taken seriously.
You can’t look at the women around you and guess which one has been sexually assaulted and which one hasn’t. There’s no neon sign that is able to point us to the specific “type” of woman likely to be harassed. Because it can – and does – happen to anyone.
And you know what else? I’m angry. Livid. Disgusted at the fact that women have to out their most painful and personal life experiences in order to get people to Just. Effing. Listen. To the problem.
But if that’s what it takes, we’ll do it. We are doing it.
So effing listen.