I saw my rapist at the supermarket down aisle three when I was looking for greek yogurt. I saw you when I forgot to get some apples in aisle five, which I had already passed. So jamming to my Motown playlist I turned around to head back there, ready to walk to the beat as if I was about to start the beginning of my very own music video. I confidently turned ready for the beat to drop and there you were, the music video now glitching. Suddenly the song slowed and time felt as if it stood still. The air got heavier yet you seemed like you were effortlessly gliding through it with your henchmen you call friends behind you. You were headed straight towards me, and I froze just like that night when I was shoved into your pillow, except this time it was different. I was still standing there as if I was a statue, but this time my soul decided to detach my legs from my frozen body and drag me far away from you.
Now in safety, I ran around like Pac Man through the aisles swallowing each breath one by one by one and hoping your brooding ghostly figure wouldn’t be there. While yearning to steady my breath, I frantically grabbed everything in sight that I could possibly need so that I wouldn’t have to leave my room and come back here for at least a month. The supermarket was my safe space and has always filled me with so much joy. I always felt like nothing could hurt me here, no evil could possibly come in here. But now that I’ve seen you in this space, I realize that this place was never as safe as I thought it was.
Just like the feelings I had felt about the supermarket, you made me feel like I could completely trust what you had to offer and that I was safe inside you. But you ruined it all when you lured me into your trap with your false advertisement of who you are and what you truly are in your core and that was something that I could’ve never seen coming. That day in the supermarket, you tainted the air I breathed in there and replaced it with the thick congested air from that infamous night. I hate you, I hate how I feel around you and I always will. I hate the burnt darkened smell I sense when I am with you. I honestly, hate that I hate you. But oddly enough, even with all this darkness surrounding you and every experience I have had with you, I am grateful that I saw you in the supermarket.
Seeing you again made me realize that every location on this campus until I leave will have the possibility of me running into you. But instead of me coming to terms with that fact months ago, I hid in my room and other secluded spaces and convinced myself to call that living because it was easier to swallow than the true reality of my situation. Before seeing you in the supermarket I thought I was progressing and getting so much better. I thought I had begun to be brave again, even though I was still sitting in the dark with one foot in the light licking my wounds as adequately as I thought I should to help myself heal the fastest. But when I saw your twisted face appear on dating apps and on Facebook’s suggested friends’ lists weeks after the incident, the wound that you created kept going deeper and deeper inside me. I was just so numb to the pain of it all that I never acknowledged it or believed that it was getting worse.
I never acknowledged that I was not as far along as I thought I was, the wound wasn’t even close to being closed. The wound was still just as open as it was the night that it was created, but I had just been ignoring the bleeding for what it truly was and calling it red paint instead. Naively thinking that red paint wasn’t a thing to worry about and that it could fix everything that was underneath it.
But in effect of the denial, it caused serious unrest within me and made a storm grow so big inside me that it became a category six hurricane. So when I saw you that day it knocked me out and left me in awe of the unexpected magnitude of these unsettled emotions. Yes I hated seeing you and I always will, but the reality is that I will never be able to stop you from living your life. And the comforting fact of the matter is that I don’t have to live with the fact that I have raped someone for the rest of my life…you do. So I hope my ghostly figure and the memories of that night haunt you far more than it haunts me. And it will, I have no doubt about that.
Though there still may be a chance that I will see you in the future, I will not be afraid of living my life because a messed up person like you might make a hurricane appear. Life is full of hurricanes, all different and all unique in their own way. But if I live in fear and in a state where I am breathless when hurricanes appear I will not be able to move on and live. I won’t be able to stop hurricanes from affecting others if I don’t find the strength to raise my voice and yell back at them. And I am not alone in this fight or this new chapter of my life, I have so many people around me who love me and are ready and willing to yell with me. As well as thousands of other women and men with their own battle scars from their hurricanes who are ready to live in the light and ready to fight back no matter what. So with red paint chipped away and wounds fully open, I am ready to breathe in clean air and allow myself to go back to joy and go back to the supermarket.