Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
placeholder article
placeholder article

I am 1 in 5 women

Malique Ferrette
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Alana Long
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at USFSP chapter.

I am one in five women; I am the one that was sexual assaulted.

I didn’t know that my friend had that power over me, that my friend would soon be the monster in my nightmares. I didn’t know that I could be silenced so easily. I didn’t know that I had been raped.

You don’t ever think it will happen to you until  it has happened to you. You sit there thinking to yourself, “Why aren’t I screaming? Why aren’t I pushing him away?”. This has been the only time in my life where I felt truly silenced.

I remember telling him that I didn’t want it to happen and he started to sob. I had comfort him and tell him it was okay, that it was just anal sex. I had to rationalize him raping me.
 

I had to deal with hearing my mother tell me I deserved it. I had a friend tell me that I wasn’t assaulted. The one thing I didn’t hear from was myself saying it wasn’t my fault. I heard myself cry, thinking in my mind, “Why must I have gone over to his room? Why must I have kissed him?”.

But then I think,

     he doesn’t know what he did was wrong.

He doesn’t know that now when a man pursues me that at the back of my mind I think, “what does he want from me?”

He doesn’t know he took my voice.
 
But he should know, I am strong. That I have felt raw and damaged then, but now I have a voice and he can’t hold power over me. That you, with the gelled hair and glossy eyes, aren’t seen as anyone different in the crowd to anyone else. But to me. I see someone who is just as messed up as me.
 
I forgive you, even though I want you to hurt. I have filled my heart with hatred and I must let it go. I’ll always remember September 28th, 2016,
 

           The day I was raped,

           But I will remember this day, the day I am no longer silenced.

To women and men who have been sexually assaulted know, it is not your vault. That he or she can’t hold a flame to the amount of strength you have inside you.

That you have a beauty in you that is indescribable and that you are loved.

Anonymous Her Campus at USFSP Contributor

Resources:

http://www.bossyisthenewblack.net/read-this/2016/8/13/dear-boys-heading-…

http://www.amazingtruelifestories.com/stories-of-women/please-forgive-my…

 
 
A Mass Communications Major with a passion for inspiring others. 
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar
Alana is a college Senior with a major in Mass Communications with a concentration in Journalism and Media Studies and a minor in Art History. Alana was born in raised in Southwest Florida, so she adores the water and beach lifestyle. She loves anything to do with fashion and plans to work as a professional fashion writer or PR professional when she gets out of college. Alana looks forward to writing for the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's chapter of Her Campus all four years of her upcoming college career and is currently a Campus Correspondent and Editor-in-Chief for her chapter. When she's not running to and from classes, she loves to go online shopping or watching YouTube videos.