*Trigger Warning: Discussion of sexual assault*
I’ve gone to an all-girls school all my life, so reading and sharing articles about feminism and feminist topics ranging from women’s rights and equality at home and in the workplace to sexual violence feels like second nature at this point. I, like many other women, have always been able to empathize with those who write about prejudice generally, but after an incident last November, I have found myself approaching these articles and narratives in a very different way.
On November 1st of 2013, I was date raped. Every aspect of the situation still feels so surreal including the fact that it happened at all. I have trouble pinning an adjective to describe how I feel. The only word to accurately portray my emotions is weird. It’s all weird. The fact that it happened is weird. And it just gets weirder. The first time I read an article about date rape after it happened then realizing I was able to empathize with the writer was such a strange experience. And then, one day, my friend asked me if it was okay to mention part of my story in an article he was writing.
Like I said, its weird. We read these articles and are told these stories, and we watch these horrific episode of SVU, but we don’t ever think something like this could ever happen to us or someone we know — not really. Reading the article he wrote was probably the most surreal feeling yet. The experience of being written about was my own. It was me in that story. I was the girl who was raped. Writing about it now, the words still seem unreal.
But maybe this is why I’ve felt so numb to the situation: because it still seems so surreal. That’s the thing about these articles. Yes, I can empathize with these girls, but reading them just makes me wonder if I’m supposed to be feeling more? I’m not saying I’m not upset, because I am. It damaged me beyond repair, really. Yet I still feel so numb. Seeing my story in the piece was just another reminder that it did happen, another slap in the face that I’m not just reading someone else’s story but still experiencing my own.
I’m baffled as to why I feel this way. Reminders of the experience are everywhere. I used to love taking relaxing showers, but now when I close my eyes the water beating down on my body reminds me of that night and I’m back there and the blurry memories of the evening replay in my mind.
I was walking back to my friend’s house after a little Friday night ‘unwinding’ in the park. I felt good. I felt fresh. It was a new month and I felt positive. The cool November breeze brushed against my skin and felt better than ever. As we were walking down Madison Avenue, I saw a group of 3 boys standing on the corner in front of a closed high fashion designer boutique, the light shining on the mannequins in the window slightly illuminating their faces. They were all smoking cigarettes. It turned out that my friend knew them and that they were high school seniors and I had met them before, but I drifted in and out during that conversation. The next thing I knew, the guys invited us to join them for a drink in a giant townhouse with extravagant marble staircases and crystal chandeliers.
After that, the night only got blurrier, and blurrier. Drinks kept on coming. One of the seniors asked me if I would hook up with one of his friends, but the only word I could make out in my cross faded state was “nahhh.” The way they reacted made me think my decline was harsh. They both then asked me if I would hook up with their friend (we’ll call him “John”) who was outside smoking. I couldn’t think of a way to politely say I wouldn’t hook up with the guy who had funded our evening and who had made comments indicating he was wealthy and powerful (powerful enough to “have somebody killed” according to him). So all I could think to do was shrug.
I’m not sure what happened after that. I found myself in a beautifully marble tiled bathroom that reeked of Chanel Bleu cologne – the scent of an ex who broke my heart, only making the situation more emotionally traumatizing — with John. He lifted me up onto the counter top, where my back pressed up uncomfortably against the mirror and sink head when he first started to aggressively kiss me. Then he went down on me — the first time I had experienced that. I soon realized that it hurt and wasn’t enjoyable at all or how my friends described it. I thought that maybe if I pretended to be into it I would actually start to be into it, so I forced myself to moan. Unfortunately, my drunkenly devised plan didn’t work at all and ended up working against me. The moans had convinced everyone outside the bathroom that I was having consensual sex with this guy.
The next thing I knew, I was in the shower. He had stripped me of my clothes and I was naked. He kept pushing my head down and I tried to resist. But he reminded me he had paid for the evening and therefore I was obligated to return the favor. He continued to push my head down. I remember banging into the glass side as I dizzily brought myself down to a lower level. I don’t remember doing the act itself to be honest, I just remember feeling so weak, and powerless towards the end when I was looking up at him, trying to fight tears that were only washed away by the shower water, along with other substances that made their way onto my face.
But this part of the story was only the beginning. Although I was in a foggy state of mind, I still have bruises up my spine from when he pushed me against the cold tiled floor of the shower in his fancy Upper East Side townhouse. As my spine dug into the floor, he forced himself inside of me. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. When I did, I tried pushing him away but only slammed myself into the wall more. He said he would stop. This same thing happened 4 more times.
The next week, I sat down on a bike for the first time and immediately sprang off because I was in so much pain. I was bruised there because of what had happened. This was the first slap in the face as to the reality of it all, the first time I felt “weird.” This feeling still occurs every time I’m reminded of his forceful grasp when my boyfriend, whom I started dating after, gently caresses my sides.
You’re probably wondering right now why I didn’t stop it. I was scared to. Because he payed for a 605 dollar dinner, he was a senior, and he claimed to have enough power to hire someone to kill me. I was scared, I felt obligated. That’s the problem with society and gender roles: women so often feel obligated to pleasure men for a variety of complex reasons.
There is no worst part about what happened to me. It’s all unfathomably terrible. It’s hard to imagine that I will ever be able to enjoy sex or any type of sexual activity to my fullest capabilities even now that I have a boyfriend. Every time I’m with him, each touch just reminds me of how I was violated. It’s a permanent buzzkill I cant seem to bury.
But if I had to pick a worst part, it’s how difficult I find living my normal life without being reminded of this terrible thing that happened to me. At the start of winter break, a month and a half after it happened, I received a message. It was from him. It was the first thing he had said to me since. “U still in the city?” A mixture of emotions filled my body to the brim, and I swear to God I was about to boil over. I was outraged, I was beyond upset, I was just speechless. The fact that he had the audacity to message me, out of the blue, because everyone else was away and he needed to ease his hormones for the next few days? He doesn’t realize what he did to me. He along with so many other people in this world truly don’t understand what rape is. In their minds, rape is verbatim how it’s depicted in graphic TV shows and movies: it’s being pulled into an alley by a large man who fits some type of pedophile rapist stereotype, who then beats you up, maybe stabs you a few times, and forces himself inside of you. Then he cleans up his traces and you sit there in that alley surrounded by your own blood, unconscious, waiting for detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler to come save the day.
Maybe that’s why I’ve neglected to speak up. In this society, no one really understands that having your friends help you pressure a drunk and high girl into a bathroom, taking off her clothes, getting her into the shower and inserting yourself into her on five separate occasions even after she’s told you she’s a virgin, that she wants to wait, and most importantly of all, after she said no is rape. Maybe I’m numb because I’ve even convinced myself that I am only supposed to feel something if my experience falls under the description of an SVU episode. But like I said, maybe. Only maybe. I don’t think I’ll ever really know why I’m numb until I’m no longer numb, if I ever stop being numb.
All I ever get is that burning sensation in my cheeks head and chest. That burning feeling embodies what I think is anger and sadness, like I said. There is one emotion that I am certain of though. I absolutely despise him. I despise him for doing what he did to me, for having the audacity to message me, and for telling everyone I knew at that party I wasn’t invited to “Oh yeah, I fucked her.” I despise him because he “fucked” me and had the nerve to tell everyone, but not even message me about it for 6 weeks when he wanted some more. Because he told all his friends. Because they went on his Facebook and posted on my wall “shower sesh soon?” Because to all of them, its just a joke. A game. Whoever can fuck the most girls in a weekend. I can’t tell you how much it upsets me that society has come to this point. That girls are only objectives and obstacles in this little game only men get to play. When will this end?
Editor’s Note: If you have experienced sexual assault and/or rape and feel similarly to this writer, please find more information at RAINN.
