It was dark, and the cabin was filled with several of my closest friends. We had been drinking for hours, playing games, and living it up -- trying to make the most of our spring break. Music was blaring from the wireless speakers, competing to be heard over the sounds of Mario Kart coming from the TV. Someone shouted a suggestion to play beer pong and we all dropped what we were doing, excited and ready to play.
That's the last thing I remember happening. The rest of the night are just flashes. Flashes of unwanted touches. Flashes of unwanted whispers in my ear. Flashes of me being so intoxicated I couldn't even make my mouth form words.
The next morning I woke up earlier than everyone else, with only one desire: to wash the feeling of someone else's hands off of me.
As I showered, I tried to put the pieces of what happened the night before together. I tried to figure out if what I was feeling was real, if what I could only vaguely remember happening was real. And that's when little tiny fractions of a second came back to me, little moments that I couldn't deny. I stayed in the shower for a long time and cried.
When I was finally able to return home I didn't know what to do. The person who assaulted me was someone I referred to as a brother. I confided in him daily about my personal problems, and he would listen always and give me the most thoughtful advice. We bonded over similar interests and I truly thought we would be friends for life. I looked up to his relationship with his now fiancé, wishing I could have something similar. I ignored the signs, never once doubting his friendship. I brushed off the night he locked us in his bathroom under the pretense that he needed to tell me something, and shoved his hands through the bottom of my shorts. I wrote it off as his being drunk and silly. I felt uncomfortable when he cornered me away from our friends to tell me his penis size, making sure I knew it was bigger than the person's I was interested in at the time, but I forgave him after he apologized for saying those things to me. I wrote off every compliment about my outfits or physical appearance, because never in a million years did I think he was a person capable of hurting me. I was wrong, so very wrong.
But that's thing, we live in a world where most sexual assault victims are hurt by the ones they are closest to. It's not the stranger down the street, it's the best friend, the significant other, the person with a nice and open face. And yet, even though all of the evidence points to this connection between attacker and victim, we are still taught to fear the hooded figure, the man who lives in the shadows. Our system works in favor of the attacker from the very beginning, allowing them to go undetected as trusted friends.
For a long time after I blamed myself for what happened. If I had just paid attention, if I had just had less to drink, I would have been fine. And it didn't help returning back to a school that adored my attacker. Professors and peers raved about how he was one of the good ones, one who championed for women, one of the few "woke" straight white males on campus. So I kept quiet. I made myself small, carrying around a large blue chunky sweater that I could throw on at a moments notice just in case he walked by, hoping that the sweater could hide my whole body from his eye's view. I lost friends, close ones who I confided in, only to realize they took his side, asking me for proof, or trivializing my experiences as they used what had happened to me, telling my story as a way to get attention from other people.
I thought long and hard about reporting him, even going so far as to talk to the university counselor. She informed me that it would be very much a "he said/she said" kind of case where she couldn't guarantee a favorable outcome, and that I could be removed from classes with him to keep us from interacting. Considering how loved he was, and the fact that he was everywhere on our tiny campus, I left it alone. I tried to cut off as much contact with him as possible, though he continued for weeks to message me about how I looked or was dressed. Most of our mutual friends became his friends as I cut off close contact with anyone who was close to him. And slowly but surely I began to piece myself back together.
Today is my birthday. I am now 22 years old and over two years have passed since I was sexually assaulted. And though I no longer think of him or what happened to me that night everyday, I can also never escape it. The sound of his name still makes my palms sweat and the accidental run-ins that happened the year after he graduated when he would visit campus unannounced made me want to hide underneath my covers and cry. What he did to me will always permeate my college memories, but at least I was one of the lucky ones.
I was violated as so many others are. I was taken advantage of, made to feel small, victimized. I know very few women who have been lucky enough to say they've escaped the horrors of sexual assault, and yet there are still so many victim blamers, so many who refuse to listen to the stories of actual women and interpret them as anything other than their own fault. So I share my story with you in solidarity with them. The brave women who have stood up and been silenced, who have been called liars and attention-seekers for simply speaking up for themselves, for telling the truth. More importantly, this is for those who live in fear, those who are still processing and have yet to be heard, those who have been made to feel small, whose bodies have been violated without any regard: I am here for you. And I am so sorry that our culture has provided an unsafe place for you. You are valued, you are loved, and you deserve to be heard.
