TW and Editor’s Note: This piece includes graphic depictions of sexual violence. We feel that this sort of story needs a platform where it can breathe and be seen, but also recognize that sexual assault is a complicated and triggering topic for many people. We want you to be safe while reading. If this is not the kind of subject matter that you feel comfortable reading at this moment, we encourage you to save this piece for another day.
The “night sea journey” is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness…. The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.
-Stephen Cope
There was a man. Let’s call him Man 1.
I never kicked him. I never screamed. I never really fought back. I just cried, two tears, while he beat me between my legs; while he shoved his thumb inside my cheek and held my head to the passenger seat of his car with the rest of his hand; while he choked me, once with his hands and once while he forced my mouth onto his lap.1 He wiped away my tears, asking, Why are you crying?
He leaned in, whispering, I am not a pedophile but I know a pretty girl when I see one. I was 17. He was 23. He called me names. Mean, degrading names. He said, You need to learn.
When he entered me, I thought of my best friend’s advice after she had sex with her boyfriend for the first time. The more you relax the better it will be. It will hurt at first, but then it’ll feel good. I could not relax. It hurt at first, it hurt during, it hurt after; it hurt the whole time and still does.
And then there was the dad. Let’s call him Man 2. Man 2 was a manipulative motherfucker.
Truly, I do not believe Man 1 ever thought he committed rape against a minor. I would like to believe that. I would like to believe he simply wanted to act out what he had seen in porn, how he saw women treated, how he thought he could treat women like that too. I believe this because he continued to text me, When can I see you again, baby girl? He continued to ask if he could pick me up. If he could get a hotel room for us. When he could see me again. I would like to think that society failed Man 1. That he did not believe his actions constituted the rape of a minor. That he didn’t know it was not, actually, hot to hit a woman (who was a girl) like he did. I would like to believe he didn’t know it was not, actually, hot to choke a woman (who was a girl), to call her names, to leave bruises like he did.
Not Man 2. Man 2 could smell it on me. He knew exactly when, where, how to take advantage of an eighteen-year old girl. An 18-year-old girl, who, in the eyes of the law, was a woman, an adult. An 18-year-old girl who worked with his 12-year-old daughter. An 18-year old girl who did not know the type of manipulation 46-year-old men were capable of.
And, oh, how he made me think it was all my fault. That I was the one asking for it. That it was not assault when I said no, and that he could simply rub my back, hold me on his lap, continue to sneak his hands deeper and deeper in and around me until I stopped fighting him. How he made me think that because I stopped fighting, it was all my fault. How he made me think the town would hate me. How he would twist my words around his slimy, grimy, crooked, tobacco teeth to make me think I wanted it, that I signaled to him that I wanted it.
And of course there was money involved. Because I just graduated high school and because he was 46 and financially stable he could give me AirPods and an iPad and Tiffany earrings and shopping money for college clothes and all of these things all in exchange for my body and my silence. Because I was worth nothing, and dinner and a car and a club membership was worth something, I took the gifts and gave him me. Does that mean I’m guilty? Does that mean I’m twisted? Does that make me responsible for my manipulation? Because, after all, I got something out of it. How the money made me so confused.
Well, now I know. Now I know, at 19, what 23-year-old men are capable of. What 46-year-old men are capable of. What men are capable of. What the world is capable of. When should girls and women know better? When they are 7? 17? When should we know what terrible things can happen to our bodies?
Post-traumatic stress disorder.
I stare back at the woman. I stare back at the licensed, professional, very kind woman, and replay the new words she gave me to describe my reality (?).
Post. Traumatic. Stress. Disorder. PTSD.
Four little letters that describe the nightmares, the cold sweats, the panic attacks and seizure-ish episodes, the inability to trust in the love of the people that love me, the constant triggers, the mood swings and the tears.
Post.
Does that mean it’s over? Why do I see it, then, on the back of my eyelids every time I close my eyes? Why do I feel another pang in my chest every time I see my younger cousins, high school girls, thinking, When I was their age…? Why do I feel the hands on my body when I finally manage to drift off to sleep? Why do I dissociate while having terrible sex with terrible men instead of walking out?2 The event, that period of time, has ended, yes. But, really, it will never be truly over, truly post.
Traumatic.
But, I didn’t go to war. I didn’t watch my comrades perish by bullet fire. My parents, my brothers are still alive. My house didn’t burn down with the people I love inside. I have never had to flee a country to avoid persecution. Does my experience, do I, really deserve to use traumatic?
Stress.
My heart constantly trying to contract, hide further and further into my chest. Waking up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat, wading, grasping for anything to ground me, prove to me I am real and I am alive. Hitting and hurting the person I loved while we laid in bed together after having a sudden flashback. Bearing moments when my entire body shakes, my neck whips back and forth, my eyes roll back in my head and I can no longer speak, when I am overloaded with flashbacks and my body no longer wants to stay present, to cope, can no longer bear another moment of trying to hold it together.
The weight I bear down on those who know; I can feel it on their shoulders, feel when the burden gets heavier under their own personal stresses, too; I can feel when it’s nearing time to stop talking, time to rotate to the next ear, time to get better already, to be stronger for them; after all, they have their own weights, too. The three friends I still talk to about what happened, who still show up for me when I am crying, alone in the dark, who are probably just as tired as I am, who probably think, What more is there for her to say? What more can I say? What more might there be to listen to? 3 The ears and the hearts and the bodies that have saved my soul from disappearing into a vacuum.
Disorder.
Did he win? Did they win? Did they truly break me? Am I finally disordered?
Now, I end pretty much every single sexual experience in tears. Either in tears of joy, because I was not hurt, because I felt loved, seen, appreciated, or in tears of dismay, because I had a flashback, because I could not contain my anxiety about my body being touched. I survived, but I am not a survivor. They took things from me I will never get back. I am not brave. I am terrified all of the time. I rarely feel moments of true safety, and in those moments, I usually cry. I have so many things I want to explain to the people around me. To hold up my pain and say, Here, this is why I am so broken. This is why I am me.4
Between and since, I have felt love, I have felt loved. That gives me a glimmer of hope. But this is not a hopeful story. This is not me coming out victorious on the other side, of fighting the good fight, of going to therapy and feeling healed and whole and ready to be loved by the world. I tried, very, very hard to be that girl, that woman. That who needs no one. That survivor.
On my good days, I win that battle and I convince myself that I have overcome the past. My bad days, then, hurt that much more, when memories come back at me like knives aimed at my chest. I survived but I am a bad survivor. I need people. I need people to need me. This is me in the trenches. This is me in the trenches.
1 “I contributed nothing but an open cavity.” Lisa Mecham, Only The Lonely. (from Roxanne Gay’s essay collection, Not That Bad.)
2 “I did not care about my body because my body was nothing. I let men, mostly, do terrible things to my body. I let them hurt me because I had already been hurt and so, really, I was looking for someone to finish what had already been started.” Roxanne Gay, Hunger.
3 Bless the hearts of these friends.
4 “It’s hard to admit, but part of it has to do with the need for an audience. We don’t exist without other people; therefore, our pain isn’t real until somebody else looks at it and goes, ‘Damn, that looks like it hurt.’… the antidote to losing your mind is to have a handful of people around who know your wound and will verify its existence.” Nora Salem, The Life Ruiner. (from Roxanne Gay’s essay collection, Not That Bad.)
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