This is something I’ve been avoiding talking about for a while now, but recent events have really been weighing on me and I felt like I had to say something.
A couple of years ago, I woke up on a floor. I was in a lot of pain, I didn’t know why I was on the floor, but I knew where I was. It was a friend’s bedroom. He came in a few minutes later and I asked him why I was on the floor. “you were fighting and kicking when I tried to get you into bed so I just left you there.”
All of my memories of the night before stop right after I walked into that room.
It was a party at his house, it was our regular thing. We had done the same thing nearly every night during the summer before, but this time it was a little bit different. It was January and our first time together since we had gone away to college. I was excited, it was my best friend’s birthday and I wanted to have fun. I wasn’t really someone who drank that much (I’m still not), but I was stressed about going back to college and nervous to see how the night would go. I was surrounded by friends, there were no strangers at this party. I was in what I thought was a safe space.
I thought I was safe, I was wrong.
I had heard a story about another girl I knew. She had accused him of raping her at a party, and everyone had turned against her and called her crazy. I didn’t believe her, I just listened to what everyone else said. I really wish I had asked her for her version of the story. I wish I had believed her. I wish I didn’t trust people so much. I wish I had the courage to speak to her now and tell her I believe her story. The last thing I remember is going into that room and looking for a chapstick in my purse. I remember him coming in after me and snaking his hands around my waist, and then it goes black.
Sometimes I have nightmares about waking up in that room. I have nightmares about what happened in that room that I can’t remember. I have nightmares about what I do remember. Sometimes I won’t open my eyes when I wake up until I’m absolutely sure that when I open them, I won’t be back in that room, back on that carpeted floor.
He had my stuff all put together in my purse and let me call my mom from his phone. I followed him out of the house and into his car. We went to meet some friends to get coffee and donuts, he asked if i wanted anything but I couldn’t eat and I didn’t want to face my friends, he got his coffee and got back in the car. We sat there for a minute and I stared at my hands and the bruises on my wrists. He broke the silence.
“So are you gonna be a good girl now?”
I felt like the wind had just been knocked out of me. It was a punishment. When I left I made choices he didn’t agree with. I did things he didn’t like and this was my punishment. We pulled out of the parking lot and continued driving back to my house. The car skidded on black ice back into traffic and I felt relief for the first time that morning. Something terrible had happened, but at least we might die. The cars managed to stop and we got around the ice patch. We got to my house and he kissed me goodbye. I felt numb. I went inside and spent the day vomiting.
All I could think about were what ifs. What if I had gone out to dinner with the person I had a crush on who wanted to see me that night? Why did I let my friend convince me that it would be better to go back to the house of someone who i didn’t even like? What if I had said yes when that person I liked offered to come pick me up later that night? What if I wasn’t so desperate to keep my friends that I did everything to avoid making them angry?
It’s been two years, and it still affects me everyday. It completely changed everything about the way I interact with people.
A month later, I fell in love. It didn’t fix me. Those words echoed in my head every time I spoke to my partner or got upset with them.
“Are you gonna be a good girl now?”
I felt like I could never be angry, I could never voice how upset or hurt I really was sometimes. I would cry for hours but never tell them until all of the fear and doubt would build up for months until I would end up having a panic attack all over them. I was so scared all the time. Scared I wasn’t enough for them, because I was broken. Scared they would leave me, for someone undamaged. I was happy, though. I was the happiest I had ever been and the saddest at the same time. I pushed too hard and I cared too much. I had lost all of my friends when I told them the truth about what happened. I knew I couldn’t tell my family, I still haven’t so please don’t, my partner was the only thing I had left. The only person who knew the truth and still loved me.
I wanted to help them as much as they helped me, but I couldn’t. They were my best friend, my only friend really as i isolated myself further. My home. I tried to help but the more I tried to be good and helpful, the more they seemed to withdraw. It hurt. I knew they weren’t trying to hurt me on purpose but it hurt all the same. Eventually they told me they hadn’t loved me in over a year and that I was the cause of their problems. It all just felt like another punishment for not being good enough.
“Are you gonna be a good girl now?”
After that night I stopped feeling human, much less like a girl. The issues I had with my body and being a woman only increased. I was constantly admonished for not being feminine enough as a kid, I had been called so many names so many times. I was a fat kid. By the time I reached high school the way i saw myself was entirely based on the way boys saw me. My first boyfriend broke up with me and over the course of the summer I lost a lot of weight very rapidly. Suddenly I was allowed to be pretty. I never wore pants, I did everything I could to avoid being perceived as masculine to try to offset my personality. I did everything I could to be a girl. I dated a boy and his friends said I was more of a man than he was. My entire self-worth has been based on being enough of a girl for whoever I was with, but I never felt like a girl to begin with. I never felt like a man either. I’ve never had much of an identity. I’ve tried so hard to want to be a woman, I really have. The more trauma done to the parts of me that make me a woman the less I’ve wanted to be one. I’ve accepted that I don’t think I am one.
“Are you gonna be a good girl now?”
I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough. Now I exist in isolation. I don’t see anyone. No one seems to mind. I use my voice so rarely the sound has become foreign to me. Everywhere I go in my hometown I’m reminded of what happened, these summers are unbearable typically, but even more so when I’m doing it alone.
These are only some of the effects that one night, “20 minutes of action,” have had on my life. Please, take care of your friends. If they start feeling unsafe and want to go home, take them home. Believe them. Don’t doubt victims, we doubt ourselves enough.Â
