I don’t know what to call this experience, but I want to understand it
I wrote this in 2023. It’s been over two years. But I found it again and I never showed it to anyone. I want to better understand what I wrote and how someone else might see it if they read it.
About the event, I don’t know what to call it. I think I feel calmer about it now. I don’t want to call it rape, because I’m not sure that’s what it was. It was more like an experience that made me feel very uncomfortable. I chose to go, I chose to go to his place, I gave him the opening for things to start, and I knew I wasn’t really attracted to him, but my stupid self thought “What do you have to lose? You’ve liked him for a month over messages, you’re traveling, you have to live life to the fullest.”
I don’t think he had bad intentions, he was just very excited. Everything started well, even the first kisses felt nice, but once things escalated it became too much. He kept trying to push things further, and when I told him no, he insisted. That was the theme of the night—insisting: “come on,” “a little more,” “just a bit more,” “relax, please just more,” more, more, more.
Everything in me was screaming discomfort. I didn’t want certain things, but with his insistence I ended up allowing things I didn’t really want. I felt dirty. It all became too much, too intense, and I kept asking him to use protection, he put it on for a few seconds and then took it off again. Everything was overwhelming me, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
My legs, which I normally open to wrap around someone, he kept between his legs, repeating the same movement, and he would position my hands like a little soldier. I wanted to move, but he had me trapped with his weight in that position of “soldier,” of being still, basically where I didn’t feel that what mattered was what I wanted.
At some point he turned me around and I started to feel like things were going in a direction I didn’t want. That’s when something in me finally reacted, I stopped him and curled up, I started breathing because I felt like my heart was going to come out of me and I had a huge urge to cry.
He reacted and asked me if I was okay and I told him “I think this is becoming too much for me, I feel overwhelmed, give me a moment.” He hugged me and said not to worry and pulled me so we could lie down together. It’s not his fault, but even that of lying there together made me feel uncomfortable and repelled, and I started telling him I had to leave.
He hugged me tighter and told me “no, stay, I want you to stay the night and tomorrow we can continue.” Inside I was just screaming “no please no,” but my reaction was to stay still and tell him I had to go, but he insisted I stay, holding me tightly and pulling me back. There would be a moment of calm and then things would start again, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe if he finished, he would let me go, so I let things continue a bit more.
At some point I tried to take control and thought maybe I could make the situation feel less uncomfortable if I got on top. I tried, and he liked it, but it only lasted a few seconds. As soon as I realized, I was back in the same “soldier” position.
My breathing was getting worse and I kept telling him I didn’t want to continue, that I was tired, that I was going home, and again he would hug me and beg me to stay, wrapping me up with his arms and legs, and after a few minutes everything would start again.
At one point he noticed I had my eyes closed and a tear coming out, and as if trying to compensate he changed what he was doing. That gave me a moment to breathe, at least I didn’t feel him on top of me. In my head it was a moment to recover, but after a while he said “your turn,” moved quickly and in a very invasive way expected me to respond. I tried, although I pulled away whenever I could, and he kept insisting.
The same routine repeated: telling him I didn’t want to continue, being held tightly, and then it would start again.
I don’t know how many times it happened, but it repeated over and over again. He finished a couple of times, the first time over me, and the second time he tried to do it near my face at the last moment. I moved away as much as I could, but some still reached me.
I felt dirty in every sense, disgust, a lot of disgust, of him, of his body, of his words, of his presence, and of MYSELF.
I could have just been firm and left, but something in me told me I didn’t know how he might react. He begged too much, held me too tightly, didn’t let me get up easily, and kept telling me how much he had thought about me and how much he liked me. Something in me felt that the safest way to get away from him was not by being rude.
In my mind I tried to map where my clothes were, but most of them were in the living room which already felt far away. I don’t know how many times it happened, but it was more times than I wanted, and towards the end I just let things happen.
He kept telling me how much he liked me and how he wanted to see me again, but I didn’t even want to respond anymore, my discomfort was too much, so all that came out of me was a forced laugh.
At some point he finally went to the bathroom. In that moment I got up and ran to look for my clothes. He caught me in the process and started taking my clothes off again while pulling me back to bed. I just wanted to run and cry.
I managed to slip away and start getting dressed in the living room. He followed me and sat there, pulling me so I would sit on him, begging me for a kiss. He pulled me and didn’t let me get dressed, and my discomfort only let me give him a kiss on the forehead.
He told me “don’t kiss me like your brother, give me a real kiss” in a slightly demanding way, and so he would let me leave I gave him a proper kiss, as short as I could, and slipped away again to finish getting dressed and grab my things as fast as I could. I took advantage of the fact that he was still there and couldn’t follow me further, and I left almost running.
On my way home I didn’t know how to feel, I don’t know how to call this event, but the closest is that it was unpleasant, it made me feel disgust, repulsion, shame and guilt. I PUT MYSELF IN THAT SITUATION. I LET IT CONTINUE MORE THAN I WANTED.
The whole way home I cried, and I wanted to talk to someone to understand myself, to clarify my thoughts, but who? What could I even say? What was this event?
My friends would worry and probably ask a lot of questions, I didn’t want that. My family would get scared, and it was the middle of the night. I thought of a friend, he knows me in that area and I thought he could tell me if this was normal or not, I know he doesn’t get easily shocked and luckily he always has insomnia, so he answered very quickly. He helped me a lot, asked me a few things, told me to breathe and that he was with me, that he would stay with me on the phone until I got home, and he distracted me the whole way with other conversations.
That’s basically what I can say about the event. Like I said, I’m not sure if it was abuse, but I didn’t feel comfortable and I felt out of control the whole time. Today I can say I feel calmer, but it’s definitely something that comes back to my mind at unexpected moments and always makes me feel strange.
It’s over now. I don’t expect anything and I don’t think I will tell anyone else. But in anonymity I think I would like to understand it, and have someone else, from another perspective, see what happened.