This Happened to You
We too often think of rape as this entirely violent and physically catastrophic event with lots of punching and pulling and scratching. We hear “assault” and we imagine a brutal attack that leaves one with several visible scars as proof that it happened. And sometimes it is like that. Other times, it’s you, going into survival mode, deciding it would be easier to just lay here, to fix your eyes on the thin crack of your closet doors and let him do what he’s going to do because you said, “Stop,” and he said, “No,” and he’s an offensive lineman and you have never before in your life had to use your hands and your body to overpower someone.
It was freshman year of college and you had yet to face the crippling depression and the spontaneous, mid-afternoon weeping and the long drives in a new town that made you feel like you were drunk or dreaming. You were struggling with #blackgirlfeels, unable to express your sadness in any real productive way and instead opting to behave so destructively that it scared you. You hated yourself — the way your hair never quite did what you wanted it to, your chubby thighs that spoke and echoed when you walked down an empty hallway, your inability to shut the fuck up, particularly when speaking on things you didn’t care that much about — and you were terrified you would be exposed, so you compensated with an arrogant boisterousness that made others respond to you with a blurry mix of pity, admiration, and fear. It was your belief that if you were rude enough, your laugh loud enough, they couldn’t possibly know you so often wanted to fade away and die.
The attention he sprinkled you with made you feel good. His willingness to spend his time with you made you feel wanted and the way his touch lingered on your body made you feel sexy. Despite desperately wanting to soak up this feeling, you were able to recognize it wasn’t necessarily about you. A tiny part of you that you tucked away early on knew this was more about him fulfilling some pornographic fantasy based on an idea of you that had manifested itself when you showed up. You ignored the slight tinge of sadness you felt when thinking about it this way. It was your need for affection and touch that dominated over your hatred of men like him.
Afterwards he sat next to you on the bed with his arm around your naked body as you cried. You cried because you were confused. You were sad. You were scared. You were unsure of who this person sitting beside you was and whether or not what had just happened was real or not. You wondered if maybe you had imagined it or if maybe your naïveté had captured it as something it was not. Perhaps the several times you had said “Yes” before entitled him to this. It was not the last time you saw one another and your willingness to let him touch you again may have told him it was OK. That you were OK.
When he sent you a friend request on Facebook years later, you accepted more out of curiosity than genuine interest. When he told you that you looked good you internalized it in the same way you did back then. Your feelings bounced between self-worth and shame and you wondered if you were again giving him permission to do what he wished with you. Only when he told you he might be moving to your city did you begin to feel fear. The idea of having to face him again became real and you immediately blocked him, refusing to respond to his inquiries about why. You thought that that was it. You believed that you had successfully kicked him out of your life.
And then a few weeks ago an editor sent out a request looking for people who were assaulted by a college athlete and had never reported it. It was an impulsive decision to contact her. It made sense that you come clean, both to her and to yourself, at this time. She apologized for asking for more information and you winced when she asked his name. This would make it real and for a moment you thought about taking it back. Your memory came back as you typed his name and tried to recall the year; you knew it was the year before he was arrested for raping another girl on campus; you knew what year that was. “My assault was my freshman year in college, but I can’t remember if it took place in 2001 or 2002. The rape he was charged with was in 2002 and he pled guilty in 2003,” you wrote, and you remembered how confused and angry you were as you sat at your desk and watched as an IM from an acquaintance popped up on your screen with a link to the news article. Did you hear about your boy?
No one knew that this happened to you. It took several years before you would even admit it happened to you. He had a girlfriend at the time you two were gallivanting around and you knew her and would contact her months after his arrest because you didn’t know to who else to turn to. She knew about you too and yet was supportive in a way that you didn’t expect — perhaps the only way that she knew how — by telling you she understood, but that she had already dealt with it on her own and that you needed to do the same. It was too painful for her to talk to you and the knowledge that she too was hurting was somehow comforting.
You acknowledge now that you did not succeed in kicking him out of your life and there’s a chance you may never do so. You will Google him and you will Google his new wife and you will search for clues that she knows who he is and you will find yourself jolted out of bed in the middle of the night a handful of years from now because you will dream about him.
You are left with no visible scars, but this happened to you.
And you are OK.
Elaine Paddock is a writer in Boston.
