#metoo
It had been 5 years since it had happened. 3 years after it happened I thought about it. I realized what happened to me. I thought I was just a dumb 18 year old girl, I thought it was okay because I was drinking, I thought it was okay because I was wearing short shorts, I thought it was okay because he was my friend, I thought it was okay because I was pretty, I thought it was okay because he was good looking… maybe I should have taken it as a compliment? What happened to me was as scary as it was real. It was invasive and it was scarring. I cried, and I stayed quiet. I don’t talk about it because I wasn’t brutally raped. A man didn’t attack me and hold me down. A man didn’t rip my clothes off and take me. But he could have. Instead he chose to lay on top of me and try and push himself inside me. He chose to whisper his girlfriends name in my ear, begging me not to tell her. I said no. I said stop. I said get off. He wanted to have me. But he couldn’t, I’ve never been more grateful for whisky dick. I cried in the arms of a friend afterwards, while he slept in the bed he invaded my space in. We never spoke of the situation again. He was our friend, maybe it was a misunderstanding.I felt useless. What was wrong with me, was I being overdramatic?
I went to work in the same underwear he touched me in. I felt disgusting. A nasty hangover and a nasty feeling of doom. What were people going to think, was I was doing it for attention? “She probably said yes when she was drunk”.
I thought about the man I wanted to be with, would he think of me differently? Would he think I didn’t want him? Would he think I was a whore? So away it went, to the back of my mind, where it stayed for years rotting a hole into my subconscious. I think about it occasionally, I hear they’re living together. I hear he’s a school psychologist. I hear they’re really happy. Life is ironic, isn’t it. I eventually told that man I wanted to be with about what happened in the very begging of our relationship. He held me while I cried. He told me he hated him for making me feel like this. It felt good to tell him and it felt good to be touched by someone who wasn’t going to hurt me.
— Survivor, age 24
Dear survivor,
I am grateful you shared your story with the Brave Miss World community. I want you to know that the questions you asked of yourself are valid, real, and common among survivors. It makes sense that you felt you couldn’t talk about it because, as you wrote, it wasn’t a “brutal rape”. I want you to know that trauma is trauma and that just because you didn’t experience a “brutal rape” doesn’t mean you didn’t experience sexual harm. Your pain and your trauma are valid, important, and deserving of a voice. You are a survivor. You are a warrior and you are in no way being over dramatic. Sexual violence takes on many forms and none of it is acceptable. None of it is ever the survivor’s fault. Thank you again for sharing your experience. You are very brave. With love, Alissa