New Year’s Eve Party

I had spent New Year’s Eve at a friend’s boyfriend’s house, a nice party with great people. I had promised my mother to take the latest bus home, and I intended to do so. But, as I was putting on my coat and my boots to get ready to leave, this handsome guy I knew rather poorly, told me that it wouldn’t be safe for an 18 year old girl to walk from the party to the bus stop alone. He offered to walk with me, told me it was a man’s duty to not make a woman walk alone in the middle of the night. I was flattered, and happy that he would leave the party just to be a gentleman.

We walked no more than about seventy yards away from the house, when he pushed me down in the snow, hushed me, tore down my nylon stockings and with the other hand pressed my neck down, forcing my face down in the snow making it hard to breathe. Seconds later a sharp pain jolted my mind as if I had been electrocuted. It was the pain of him raping me anally.

I can’t say how long time he raped me, but I repeated in my head over and over that if only I relaxed my body as much as possible, he’d finish and the pain would stop. When he was done, he took me by my hands and helped me stand up. He brushed snow off my legs and wiped the tears off my face. He said “I guess you’ll miss the bus now.” He smiled. A beautiful, sadistic smile.

I walked through the city, got home hours later than I was supposed to and was met by my mother yelling at me for being irresponsible.

I felt so guilty. So alone. I didn’t tell anyone about what that man had done. Due to the untreated injuries to my body, I couldn’t sit on a hard chair without feeling strong pain, so in an attempt to keep the rape a secret, I dropped out of school, left my mothers home to live with a man I met just weeks after the rape.

It took me years before I could speak about it. I never went to the police and reported it. I moved to another city, since I twice had seen him out in the city. He smiled at me, without words he scared me and I couldn’t stay.

It has been 13 years now, I have PTSD and try my best to live a good life. But it isn’t easy.

The rape itself took just minutes, but the damage is something I live with every day. But I no longer blame myself.

Yes, I was drunk. Yes, I wore pretty clothes. But, I didn’t bring this awful act to happen. A rapist did. No rape victim is ever to be held responsible for a rapist’s actions.