#triggering content
I’m writing this in the hopes that I can help myself and contextualize what happened to me. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been in a process of recovering from an incident I never thought in a million years would ever happen. I know it sounds ridiculous and maybe even selfish (?) to say but it’s never something that I thought would ever happen to me. I’d like to preface that I’m writing this not to seek pity and “I’m sorry for you”’s, I’m writing this to put my thoughts into one place and create a safe space to share my own story. Firstly, I’d like to say that at the time of writing this, I am not comfortable to referring to the story as rape or sexual assault. I am not mentally prepared to call what happened to me what it is. It invokes a feeling in me I am not yet ready to face. Therefore, until I have reached a point in my recovery where I am capable to call what happened to me those two phrases, I will be referring to it as “the incident”. I’m kinda just keeping this all loose. I’ll write when I feel like it. It’ll definitely be a word vomit and very stream of consciousness.
5/26/2021-At the time I’m writing this, I’m about three days off of my depression and anxiety medication as I just returned home from college and I’m waiting to get my prescription refilled. What’s really shocked me throughout this entire process of recovering, I haven’t cried nearly as much as I thought I would. I’m an emotional person, I cry at simple things like angsty YouTube videos and even the slightest mention of something sad gets me all teared up. But in the past three weeks since the incident, I haven’t cried about what happened. The first week since was just me trying to physically recover from the effects of being drugged but now it’s just me trying to figure out how to navigate my mental state and create a lifestyle that’s effective for me. When I say that, I mean this, prior to the incident I enjoyed meeting people! I enjoyed drinking with friends and hooking up with people from dating apps! I was really safe with everything that I do. My roommate and all of my friends had my location. If I was meeting someone at their place I would have a friend drive me and make sure the vibes of the place were okay. I would never meet someone who didn’t go to my college and would only meet in places that weren’t too far from the school. I enjoyed a free lifestyle of being independent. I loved meeting new people! Prior to the incident I was also really sex positive, (still am but I’ll explain shortly) I enjoyed my sexual liberation and the powerful feeling I got from it. All of that changed so much. I couldn’t even get myself to go to the dining hall with my friends. I wasn’t able to sleep in my own bed, let alone sleep alone. For the last two weeks of the semester I would move my mattress into my friends room across the hall and sleep on their floor. If I could stomach sleeping in my own room I would still have two people minimum in the room with me whilst I slept. I couldn’t shower alone, I couldn’t go on walks, I was hesitant to drink, hesitant to make out or hook up with someone, hesitant to see some of my friends. I felt like so many parts of my personality were stripped from me. My independence that I’ve had my entire life was suddenly gone. I began to worry what that meant for next semester. Now that everyone is getting vaccinated and my university is requiring all returning students to be vaccinated, I’m sure classes will be in person again. This means walks from each lecture hall, late night walks back to my dorm from the library, walks to the dining hall and having to sit there as opposed to taking my meal to my dorm and eating. All of this is just looming over my head. What if I see him? I mean we’re going to live close to each other next semester (not out of want but I’m going to be an RA and was assigned a dorm close to the one he resides in). For fucks sake he’s going to work at the mail center that I am required to get mail at. I don’t think I can physically prepare myself for encounters with him. I’ve thought about filing an order of protection (kinda like a restraining order) so that I wouldn’t have to fear him being near me, but in the midst of finals and heading home, I just wasn’t able to fill it out. All of this legal jargon is just so confusing and I know I have people to help me but it’s so hard. I have six people on the daily reaching out to me including two advocates. I constantly have to relay info and it’s just so difficult to keep everything in one place. I know my friends are willing to help and I appreciate it very much but I just don’t think I can physically do anything. I’m so tired. So so tired. I don’t want to fill out paperwork, I don’t want to go in front of a judge, I don’t want to deal with police interrogations. Most of all I hate that I have now become a victim. One of the main reasons I can’t get myself to press charges is just how it’ll look. I know it’s a stupid thought. I know getting justice is the right thing to do. But I can’t explain how hard it is to come forward and say this is what happened to me. Regardless of what I do, I will ALWAYS have people who will say things, say I deserve it, say it was my fault. Even if I don’t believe it, I just don’t want to hear it. I just wish I was able to get justice quietly. I know that if I come forward with what happened to me, it WILL be news. My university is on the international spectrum and it will make news just like the incident at Stanford years ago. I don’t want that attention. I don’t want my story in the hands of people who don’t know ME. Who don’t know what I know. Who will never know me and my life story. So for now, I don’t want to file an order of protection and I don’t want to press charges. I’m not strong enough for that yet. Maybe one day.
