the assault

I am a feminist, I define myself as such and wear the label proudly, loudly.

I am a feminist, and I am prepared with an array of witty, cutting comebacks for catcalls.

I am a feminist, and I have a stack of books and a twenty-eight-page paper defining what that means to me.

I am a feminist and when I got sexually assaulted I did not remember any of those things.

I am a woman, I define myself as such and react to life accordingly.

I do not put my drink down at Frat houses,

I carry my keys between my fingers when I walk to my car alone at night.

I am a woman and I have pink pepper spray on my key chain.

I am a woman, and when I got sexually assaulted my pink bottle of pepper spray was in the car.

I am a college student, nineteen years old, young and brimming with chaos, with passion.

I am a college student and I just got the first taste of my dream job, and I’m struggling with being back here, feeling purposeless after such an eye-opening, jaw-dropping time.

I am a college student and classes are hard, and last week I made 150 notecards for a test and none of the things I studied were on that test.

I am a college student who is struggling with being in this country, self confidence, money, boys, school, life, and when my friend asked me to go out dancing with her I said yes, please, I need a release.

I am a college student and I went to a party to get away from my problems with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while and instead, I got sexually assaulted.

I was dancing, I was dancing and I could see my friend in front of me, she was laughing and pointing at me.

I was dancing and I felt the warm body of a male press up against me, swaying with my hips, I changed rhythm to try to get him to stop.

I was dancing and there were people crammed wall to wall inside the house, because it was raining outside.

I was dancing, and then there were hands in my pants, it took me a second to realize what was happening, what they were doing, these hands.

I was dancing, and there were hands in places they shouldn’t be, and it took me a second to turn around, to react and when I did, in my minds eye, remembering it I cannot see a face or even a body.

I wasn’t dancing anymore, and then I was, because I didn’t want to make a scene.

So, I was dancing again, more cautiously, closer to the group.

I was dancing again, and time was passing, I think.

I was dancing again, and not that clothing matters in this at all, but I was wearing jeans that had rips in them, up on the side, where you could, if you wanted to, reach the crotch strategically.

I was dancing again, and those rips were there for style, decoration, and I know you can reach the crotch quite well from there, because someone did.

I thought someone had fallen, quite literally.

I looked down, expecting someone to be there, on the ground, clutching at me for help.

I looked down, but no one was there, there were just hands in places I didn’t want them.

I looked down and I thought, ‘remember this, because it is important and it isn’t ok.’

I looked down, and then I looked to see who it was, but in the place, in my minds eye, where someone should’ve been is just empty space.

In my head, I think, what’s happening?

In my head, I think, well, I can’t do anything.

So I keep dancing.

I keep dancing and stare, confusedly, uncomfortably, off into the distance.

I keep dancing, and my friend asks me if I’m okay, I realize I’m supposed to be smiling.

I keep dancing until someone grabs my arm, pulls me away.

He pulls me towards him, through the crowd, jerks me off balance, ‘what’s your name’, he asks.

He does not even know my name, let alone who I am, and already he knows what he wants, already I know what he wants.

“What are you doing after this?”

“What are you up for doing after this?”

He drops my arm, and I frantically search for my friends again.

I join them, and they’re still dancing.

I join them, and one can see the look on my face.

I join them, and I don’t tell them what happened, about the hands or the guy those hands could’ve belonged to, I don’t tell them anything.

One of them asks me if I’m ok, I tell her I have to use the bathroom.

We start dancing again,

We start dancing again, and this guy starts following me, from friend to friend, around the room.

I start noticing it, my friends do too, they spin me away every time he comes near.

I move,

He moves,

I move,

He moves.

And so on

And so forth

My friend looks at me, I’m squeezing her hand, he won’t leave me alone, she says, “Let’s go to the bathroom.

We go to the back hallway to escape him, where the bathroom is, but we just stand in the hallway,

And he follows us.

I lean in to my friend as she leads me, “He’s here, he followed us.”

She looks over her shoulder, and I realize then, how lucky I am to have her.

How lucky I am, I think. How lucky.

We leave shortly after.

I wake up late the next afternoon, someone’s car got hit, we walked home in the cold and slight rain, my keys and phone are in the car, she’s drunk so I take care of her and I do not think of me.

I wake up late, and I don’t really think about the night before much at all.

I wake up and I do my laundry, I take out the trash.

I wake up and I try to do my homework, but I can’t focus at all, and I can’t remember why, but there’s a ball in the pit of my stomach.

I wake up and I do not remember what I told myself not to forget: that I am a feminist, a woman, a college student, and now, now, a victim of sexual assault.

I am a victim of sexual assault, and I don’t know who it was.

I am a victim of sexual assault, and when I walked outside the day after, I got uncomfortable when people looked at me.

It was so overwhelming, to be outside, because when you don’t know who it was, everyone becomes a predator.

I am a victim of sexual assault, and I have to take medicine if I want to get more than an hour or two of sleep.

I did not ‘ask for it’, yet I blamed myself.

I did not ‘ask for it’, yet I felt guilty.

I did not ‘ask for it’, yet I felt dramatic, like I was blowing it out of proportion.

Because so many women have it worse, so many women, right?

Because statistically speaking, it was bound to happen, it wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

Because I got lucky, I didn’t get raped, it could’ve been so much worse.

I told that to my counselor, and she looked at me and said, “You’re a feminist right? And if your friend had the same thing happen to her, you wouldn’t tell her she was being dramatic you wouldn’t think she was blowing it out of proportion. It doesn’t matter if someone rubs their hand down your back and it makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s still sexual assault.”

I thought, I know this. I know this. I have books, and a 28 page paper, and yet, when I was sexually assaulted, I understood why it felt like your fault. Why the arguments make sense, yet why they feel like they don’t apply when it’s you. Because maybe in all of it,

We don’t want to believe people are that evil, that inconsiderate or selfish, we want to believe we did something wrong, because believing they’re just that person, that does that horrible thing without you ever saying anything is just too sad. Too heartbreaking. It’s easier to blame ourselves, especially as women, we’ve been taught to do that.

I now have a counselor I see every week.

I now get nauseous when I walk across campus alone, I used to think nothing bad would ever happen to me at school.

I’ve never been a person who gets afraid, I travel alone to dangerous countries, I pick up hitchhikers on the side of the road at midnight, I’m not someone who shies away from danger but now, now I have people walk me to class, or to my room, or to my car.

My counselor tells me we are going to try to get back what he stole from me: my comfort, my confidence, my security, my sleep— that we will work for me to be able to sleep at night, to walk alone without being afraid, to not be uncertain about men because they all feel like predators now.

And this, this, is not to find him.

I don’t care who it is because the point is that this is society.

The point is that it could’ve been anyone, any single or multiple persons, because it’s common for people to think it’s okay.

Because this is rape culture.

Rape culture tells me my assault wasn’t important because it wasn’t actually rape.

Rape culture is the voice in my head that tells me I’m being dramatic.

Rape culture says to that guy, those hands, that it’s okay, it’s acceptable.

Not his mom or his grandma, but the society, that culture that looks at me and says, “Oh you were sexually assaulted? That’s just the way life is.”

He came from behind me, all of them did, they didn’t see my face, he didn’t know who I was, it wasn’t important— because I was not a feminist, a woman, a student, not even a victim, not to him.

I was nothing, an ass maybe, a source of enjoyment, five seconds of pleasure?

Rape culture says I was there, at a Fraternity Party, wearing somehow revealing clothes of course, making eyes, wanting it, ect. ect. ect.

Rape culture is what’s making your subconscious ask questions in your mind right now: the ones like, were you drunk? Or, how were you dancing? Or, was your shirt low cut? How tight were your pants? The ones that say, well, you were wearing holy jeans. And you were at a Frat house, what did you expect to happen?

Not this.

Definitely not, this.

----

This experience has taught me a lot of things. About friendship. About people. About myself. About our culture. I downplayed it a lot, honestly, at first, I think I laughed about it the first time I told someone. I said, “Someone did this to me, isn’t that so sad..” And I laughed. Because I didn’t know what to do.

They said, “That’s not okay, Danielle. You need to tell someone about that.”

People downplay sexual harassment or assault, the first thing they think is oh my god you got raped, and then when you say it wasn’t rape, they care less. That got to me a lot, just being honest, a lot of people didn’t understand why I didn’t want to go back to the houses or why certain things bothered me now. A lot of people treated it like it wasn’t a big deal, and it made me feel dramatic and pathetic and confused. That first week I slept maybe 8 hours the entire week. 10 hours if we’re being generous. By the end of the week I was so exhausted I slept through my alarm and showed up forty minutes late for the choir bus. I remember texting someone that morning that I wanted to die. I was so embarrassed, I was so hurt, and no one new, no one new because how do you say that. Hey, sorry, I overslept and you all just think I overslept but really I’m going through something so traumatic that I haven’t slept all week and I stressed myself so much about it last night that it made me physically ill and I had to take medicine that knocked me out to calm me down.

It wasn’t until I read an article on Bustle about the show 13 reasons why that I understood that my assault mattered. My hurt, my fear, my uneasiness, my experience was valid. The article reads:

“Recently a guy mansplained to me that far fewer women are victimized than reports from sexual violence organizations like RAINN indicate. He claimed that such statistics include account ‘minor’ forms of assault and that most women won’t experience rape. First of all, in 2010 the CDC found that one in five women have been raped, which it classified as ‘complete forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration,’ so the statistics are staggeringly high even within that specific definition.

But second— and most importantly— people need to recognize that all forms of sexual assault and harassment are traumatic, instead of brushing some aside.”

All forms of sexual assault and harassment are traumatic.

There it was, the golden ticket, the validation, what my counselor had been trying to tell me for weeks: it’s ok to be affected by this, you don’t have to sweep it under the rug.

So, for you, out there, who feel like maybe you’re overreacting and treating something ‘minor’ like it’s major: you aren’t. It is major. Someone violated you in ways that made you feel unworthy, unnecessary, all body, no soul. Someone took your security in your body, in the space it takes up, in the way your skin feels, in the way your body looks. Someone made you afraid to be who you are because you don’t want to be provocative or an easy target or ect. ect. ect.

The week after it happened I wore the same non-descript black leggings and oversized plain black shirt with various long sweaters because I didn’t want anyone to notice me or see me or look at my body. I wanted to blend in, to hide. To be nothing, no one.

But I wasn’t made to be nothing and no one, I was meant to be me. Obsessed with all things beautiful, with clothes and flowers and words and people. I was meant to stand out.

And so were you.

Don’t let them dim your light, darling, this does not define you.

Ps: this is the article.

https://www.bustle.com/p/13-reasons-why-shows-the-deadly-consequences-of-rape-culture-48125?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=owned&utm_campaign=booksbustle