I was sleeping. He wanted in, so what I wanted didn’t matter. I gave in so not to be forced. It hurt like hell. I couldn’t get wet, and he refused to wear a condom. I was on birth control, but I don’t think he knew that. He wouldn’t have cared either way.
He came, and I rolled over to go back to sleep. But a few minutes later, he wanted more. He was insatiable, an addict to it, no doubt.
He once told me he liked forcing me—he knew what he was doing—because it felt better. “You’re tight, but it gets even tighter,” he said. “Better than a virgin.”
It isn’t like I didn’t try to get away from him. Six months of trying to get away from him. I didn’t grow up trusting the system; it had to get bad enough. I had to be sure I was fighting as hard as I could.
The last time, that’s what did it. I fought so hard. My legs, my arms, my weight, all of me. I didn’t almost get away from him. I managed to squirm from beneath him, run toward the door. I didn’t care if I was going to run into the hallway naked. I needed to get away.
Three strides, and he grabbed me by the waist and pulled me back onto the bed. It felt like I’d run into a clothes line. My breath left me. I relive that moment every day. I don’t know what it is about that moment that makes it stick out.
I was fighting for my sanity. I was wrestling with a monster that wanted to crawl into my mind from between my legs. Maybe that moment represents hope destroyed. I thought I was getting away.
I fought as hard as I could. I was never even close to winning. I always thought I had strong legs. He split them open with his own.
The moment I felt him inside me, I knew I’d lost. I continued to fight for some time, but exhaustion set in. And my body betrayed me. I came. It was the last time a man made me cum until two years after.
He didn’t just put his dick in me. He put in the realization that nothing I do matters if the other guy is stronger.
He whispered “Fuck you” in my ear. I confronted him later that day about that. I wanted so badly for him to convince me that the day hadn’t played out the way I remembered. I was convinced it had, but I just didn’t want it to be true. I wanted him to lie to me.
“No. I didn’t day ‘fuck you.” I said, ‘I just want to fuck you.’” That was his only correction to my memory. Everything else was right.
I went to the cops. I let them listen to his late-night voicemails begging me to forgive him for what he’d done. His apology was enough for the judge, but not for me.
I’m telling you this story again, because it’s never fully told. I always seem to leave a detail out. There’s too much in each moment for the words to be enough.
You replay your stories, don’t you? Don’t you remember something different every time? The details could kill me. Why can’t I remember other things this way: useful things, beautiful things, the things that make happy when I smile.
It’s better this way, though. It’s not remembering that drives me crazy:
Did I say “no” loud enough for him to hear?
Did He know I didn’t want it to happen?
Was Andy, who I say is my first, really my first, or is there something I’m not remembering?
Did I ask for this?
How old was I when these things rally started happening to me?
The not knowing can kill. And it does—some days.
This I know inside and out. This story, I’ve gone over and over. I’ve said it aloud to courtrooms and judges and lawyers and cops and friends and boyfriends and the walls.
And each time, there’s more.
Always more. It drives me to keep telling it again and again. Do you tire of me? So many have. They say, “just get over it. It’s in the past.”
They don’t understand. I’m trying to do just that. In the middle of my panic attacks, to stop them, I say, “I’m here and now. That’s the past.” It helps. It doesn’t cure.
It’s like Clara said of her trauma: I can recount the details of my nightmares, but my dreams evaporate into the ether. It’s a cliché, but it’s also very useful. As with nightmares, we wake up from them. They’re scary, they linger in our minds, but they’re also unreal—at least, they are once you wake.
And dreams? They’re flighty and often seem impossible. They might very well be. But they can be made real. They can be re-imagined. It just takes some work, some focus, and getting back to the origins.
So I go back every day. I tell it to myself again and again. I say it aloud, especially when I’m high, because it’s surprising how things slip out. I leave my body during those times, dissociate. And the truth emerges. It’s beautiful. I just wanted to share that with someone today. You can do the same.
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