It Wasn't As Bad As...

I have never been lucky in love; I chalk it up to mainly something wrong with my face — maybe too big of a nose, or my hair just hates to stay in place despite the constant brushing. Maybe there is something truly wrong with my personality. But whatever it is, the fact remains that I have never been one to dabble in romance.

I believed it once, for exactly 2 weeks and four days. I had been talking to this boy for a few weeks and we had a lot in common. He liked superheroes, and discussing Eastern culture, and we both had a love of religion. A few days after we had made our relationship official he asked me to come over and meet his parents; of course I was ecstatic to meet them. However, when I went to his house I was strangely greeted with one that was empty.

He explained to me that there was nothing to worry about, that his parents would be back soon. We played video games and chatted, he showed me his unique paintings and I smiled and laughed. As we were playing another round of Donkey Kong 64 I asked for some water. He obliged coming back from down the stairs. Being thirsty, I drank most of it.

Now, one can say I was blind to the dangerous situation I was in, and the truth is, I was. I didn't expect any harm from this man, much less a glass of water. But it was after this innocent gesture that I started to feel out of touch with myself. I ended up with my head up in the clouds, not truly being completely aware of what was going on around me. Somehow, I ended up on the floor, with my shirt off; the next thing I knew, my pants and underwear had been discarded. I am in a bed now, a pillow is covering my face. He is speaking to me but his voice sounds like something out of a nightmare.

"You like it," he seemed to yell at me. I couldn't tell if he was trying to convince me or himself. I try not to dwell on his logic. But the words he told me still haunt me.

It wasn't until the extreme pain I felt that my mind snapped out from the fog, I kicked him off of me. Wrapping my arms around myself as I tried to absorb what had just happened to me. The worst thing of that night was not the crime that had just been committed, but the fact that he tried to comfort me. Telling me over and over that everything was okay, that this was normal.

It didn't take me long to break off the relationship after that; three days of a happy relationship, the rest was the fallout of a terrible breakup.

But why is this important? Why is this story of sexual assault any different from anything else? Well, because I had to heal, and continue to heal on my own.

I tried to talk to support groups; the entire thing there could be summed up by the statement of, "Well, that is sad and we are sorry that happened. However, this is a rape support group. You merely were assaulted," or, "Date rape is a concept that you fought against him, which it seems that you didn't really."

More often then not, when I talked with women, I would get the sob story of their life and about how the time they were "actually" gang raped, or abused by a boyfriend constantly, or how this one bad date turned violent, was much more traumatic than my "simple" assault.

So, like many women do in this country, I stayed silent. I stayed alone with my broken mind and heart, and shunned everybody that even came close. I became the 65% percent of women that didn't report the crime that had been done. I didn't pursue justice, for fear that the court would tell me the same silly things that I had been asked and told by other women that had even been through the same thing.

One can argue that being raped is different than being sexually assaulted. However, if we as a society become so wrapped up in labeling what is and what is not traumatic, we will end up hurting the progress that is being made to better protect women.

In a study focusing on all the reasons one would not pursue justice, one of the reasons was that the women believed that it wasn't serious enough. Just as my simple assault was just a case of bad sex, or because it didn't include penetration wasn't even assault, just harassment.

Because of this, only 9% of offenders are ever prosecuted. The 747,408 registered offenders are only the tip of the iceberg; there are many more actual crimes being committed by people that are never found or even looked for, partly due to because some women don't believe that their case was as serious as it was.

Women, I am here to tell you: as a victim, a survivor, and continual warrior, that this comparing horror stories needs to stop. Instead, we need to accept and listen to one another and realize that when somebody has been violated in any means, it is all bad. There is never a positive or a less hurtful side to it.

We can all heal together, listen to one another's pains and sorrows without feeling like one is greater than the other. I like the way that Danielle Bernock says it in her book, Emerging with Wings: A True Story of Lies, Pain, and the Love That Heals:

“Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. When someone enters the pain and hears the screams healing can begin.”

It is my sincere hope that we as warrior women can be better with helping each other, so that we do not have to worry about the definition of what is and isn't a crime. But more importantly, I wish this so that women never have to experience the heartache and sorrow that I did alone.

#MyWorstDate

Sources:

1. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, M. Planty and L. Langton, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013; Wolitzky-Taylor et al, “Is Reporting of Rape on the Rise? A Comparison of Women with Reported Versus Unreported Rape Experiences in the National Women’s StudyReplication,” 2010
2. D. Kilpatrick et al., “Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study,” 2007
3. Probability Statistics Calculated By the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, “Reporting Rates,” 2013
4. Bernock, Danielle "Emerging with Wings: A True Story of Lies, Pain, and the Love That Heals" 4F Media, October 22nd 2014