CW: Sexual Assault.
I’m only just coming to terms with what happened to me thirteen years ago. I’ve repressed it for so long; I’m overreacting, I asked for it, I deserved it, I said yes in the beginning so what reason do I have to be upset?
It was done by a family friend’s son. I was sleeping over when he said he would show me his if I showed him mine. I was confused until he started taking his pants down. I said yes.
I had a look, I can tell you I wasn’t exactly impressed. He then tried to start touching. I told him no, pulled up my pants and went into bed. He followed me and put his hands down my pants and tried to enter me. It hurt.
I moved from bed to bed, trying to get away. He just followed. Eventually he gave up, and I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning he told me he had “played” with me during the night.
Fast forward about ten years and I have started dating this guy. He liked going through my phone to see if I was cheating, telling me what to wear, telling me what to eat, when to eat, who to be friends with, and mostly he liked to tell me when we were going to have sex.
The first time we had sex, the first time I’ve ever had sex, I said no because it hurt. He didn’t stop. Another time I didn’t want to have sex because his brother was outside and it made me uncomfortable, he pulled me onto the floor and said it was fine. I tried pulling up my pants but he pulled them back down. I said I wasn’t comfortable. He entered me. We broke up. Everyone knew why and tried to talk to me about it. We got back together. It took almost two more years to realise I despised him. I still have to listen to his friends joke about what he did to me.
Both events have messed with my self-esteem and my self-worth. What stopped me from learning that this wasn’t my fault was the fact that these aren’t socially considered “violent” attacks. I thought I didn’t deserve to feel this way because I wasn’t beaten or threatened with a knife. I thought if I was just stronger it wouldn’t have happened. You see the wom*n in sexual assault cases being attacked, people saying that their experiences aren’t “that bad” and “if they didn’t want it, why did they let it happen?” Every rape is violent. Every sexual assault victim has every right to feel however they like. If you tell someone that their experience wasn’t “that bad” then you are a terrible human being.
