It’s all in the title. I was raped. 53 days 14 and a half hours ago. I want to tell the whole world, but I don’t want to tell anyone and I don’t want anyone to know. I feel like I have this huge secret that I can’t tell anyone. (See, there are reasons why I am slightly unstable in the emotional sector right now.)
It’s like having this giant two ton brick sitting on my chest constantly. It’s like having my head wrapped in wet leather that is slowly drying. It’s squeezing me. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t sleep. I can’t decide if I want people to know or if I don’t want them to know anything at all. I can’t decide if I just want to be alone or if I need people. I am hugely ambivalent about everything right know and it is completely unsettling.
Every so often I work up enough courage and tell one friend at a time. Only when it is someone that I feel like I am hiding this from. Someone who would otherwise know big things in my life. Not just friends that I hang out with sometimes. The friends who are basically my family. But even when I work up the courage to tell someone, I am immediately eaten up inside. I just get really ashamed and I feel like maybe I should keep it to myself. I know they don’t think less of me, but it just feels like I am somehow less of a person after someone knows. After a while it is fine and I’m kind of glad that they know, but it’s just a really tough decision and something really hard to do.
This wasn’t the first time, but it is such a completely different experience than any other time. Someone broke into my apartment, they jumped in my bed while I was totally asleep. I woke up to someone in my bed. I shut my eyes. I didn’t even see his face. I have no idea who it was. And I have no face to put with this, no one to be angry at, no one to look out for. The police are at a brick wall, until something else turns up there’s nothing they can do. So until then, if there’s a then, I’m left in a twighlight zone. I don’t know which way is up or down, left, or right. I don’t know how to deal with this. I just don’t know.
So, here it is. No pussy-footing around, no off-beat humor, no sarcasm. I was raped and that is all there is. Where do I go from here? How do I move on? This is the thing. This is the thing that has knocked me down, the one that I am afraid I won’t be able to get back up from. The one that I’m afraid to even say aloud and avoid saying it at all costs.
I see that word on my screen and I am moved to erase it. Find something less harsh. Find something that doesn’t slash my eyes to read, doesn’t make them fill up with water every time I see it. Find a word that has less power. One that doesn’t contain so much fear, that doesn’t hold so much pain. But, there is no other word. There is not one, single other word in the whole English language that describes what happened that night. And I hate that. I hate the whole language for it. I hate everyone who speaks and writes this language. The language that provides me no consolation. It gives no gentle alternative to the razor sharp edges of rape.
I am lost. I am broken. I don’t know what to do to fix myself. I need someone to tell me what to do. I need that calm voice talking me down off of the mental wall that I am on. Talk me through the actions. Talk me down. I can’t do it, I can’t get down on my own. But, no one can tell me what to do. I have to figure it out on my own. In some ways that is a very cold and lonely place to be and no one can be here with me. But, I know I am not alone at all. I know that people are here for me. But, there is nothing they can do. No way to get into this place where I am and hold my hand. No way to tell me what to do.
Why is there a 49 in the url? I started writing 49 days after The Day. I needed to write.
I don’t even know if I should post this.
