My Journal

At the end of my freshman year of high school, when I was fifteen years old, I trusted a nineteen year old friend and left my home late at night to go for a “walk.” We walked to a playground at the elementary school near my house, where he suggested that we sit down to talk. He raped me next to the mouth of the orange tube slide.

I told no one.

He told his friends, and they told their friends, etc., that we had consensual sex. I was branded a slut and tormented for the next two years. To this day, when I hear someone yelling in my vicinity, I think that they are talking about me, laughing at me, “How many STDs did you get, host monkey?…You are so dirty…Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

During the summer before my senior year, I moved from Massachusetts to Virginia. One night, I told a friend about my past and I began the process of healing.

I’ve made a lot of progress since that night. I told a member of a confidential support group at my college and just recently, I told my roommate. Every time I tell the story, it gets a little easier. I know that I still have a long way to go, but I have a support system now, people I can rely on when I have bad days. I feel that I am strong enough now to support those who are just beginning this journey. It’s really hard and it’s really scary, but we can do this, together.

Well, that was cheery and optimistic, huh? I really don't feel like that all the time. Right now, I feel pretty crappy. I feel pretty alone.

I've noticed that I have a major problem with people touching me (male and female) , in any way. It's like I exude stay away from me rays or something. I think that I really do. I freeze up when people hug me or even do something as simple as touch me on the arm. I don't know why I just realized this. In any case, it has really been depressing me, because I hate feeling...different. Not different in a good way, different in a bad way. I feel like I'm the only one in the room that freezes up when the word "rape" is mentioned. I feel like I'm the only one who feels weird when someone puts their arm around me.

I wrote an article for my college newspaper about something like this...you can read it if you want.

It's late. I'm going to bed.

Okay, that was a bad day. Luckily, they're not all like that.

Today I completed my application for Safe Space, the student-run, sexual assault support / activist group on my campus, which included an essay. Hopefully, I'll get in. I encourage everyone, when they're ready, to take part in a group like this. Reaching out to other survivors really helps you regain the sense of empowerment that is lost when you are sexually assaulted. It's like...not only is he losing his power over me, but I have the strength now to help others.

I really believe that survivors should stick together and help each other. It's so difficult to go through something like this alone -- I know -- I tried to do it for three years. I just want to let everyone know that I am here to listen and to be a friend.

The last two weeks of my life have been some of the scariest. Two weeks ago I finally found the strength (with the help of a very good friend) to get tested for HIV. I was convinced that the man who raped me had given me a deadly disease as well. I don't know how I would have survived the last couple weeks (it takes two weeks for the result to come back) if it weren't for a friend, who spent many late nights calming me down and another friend who accompanied me to the clinic. This experience gave me a topic for the short story that I had to write for my creative writing class.

The test came out negative, which was a giant relief, to say the least. Anyway, since my professor wouldn't accept my claim that I shouldn't have to fill the ten page requirement for the short story (the one about being tested was only five pages), I had to write a second one, which is about the struggle to put the feelings after a rape into words.

I got into Safe Space. Yay! I had my first meeting today and I think that the people in it are really nice. It means that I'll have to speak to groups, such as fraternities, about sexual assault, which will be hard, but I think it'll be good for me.

On a side note, I've decided to live in a single next year. I think that I need to be able to control my environment more than if I was living in a double with a roommate. What this means is that I've had to meet with a whole bunch of people in the administration to explain my situation, which had been hard. The last couple of days have been tough because of that, but I think that it will be worth it.

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