Dirty. Violated. Used.
Those words described what I was feeling as I lay in my bed that Saturday night. I didn't occur to me that it wasn't my fault until now. As I let the tears fall, the only thing that was running through my head was:It's your fault.
He seemed nice at first. His blue eyes showed the promise of something more. His body language showed nothing but a slight interest in me. We had a nice conversation. We danced. We laughed. We flirted.
He asked to walk me home since it was late. I was sixteen. I didn't know that I should have been more careful than to walk home with a boy I had only just met. The slight unease in my stomach was on full blast as we walked out of the house together, the party still going on behind us.I ignored it.
He didn't speak. He didn't smile. The light in his eyes turned to something darker. I was afraid. I should have been from the moment I stepped foot outside with him.
My house was void of light as we walked towards it. No one was home as usual and this was the time that I actually needed someone to be there. I pulled out my keys, having decided that I wouldn't invite him in. I turned to him and smiled politely.
"Thank you for walking me home," I said softly, my voice shaking slightly. "Goodnight."
I felt his stare burning into my back as I turned the key in the door, but I didn’t notice him walk up behind me. When I pushed the door open, I was pushed inside along with it. The last thing I heard before things went wrong was the slam of the door.
It all happened very quickly. My clothes were off before I could process what was happening. He bruised me up when I tried to fight back. I was no match for him. He was a foot taller and pounds heavier. Once he had me pinned down, the pain came. I heard a bloodcurdling scream and didn't realize until moments later that it was me. He quieted me and concentrated on finishing.
Tears of anger and sorrow fell down my cheeks along with some of loss. He had taken my one virtue.
Once he was finished, he left. No words were exchanged. No sounds were made other than his zipper being pulled back up and the opening and closing of the door.
I lay there, wondering why I had let him do such a thing to me. From the beginning, i thought everything had been my fault. It was my fault that I didn’t recognize a rapist and that I flirted with him. It was my fault that I let a stranger walk me home. It was my fault that I didn’t pay attention to the unease in my stomach. It was my fault that no one was home. It was my fault that I was polite to him when I told him goodnight. It was my fault that he had raped me.
No one came home that night. I showered, my tears flowing with the water, and slowly crawled into bed before letting the sobs rip through my body. I didn't know when I had stopped crying, but I woke to the light of the sun the next morning.
How could there be such a pretty day after such a tragic thing?
How could the sun be out when I had just been broken?
How could there be light when I was in the dark?
For months, I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I let the voices in my head tell me that I deserved it. That it was my fault. I let the voices pull me deeper and deeper into depression. Everything that I had ever been passionate about seemed so stupid. I didn’t want to leave my room. I deserved all of the pain and torture I had put myself through.
I didn’t know when it hit me. Maybe it was the text that my best friend sent me saying that she loved me. Maybe it was the uplifting song that drifted past the walls of my room from a car radio across the street. Maybe it was the realistic part of my mind finally pushing through all of the negative thoughts and reminding me that if I let myself fall deeper, I wouldn’t even get to experience the things that mattered in life. But I finally realized something.
It wasn’t my fault.
I had no power over that guy. I didn’t control his mind. I could have never guessed that he would have taken advantage of me. He could have chosen any girl. It could have been anyone. I had no power over that turn of events.
So why was I killing myself over it? Why was I letting it control my life? And most importantly:
Why wasn’t I fighting back?
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