May 10, 2020 1:19p
If you were active on Twitter a week or two ago, you might have seen a few pages created to expose rapists and predators. The entire thing with exposing these evil people and victims sharing their stories had been triggering. Not so much of the actual stories themselves, but victims being called liars and/or doubted. So, a few days ago, I shared a story with my mom and I told her about the time that I was sexually assaulted.
After seeing all the posts and replies on Twitter. I took it upon myself to go to my mom and ask her if she had ever been sexually assaulted. Just asking because it happens more than you think it does. I just wanted to know, I wanted to know if she ever had to go through that. She responded, “No. Why would you ask?” So, I told her about all the Twitter stuff and after I stood there waiting for her to ask if I had ever experienced it myself. She never did, so in that moment I took it upon myself to tell my mom about what happened to me. I told her…. She paused, and we looked at each other. She froze, and she looked at me with so much disbelief and sadness. She immediately got teary eyed before balling. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do, and I was taken back because I realized that I wasn’t ready for this. “I didn’t even think to ask you that. I would have thought you’d come and tell me something like this.” Well, I didn’t lol.. I honestly wanted to act like nothing happened to me. I wanted to get rid of the image and memory of what they did to me. This led me to having to share this experience with my mom, and I tried my best to not have to revisit that moment. Although I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t think I had an issue saying that it happened to me, as long as I never had to walk people through those exact moments, ya know? Like I can say “I was sexually assaulted” but me going back to that time and taking people through step by step isn’t something that I want to do.
Yes, this terrible thing happened to me, but I don’t want it to become who I am. I didn’t want to go throughout my life being seen as a “victim” or having to grow up and whenever my family and I would watch a show/movie where someone got raped and then everyone turned to look at me. Get it? I never wanted to live a life like that. And my mom asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Well, um….. It’s embarrassing. It’s one thing to have been sexually assaulted but then it’s different when you’re a boy/man. It’s embarrassing and sometimes it’s never taken seriously because it was a girl/woman who did this to you. And, in my case, there were two girls.
So, when people take it upon themselves to call men and women liars, it hurts, and it bothers me. Do you know the percentages of cases where someone lied about rape? 5%!!!! PERCENTTTTT! And this number comes from a case study of REPORTED cases. Do you know how many people choose not to report their assault and rapists??? More than you’d ever know! Could you imagine being raped, violated, and then being called a LIAR? Soul crushing!
For me, I can’t say that my experience has haunted me, nor has it ever been something heavy on my mind. I know what happened; I know who did it and I remember how I felt at the moment and after. It’s something that I worked through and dealt with on my own. I told no one. This was something that I took to my grave(or at least planned to).
Lately, I’ve been trying to take a deeper dive into myself and really figure out if this has affected me in ways I have never noticed. I mean.. other than my anxiety and having trouble allowing people to get close to me, that’s about it. And I’d say that’s light compared to things I have heard and/or read.
Perplexxed. 