I was a junior in high school when I was raped. I was raped twice by two different boys. I had recently lost my virginity but was still extremely naive. I’d had one sexual experience and it was terrible and painful. I did not know how sex was supposed to feel. I didn’t understand that he should be gentle, or that I should be completely sure about it before he entered me. That if I had a doubt, I should speak up. That I could have said no. That I shouldn’t have just laid there and let it happen.
The first boy, he was a bad boy. He did bad things and got in trouble. A recipe for disaster, at best. We kissed, and it was a big deal to me. He fingered me, and boy was I turned on. As he fingered me, his knee slipped so he had to take his hand out to readjust his position. Wrong. He needed to pull his penis out because he was going to shove it in me, without warning, and without a condom. A painful penetrating pop surprised me, I looked wide-eyed and said “how many fingers do you have in me?”, and he says, “haha I don’t have any, that’s my dick”. My heart sunk. I wasn’t ready for my number two. I looked at him and said we needed to stop. He simply said why, as he kept thrusting himself into me. He kept going, until I looked very upset. He came, and I cried. I laid facing the wall and tears began to trickle down. He said we should try again, this time with a condom. He said it would be better now that I was “stretched out”. So I listened, because I had no control. He had driven me from school to his house, so I had no way to leave and my mother couldn’t pick me up for another two hours. I was stuck. Stuck with someone raping me. I felt compelled not to end it. I tried to make things work with this boy. Things obviously didn’t work out. I realized I had been raped months after. Before that, I denied it, and I tried to blame myself for not saying no, for not fighting against him. I blamed myself for everything.
The second boy. I knew him from school, he grew up with my best friend at the time. I knew this boy, I thought. I didn’t. I thought that smoking weed was cool, so I smoked with this boy after school at his house. We went into his room. We kissed, and he, too, forced his penis into me. His pants weren’t even off. He just pulled a ‘fast one’. Imagine that. Now do you understand why I won’t tell anyone? I look like the girl with regrets, like I’m looking to blame someone. I’m not, though. I have had consensual sex, and that sex is beautiful. That is what sex is supposed to be, but those boys, what they did wasn’t beautiful. What they did fucked me up inside more than I even understand at this point in life.
I’m a senior in college, nearly 5 years after my rapes, and I can barely understand them. How could I have allowed something to happen to me that I wasn’t okay with? I try not to blame myself, as victims often do. Society tells us not to speak out, and that rapes don’t count unless you say “no”. But that’s the thing.. you can’t consent unless you say you do. Silence isn’t consent. Crying isn’t consent. Making out isn’t consent. Rape isn’t sex. Rape is a crime against humanity.
I’m in college, and I have been seeing a therapist for over a year and a half, every two weeks. I just told her about my rapes last Tuesday. She doesn’t know any details. This is the first time I’ve written of them. The violation I felt after this occurred was overwhelming. I had severe depression and anxiety, and I cut myself often. I still struggle with depression and anxiety and have just learned to manage it medication free. Although, have a problem with wanting control, and I have a problem with being lonely.
Rape takes away your control. Mentally, emotionally, physically. It overcomes you, temporarily. That’s the dangerous part. I felt no power or control, so I began to crave it. I wanted to be the one to initiate sex, and I wanted to be in charge. I began sleeping around after that. I was looking for the security of making my own sexual decisions. This is the kind of damage done by rape that no one talks about. We slut shame women who we don’t know, and we dehumanized women with a high body count yet worship men with the same. Women who are raped are not always turned sheepish and men-fearing. Sometimes we act in a less obvious way. Both are okay and we can’t tell rape victims how they are allowed to react to their trauma. We live everyday with it, we hear rape jokes and cringe on the inside. We are fully aware of how many people joke about rape and sexual harassment like it is part of the Sunday comic section. Sometimes we tell people about our rapes, and sometimes we keep them hidden inside of us forever. No one knows the pain of rape until they have experienced it. A rape by a stranger jumping out of the bushes is just as valid as a rape committed by someone you know or love, and that cannot be denied. We need to stand up for our bodies. We need to understand our power, and understand that we never need to live in fear of saying no to sex.
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