A Letter to the Man Who Raped My Best Friend
You don’t know me, but I know you. I know your name, what you look like, where you went to school, where you work. I even know the town that you live in. Might sound a little creepy, right? Well, I promise you, I have a good reason.
See, you took something that did not belong to you. You stole some things that are very important to me, and these are things that you will never be able to give back. These beautiful treasures that you smashed in an instant on that dirty shower floor. You took it upon yourself, without permission, without consent, to undress a person that I’ve spent my life growing up beside. Her clothing is not the only thing you removed from her that night, though. You took away so, so much more. Her happiness, trust, self-confidence, sense of self-worth, security, mental health, will to live, the light behind her eyes. You stole her own body from her. You are a thief.
You shoved her down and held your hand in between her shoulders. The shoulders that have carried me through thick and thin. The shoulders that were there for me to cry on whenever I needed them. Your filthy hands groped at her body. The body that I’ve spent the last 10 years hugging and laughing with. You forced yourself between her legs. The legs that ran beside me for 5 years at cross country and track races. The legs that got so sore at practice we would laugh hysterically at how long it took us to walk up the stairs. Where on earth did you get the idea that you had the right to touch these parts of her? Silence does not mean yes.
Do you know what it’s like to see someone you love for the first time after something terrible has happened? I’ll tell you. It’s heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking. To look into my best friends eyes and see something that once was there is now missing. That joy, that innocence, the lust for life, gone. I’ve experienced great pain in my life but that was quite possibly the worst thing I have ever witnessed. I sat at the dining room table in her house and listened in perturbation as she described how empty she felt inside. How she didn’t know who she was anymore.
I watched as the frustration, anger, fear, and pure depression came out in her words. They traveled across the room and wrapped around my chest like a vice. I couldn’t stand to see her like this. To know that one single person can rip everything good away from you so quickly. Tears clung to her beautiful eyelashes but did not fall. The conversation slowly moved on to a lighter subject. We joked and laughed but her eyes told me that she was not happy. I have never seen another human being look so broken.
Your beloved hockey team, the ones who lied to the investigator for you, have added her name to their list of “life ruiners”. Life ruiners. As if this has had a greater effect on your life than it has on hers. I can assure you that the minor inconvenience it caused you does not even come close. Nothing came of the case, don’t you recall? You got off scot free. The idea that your friends have a list of girls names that have presumably “ruined their lives” makes my skin crawl so badly I would take it off if I could. You are all disgusting.
I’ve got a list too, and your name is at the top. Do you have any idea how many people in this world hate you? It’s a lot, and as my friend goes through her life telling her brave story of survival, that number is only going to grow. There’s an entire community of people out there who hope you never find happiness and success, and very justifiably so.
In the title of this letter I refer to you as a man, but you reign so far from that word you could never hope to reach it in your wildest dreams. Run as fast and as far as you can for the rest of your life and you will still never get there. As far as I’m concerned you are the worst type of human that walks this earth. Collect every piece of garbage from every dump across the nation, go to every swamp, every sewage treatment plant, scrape each and every sun-dried animal carcass off the side of the highways that trail through our country. Place all of these odious objects in a mound before me and I will still find you more revolting. You are a coward. You are the scum of this earth.
I’ve never been a religious person, but I pray to God you are infertile. I truly hope you never have children. I pray you never have a daughter because you do not deserve to be graced by the presence of a beautiful girl. You do not deserve to watch her grow into a woman. Would you shrug your shoulders and tell her she wasn’t raped if a college boy took advantage of her while she was drunk? I fear deeply the idea of you having a son. How would you raise him? Would you fail him the same way your parents have failed you? How can you teach someone right from wrong when you can’t even grasp the concept yourself?
You have taken so much from my friend but you do not own her. It took some time, but she is slowly getting her body to come back to her. She is making it her own, her temple, and it will never be anyone else’s. That night might have been just one night for you, but it is going to be engraved in her bones for the rest of her life. You didn’t reap the consequences of any of this. You get to walk through each day like nothing ever happened. You got to stay in school, living in the same building as her until you graduated. Meanwhile, she sat in her dorm room terrified of leaving in fear of passing you on campus. If she wanted to get away from you, she was the one that had to move, not you.
Every night when I go to bed I find myself hoping that you are lying in your own, paralyzed with guilt from what you have done. I hope you can’t sleep. I hope you can’t eat. I hope that every time you laugh, you realize just how undeserving you are of experiencing that joy. My friend is the bravest, strongest person I know. She’s coming back to me piece by piece. She’s going to be ok. I’m making sure of it, along with everyone else who loves her. That night does not and will not define her, but it should define you. You don’t know me, but I know you, and I hate your fucking guts.
snowghoul
annaxmalina
vaporwave
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
titsay
blakekathryn
2087
