this is not poetry, this is the truth. Time’s Up.
This is a personal story about what happened a few weeks ago. I just wanted to share it because it made me so angry at men, so angry at myself, so angry at the world.
The other night I met a couple of guys. From Berlin, at a party, I liked one of them more than the others. He was tall, so tall. Not beautiful in a way that you would look at him and be immediately stunned. More in a way that you would risk looking at him twice, thrice, until you would see the whole picture. I felt special with him, brave and courageous, like he could really want me. Which had been hard in the past, just believing that someone could want me, could feel desire upon knowing me for just a brief moment. He was older than me and we decided to go to dinner the next evening. Him, his friends and I. His friend was my age, but the Berlin version. He listened to Rap, the kind that likes to diminish women. He tried to explain that he liked that kind of music because the guys in that specific rap group were authentic. Authentic, because they did and actually lived out what they were rapping about. But, oh of course, he wasn’t a sexist. Not a patriarch. I might’ve believed it in that special moment, with the guy I liked next to me, pressing his knee against mine, trying to come so close to me, that I wouldn’t be able to let him go. His friend, the 23 year old, was just a young guy, who liked to smoke weed, who liked to party, who would never disrespect women, who just thought that the guys, who did such, were authentic.
Just a few bats of my eyelashes later it happened. What was, in that very moment, just really uncomfortable, awkward and made me ashamed of myself, turned out to be so much more. The memory of it made me hate myself and especially that guy so much. Dinner was going great, not considering that awful discussion about sexist rap lyrics, then we exchanged Instagram names. Months ago I uploaded a picture. I wrote the two words ‘me too’ with blue glitter liner and in caps on my forearm. Where the veins are visible, with my hand clenched into a fist. Not because I wanted to follow a trend, not because I wanted some likes or whatever. Because I felt it, because I feel it. The hate, the agony, the feeling of being unable to do anything, something, to not be a victim. We exchanged Instagram names and his friend scrolled through my feed. I wasn’t thinking about it, I’m trying to not constantly think about what happened to me and so many other women out there, I don’t want to be a victim. First his friend laughed. Then he turned around the phone and showed us a picture. I saw a forearm on his screen, glittery blue letters and I wanted to vomit. I liked that guy next to me, I wanted him to like me, I didn’t want him to think less of me. I didn’t want him to think less of me. I didn’t want him to think less of me. His friend repeated the words on my arm in that picture in the most mocking tone possible. He laughed again and I realised, that he was laughing at me. Without having any idea if I had been in fact sexually abused or even raped, he laughed in my face. He saw that picture on my feed and decided to not believe it. Not believe me. To not believe the words I and so many other women used.
I should’ve stood up to him. I should’ve told him off, should’ve fought for myself and for every other girl, whose story wasn’t believable enough to some guy. Whose words, whose bravery, weren’t enough. What I did made me hate myself. I laughed as well, waved my hand, dismissed my own picture, my own statement, my own truth. With my words, I played it down, just so I wouldn’t lose the interest of the guy I liked. I am a victim of sexual abuse. I let a man laugh in my face for standing up, for joining other girls and women who had been through the same. And I let the affection I craved from another man push me into lying about all of that. Into diminishing my past, the person I became because of it. Into diminishing my own strength. A man made me hate myself all those years ago. The other day, after a party and a guy I liked, a man made me hate myself again. There are so many things I’ve and I’m still going to learn from that night. One, that both guys and so many more of them should learn (and I hope, this somehow reaches them): the ‘me too’ debate isn’t old news. It’s nothing you take easy, nothing you laugh about. It just started, It’s just the beginning and dear men? Time’s Up.
