Warning: This article discusses sexual assault.
It’s been over two years now, but the details are still crystal-clear. I’m 16 and bright-eyed, hopping in my new friend’s car to venture off to who-knows-where. The blaring of the radio and ever-encompassing night drowns out our trivial high school worries. We laugh and we talk and we sing, and I feel real. I belong. I trust them.
I trust them until I don’t. I’m not sure when that started. It’s the type of thing that you don’t realize is happening until you’re right in the middle of it. Like you blacked out and woke up wondering how you got there. I often ask myself how I let it go on for so long because of how obvious it was. But I know why. Because they were my friend. And friends play-wrestle and kiss and talk about sex, right?
It wasn’t like how it is in the movies. The guy gropes the girl and she punches him and it’s all about girl power and fighting for what you believe in. Instead, it was all playful headlocks and tickles and hushed suggestions into naive ears. It was telling me fantasies and kissing me with rough lips and piercing eyes and exploring my skin with calloused hands. It was blurring the line until I doubted myself, because there was no definite “no” but no definite “yes.” It was all fun and games until it wasn’t, when the predatory intent showed through each touch and the person who I called a friend wanted things I did not want to give them. I came home each night feeling unclean, the stirring in my stomach never-ending. They appeared in the deepest recesses of my dreams, taunting. But I didn’t talk about it. Except for once, when the swell of anxiety in my chest drove me to text my friend:
My friend has been touching me and I don’t know what to do about it.
Their response brought my heart to my stomach.
Just ask them not to.
And then, later on, sometimes you just need to speak up before you actually would get hurt.
Speaking up. Of course. They made it sound so easy. But every time, my throat closed up. My stomach churned. I’m a writer, a speaker, someone whose entire major revolves around communication. But I could never speak. I’ve always wanted to speak, to prove my point even two years later. I swore to myself that the next time I saw them, I’d yell and scream and tell them how much they ruined me.
I saw them for the first time again at Dairy Queen. Time froze, bile rose in my throat. We locked eyes – eyes I’ll never forget – and they ran away. They did the second time, too. I never got to yell and scream and hit them like those girls in the movies. I just went home, tried to forget their face that crept into my dreams all this time later, and moved on.
That’s the issue: forgetting about it. Leaving the issue an open book, letting it linger within yourself each day. When I finally realized what was done to me, I stewed with anger and resentment. I screamed at myself to speak up like so many people before me had done, to become a part of the #MeToo movement and stand united. I wasn’t ready, though, and that’s okay. The people who were ready gave me the strength to speak up. They gave me the strength to tell my therapist, then my parents, then my friends, and now you, reader. Speaking out doesn’t fix the issue of sexual harassment, but it puts it in the forefront. Speaking out gives us ammunition to make change. It shows people who fear speaking out that they’re not alone, that they’re supported regardless of whether they want to come out publicly about what happened to them or not. They don’t need to feel alone anymore.
I realize now, two years later, I don’t need to be like those girls in the movies seeking vigilante justice. I need to find justice within myself, first and foremost. And that’s enough.
