Why My Rapists Walk Free

So there’s this decision of mine that has plagued me with guilt for two years.

It is heavy, and I carry this burden with slumped shoulders and an aching back.

It is a burden that only I can carry. I get no reprieve.

My decision sometimes makes my palms sweaty and my stomach turn in fear and hatred: hatred of myself, and of them.

I still can’t fully decide if I made the right choice, but I like to think that I did.

Now, don’t you dare tell me that I should still report, that I should have reported the rape.

Don’t you dare tell me what I should have done in that moment of crisis.

Here’s why:

I was literally fighting for my life.

Every day for a year, I looked at myself in the mirror and hated what I saw. I acted fine but inside I was falling apart. I thought about what it would be like to disappear, I wanted to hide from life, to fall asleep and just never wake up. I didn’t want to be dead, per se, I just wanted to stop fighting. I just wanted the struggle to fall away.

The day after I was raped, reporting the bastards never even crossed my mind. It didn’t cross my mind for two years after the fact. The only thing that I was focused on was living another day. To do so, my brain attempted to cross it out of my memory, to take a pink eraser to my brain and wipe out the details of that night. Yet, like those shitty erasers on that ONE pencil you hated in middle school, it just smudged the lines of that night. The events became blurry and unfocused. I was attempting to grasp at the memory like attempting to hold on to slippery soap. The harder I tried, the easier it slipped from my grasp. It caused anxiety.

The details didn’t even make sense to me initially.

I used to have these dreams of a wine glass. It would be filled with a red liquid, but for some reason I would just know that was Jack Daniels Whiskey with a little side of evil. A concoction to make me defenseless. I would scream and scream, and that liquid would be forcibly poured down my throat against my protesting.

I would jolt awake from the nightmares in a cold sweat, my body shaking, my mind racing with thoughts of escape and dread.

For a few weeks after the attack, that pink eraser screwed with my head. Those dreams were really all I could make out of that night because of that damn pink eraser, but in my gut I knew what had happened. I didn’t visualize the rape, and whenever my mind attempted to draw near the wounded memory and clear up the details, it would swiftly recoil from the burn that was inflicted. I learned to stay far away, in the comforts of my bed, staring at the ceiling, with an empty mind. For these reasons, I couldn’t have sat down and told the stories to the authorities initially anyways. I couldn’t bear to make out the story.

It is too late for me now.

Now don’t go spewing at me the statute of limitations in Michigan. I know my rights. I could report. The problem is that I did not get a SANE exam done. There is no DNA evidence. I did not tell anyone for a long time after the fact. I don’t even have the clothes anymore that I wore that night. It would literally be my word against theirs, and I don’t even know all of their names. How in the hell am I supposed to get anything to happen against them if I can’t win the case? The only way is to get a confession from them and there is no way in hell I am talking to them again.

Now, some of you might be saying that I should be coming forward and naming the guys who did it, and maybe in doing so, other women will come forward. It is very probable that there are other women that this has happened to, and if you are reading this, reach out to me. If I can get some women to validate the story with me, I may come forward with them. I just don’t want to drag myself through the torture of taking this to the authorities if I don’t have a chance in hell of winning the case, and there is more of a possibility if more women are standing alongside me.

Yet, if I were to be honest, I am trying very hard to let go of the anger. I am trying to forgive, not in trying to let them off the hook for what they have done, for in me writing about this, I am fighting back against these men. But I need to move on. I lived in that night for two years straight, and I no longer want to live there anymore. Other people need to allow me to continue this process, and not force me back by telling me to report. I have the right to not report, and please don’t judge me for acting within my rights.

Slowly, I have come to terms with the fact that my rapists are walking free, but something I have learned to believe in is Karma.

So good luck, rapists, because I have full faith that in this case, Karma will be a scathing bitch.