The Inciting Incident

Surviving Multiple Instances of Abuse is More Common Than You Think

There’s still time to stop reading this if you don’t want to hear a story about another college student being raped at a frat party. Photo by author: Veronica Wren

I started to type that this was the worst thing I’d ever been through, but that unfortunately isn’t even close to true. It feels more like an inciting incident. The careless elbow knocking the car into neutral on a hill, starting it rolling down, down.

Any negative sexual encounter can, of course, have long-lasting effects, but a traumatic first experience can set the tone for what a person believes relationships and sex are supposed to look like. This is especially true in a society where children aren’t properly educated on sex, consent, and healthy relationships.

My only prior experience with the opposite sex had been one of my best friends, S. I was head over heels for years, but he didn’t reciprocate. While our hookups were steamy by my naive standards, they were also beautifully innocent.

I wasn’t ready to have sex, especially not with someone with whom I wasn’t in a relationship. He knew this and never pressured me. While we’d spend all night kissing and holding each other, that was as far as it went.

Near the end of high school, S started dating a girl from another school. By the time he and I began attending the same college, we’d had a pretty solid run of being “just friends”. The…