Do I Need Permission to Tell My Story of Rape?
Nothing about trauma is convenient.
Best case scenario, it happens to us before we’re fully cognizant or capable of complete emotional uncoiling at the thought of what we’ve been through.
Childhood seems like the time where it would be most efficient to get trauma out of the way, a time before we know relational context and psychology and just how bad the experience is. But then, we harbor it, unspoken, in our tiny little bodies and it grows with us like bones — a silent foundation beneath the surface.
When trauma happens to us as adults, we have a better grip on what’s right and wrong. We have the ability to wonder and worry not only about what happened and whether we’re safe now, whether it will happen again, but also how it will affect us long-term, and whether others will believe us or think we caused it, and whether or not we did cause it, and so on.
Adults see trauma more clearly, but we aren’t always sure who to blame or even what exactly was wrong about it. Without answers to those questions, we cannot figure out how to keep ourselves safe from the same issues in the future, we might over-correct our own behavior and cut ourselves off from the world, we might lose trust in others, and we might beat ourselves bloody on the inside for doing something that has caused us so much pain.
We might hurt others with our trauma.
When I experienced the unsettling sexual exchange that I now call “rape”, I knew it felt wrong. I knew I didn’t like it. I knew it scared me in a way sex hadn’t before then. But mixing the feelings of pleasure and terror was foreign to me, I mistook it for what others called BDSM or kink.
Most importantly, I needed to immediately right the wrongness I felt.
I needed to normalize my experience as quickly as possible so that I could move forward without feeling the pain and fear that kept creeping up my throat, gurgling hateful questions about me:
Why did I go there that night? Why didn’t I just leave? Why did I have sex with a stranger? Why did I trust someone I’d only just met? Why didn’t I tell someone where I was going? Why was I a slut? Why did I like sex? Why did I think I was better than that? Why did I believe in romance?
Why did I think I deserved love?
Like most experiences with rape, mine wasn’t the straightforward narrative that we saw on television or read about prior to #MeToo. I wasn’t kidnapped by someone I didn’t know, I wasn’t wearing a sexy outfit, and I didn’t meet him at a bar where I’d had too many drinks to know what was going on. I didn’t scream “no” or try to fight him off.
My rape was violent, but the kind of violence where you can both almost pretend that no violations are being made; if everyone agrees to just let it happen, they can minimize the pain and focus on the pleasure.
I drove to his apartment to watch a movie and I assumed we’d probably make out. I was looking forward to kissing him, being touched by him, being cared for by a new person who seemed to genuinely like me and think I was worthy of their time. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of sex, I liked sex, and as he led me to his room that night my heart was fluttering, cheeks were rosy, I was excited.
Like many other survivors, I saw all the steps I took toward that violent incident and subtracted them from the actions he took which made me uncomfortable. Regardless of the evening’s outcome, I did my absolute best to convince myself that the responsibility was a wash.
For a week or so afterward, I continued to talk to him to see where things might go. In reflection, I know this was my way of protecting myself from the full traumatic blow of that experience. If we ended up married and happy, it would be worth the humiliation and pain I endured that evening.
Unfortunately, he turned out to be a very unhealthy person who harassed and antagonized me for at least a month after I caught him in a simple lie and called him on it.
I punished myself internally for years, wondering if I’d just waited another week before meeting him if he’d have shown his true colors and I could have avoided the invasive memories of that night.
At the same time, I denied that what happened was that bad at all. I let the experience inform my sexual behavior, assuming that many men wanted these things and were too afraid to ask for it. I embodied a sexual fantasy I thought men were keeping hidden for fear of repudiation. Some of them were into it, some of them weren’t —one of them may still be scarred by an action I took in the name of kink without realizing the impact it would have.
Only one man ever thought to ask why I liked “those things”, and we were close enough at that point for me to explore that question more deeply. It turned out that I didn’t really like being choked during sex, but I liked turning men on and had assumed that would do the trick. It had only aroused me to think that I might be arousing them.
Over a decade would pass before I’d be able to see that night for what it was — the memories I was unable to shake, the intense disdain (what I now recognize as a “trigger”) for a song he’d played on repeat during the event, the negative adjectives and shame I’d attributed to my behavior afterward. And that auto-response of trauma, concealing the truth even from myself, has made it difficult to talk about with anyone. I didn’t even know I was allowed to be bothered by it, let alone able to register the insidious, rippling effect it had in my life.
Thirteen years later, I wonder if I have permission to tell my story.
Pouring through Medium author accounts of rape experiences, conferring with victims on message boards, speaking with a therapist — I’ve been searching for consult from “experts” whether that night qualifies me to call myself a survivor. It’s not that I’m ill-informed — I work with survivors of rape and other intimate partner violence, yet, I’ve doubted calling myself one among them.
The reason for that matters.
It has to do with the supposed complexities of consent and with the long-played games of indirect conversation between potential lovers.
It has to do with societal shaming that blooms to self-blame. The gaslighting we do to ourselves in the aftermath — a dangerous attempt to right the cognitive dissonance of experiencing pain from what we hoped would be pleasure.
It has to do with the burial of trauma and the subsequent loss of self-awareness as we feel but cannot find the source of such feelings, and as we act but cannot associate those actions with the rooted moment we learned to take them.
No doubt, when I tell my story, there will be comments from readers urging me to take responsibility for the actions I took which led to the encounter, if not the entire experience. There will be naysayers, who don’t think that my story was one of rape but of a woman who regretted her conscious choices after making them.
None of those people will be completely wrong, but that doesn’t make what happened right.
That conflict is the reason to tell the story. The nuance, the differing perspectives, the choices, are all reasons for people to read it. Because rape isn’t always something that people set out to do, but something that ends up happening anyway. It’s not just about sex, but it’s also not always only about power and control either…
In moments of intense pleasure or pain, unaddressed trauma can leak out between one body and another — a monster that grabs hold of our conscience and tosses it to the side, replacing it with an almost primal instinct.
Your past trauma becomes my future trauma. And so on.
I may not have permission to tell my story, but the closed doors I face as I type these words are the same that have turned this trauma inward, twisted it, reshaped it, and spit it back out upon unsuspecting friends and lovers.
The man who hurt me might have faced similarly closed doors.
What pain might have ended with the power of a pen?
