I Don’t Remember Who Raped Me
We need to talk about the impact of trauma on memory
Fourteen years ago, a policewoman walked into my hospital room. She asked me to describe the when, where, and who of my rape.
At that point, I wasn’t even sure I had been raped. I wasn’t sure of anything.
I’d begged an acquaintance to drive me to the hospital hours before by telling her that I thought I might have been raped the night before, that something felt wrong, but I was not sure. She looked at me skeptically, but drove me. When she dropped me off, with someone else in the car undoubtedly there in case I was in the middle of some sort of psychotic break, she gave me the saddest look.
I told the nurse at the hospital, “I think someone might have raped me.”
At that point, the hospital kicked into high gear. My sense of time was completely off. It felt like the nurse who came to examine me simply appeared at the doorway to my hospital room as though teleported there. There was nothing much for her to find, no obvious marks on me. Next, the police came, arriving with much fanfare and mumbled discussions just out of my earshot with the medical staff.
Now, having studied rape culture in detail, I can imagine what they must have been saying. At the time, however, I felt only…
