My Rape Doesn’t Define Me
Alyssa Royse’s experience with rape helped her find strength and individuality, and a message of hope.
By Alyssa Royse
I’ve spoken and written about my rape so many times that it’s downright passé to me at this point. It is one of many things that happened in my life that made me who I am. I give it, really, no more weight than all the other things. It was horrible, but…
And when I say things like that, OTHER people get mad at me for “minimizing” it.
It’s like they want me to make it central to who I am. They want me to live in fear and regret as a result of it. They want it to be a central catastrophe around which they can write a script of victimhood and injustice. (In which, I suspect, they can be the hero who saves me, poor damsel in distress.)
They want it to define me.
No thank you. I’m all good here.
Just in case it needs to be said, It was HORRIBLE. Every single thing about it was horrible — and my recovery from it was long and painful and ugly. (You can, for sure, make a movie of the week about it, no problem.)
But it is in my past. It is one of the things that made me who I am, it is not, in and of itself, who I am.
