Chills. Fingernail marks in my skin where I’ve channeled the adrenaline and panic as old sensations make themselves new again. My hands knead and knot as I curl up in my sheets, walk through campus, sit through lectures. Sometimes it feels like the flashbacks are more exhausting than the experiences themselves.
The first time it happened, it took me over a year to realize, no, it wasn’t okay. I remember being told he was interested in me; him – popular, attractive, upperclassman – interested in me – naive, awkward, 15-year old freshman – me. I remember sneaking past campus police and following him into the dark theatre, his hands pushing me against the wall. He slid one down my shorts, and when I nervously pulled it back up, he whispered “it’s okay,” forcing me to bite my tongue in silence. I agreed to hook up with him; what could I say?
The second time it happened, with someone else and a few years later, it took me months to realize he raped me. No, sexually assaulted. Where are the lines drawn? Am I allowed to call it rape when I pushed him off of me, out of me, before he could go any further? My hands shot out to block his body and he laughed in my face. Yet my voice betrayed me again when he later forced my head down on him.
The delayed response of realization, of past buried feelings dredged up to eclipse the present, mimics the halting words in my throat as yes’s turn into no’s and no’s turn into silence.
The times it didn’t happen, it almost could have. That is how I’ve been taught to understand most of my experiences with men, as almosts. Every time I see the boy from the lax house who followed me around the basement all night, hands grabbing my sides, pulling me towards him before I pushed away, again and again, my breath catches in my throat. I tell myself to breath in and out as the chills assault my body, as memories of hands in unwanted places resurface.
I am not a victim, but I don’t feel like a survivor yet. All I know is that I’m exhausted.
But if exhaustion is the product of labor, then at least I know that I’m moving forward.