I remember that when it started, I had already forgotten him. I had forgotten his name, his face, his hands. I remember that I was asleep. I was in my own space, then his foot on my foot, and I slid away and back into sleep. I remember his leg on my leg, and I slid further from him. I remember body on body, and the edge of the bed, and how all I wanted was more bed into which I could slide away. But that was the end of the bed. I remember the sheets on the bed holding me from tumbling to the floor and his body holding me from going back to sleep. His hands that I kept moving away. I wonder if he remembers my hand getting caught in the blankets while his hand got caught in my basketball shorts. I remember an audible ‘stop’ escaping my lips. I’ve always wondered if he remembers that.
I remember when he kissed me. I had been waiting for it to happen, my first kiss, and my mind fluttered for a few seconds, unsure of whether to be excited or scared. It was the first thing I didn’t resist because I wanted my first kiss (albeit not from him). It didn’t last long. It didn’t mean anything. It didn't feel like anything. It felt like a small shock, but in a dull way. I was hoping I would feel electrified, but all I felt was hollow. What a bad first kiss, I’d thought to myself. A first kiss was supposed to make your body come alive. I asked myself, does it count to be alive if you’re still half asleep?
I remember when I realized it didn’t count. I realized it six months later, when I had my second kiss and I was alive and electrified and his hands stayed on my hips and didn’t need to be slid over because he had asked first and I’d said “yes” and smiled. In that new moment, I realized it didn’t count, what had happened when I was tangled up against the edge of a bed.
I remember when, as I was preparing to commit to attending Tufts, I found out that he was coming here. I can pinpoint the exact moment when I saw on Facebook that he had committed to coming to school here. Over the next 24 hours, I wavered over whether to put down a deposit here; whether I would still be happy at Tufts even if he was also on the campus. In that moment, I was finally presented with a choice, and I consented to spending four years on a campus with him.
It happened, and, truth be told, it’s still happening. It’s still causing me frustration. It’s happening every time I see him and feel guilty marking him as my attacker and nothing else because he is a real person. It happened when I saw him kissing someone at a frat party and I knew that they probably weren't sober enough to know what was happening, but I was too uncomfortable to do anything. It happened when we had dinner at the same table as each other at the beginning of this school year, exactly two years to the day after we met. It happened when I was sixteen, and I thought that our lives were supposed to intersect once and then go separate ways. But it’s still happening here.