I've only come forward with my story to a handful of friends, because I wasn't sure if it "counted." I don't know what to call it- if anyone ever asked me if I've been raped, I would say no. Still, about 24 hours after it happened, I was hit by a terrible wall of emotion that I still carry around. Luckily (?), when I came to my best friend, she could relate by telling me about the time she knew she was raped, but when she told her friends, they told her it didn't count. In two and a half years of friendship, I had never cried in front of her. But together, we cried the tears of our own pain and each other's pain. If it made you feel awful and dirty and like you simultaneously wanted to scream at him and never talk to him again, it counts. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
This is a letter I wrote to you about two weeks after it happened.
Dear Pedestal Boy,
Everyone knows letters start with the salutation “Dear,” so I’m using it in order to make sure you understand that this is, in fact, a letter. I’d like to make it clear though that there is nothing “dear” about the way I feel about you. Our last encounter was highly traumatic for me, and you crossed lines that can never be uncrossed. You actually told me while we were in bed that you consider yourself a feminist, and I think that is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. Any feminist and/or basic human knows that implicit consent is not the same thing as consent. Had you asked me at any point if you were being too rough, if you were hurting me, I would have said yes.
Why didn’t I say that on my own, you ask? Look at our complicated history. From the beginning, I felt the need to suppress my feelings around you, lest I become one of the many who fall at your feet. I also, for reasons even I don’t understand anymore, sought your approval above all else. We both know you were never going to give it to me.
But I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t sexy enough, wasn’t good enough in bed, wasn’t what you wanted in the moment, so I didn’t want to have to tell you to stop. So I didn’t. Instead, I completely dissociated. I tried to distance myself from the physical pain you were inflicting by thinking about how glad I was that I didn’t need to have sex with you again to prove a point to myself, how even though the last guy was boring in bed at least he didn’t hurt me.
What disgusts me the most about the way you handled yourself is what I learned about you as a result. After a semester of not speaking to each other, your anger from our last fight built and so did your need to assert your dominance. Well it worked. I choked for air as you asserted your dominance into the back of my throat. I looked away when you asserted your dominance all over my chest. I wore the assertion of your dominance on my skin in the form of bruises for more than two weeks. And I think the emotional bruises are going to take a lot longer than that to heal.
Aside from not knowing your own strength and never trying to consider what OTHER people might want for a change, your biggest problem is that you’re just a huge asshole. Take, for example, the last thing you said to me before I asked you not to contact me again. You said “Obligatory next day text that you’re going to read into. Hola.” I just find it so unlikely that at your reading and comprehension level, you truly don’t understand how mean and condescending that is. Throughout all of our interactions, you belittled me, you made me feel paranoid and dumb, and you constantly made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. I think you knew that too, and you never tried to change it or talk to me about it.
That night was a whirlwind of confusion for me because I so hated you and loved you at the same time. The hate came from the logical, current part of myself, and the love came from an underdeveloped past self. I’d like to thank you, though, because if my experience of knowing you hadn’t been so terrible, I might still be confused about love. The fact is, I can’t love with my body and not with my mind. And when I try to, it’s a huge mess. So with you I should have known better, but I’m glad I do now for the future. That said, I still hate you. Burn in Hell, Palace Queen