Last year, I submitted my story to It Happens Here and it had a profound effect on me. I finally came to terms with the fact that my assault was not my fault, and I gained a small form of closure.
I never told my parents about my assault. My friends at Tufts were supportive. I had friend from home tell me that I should “stop getting drunk and making stupid decisions” My sister said something similar.
This summer, I was talking to my mom about an article I read about sexual assault and she began saying things like “girl’s can’t put themselves in situations where this kind of thing can happen to them”. This really bothered me, that my own mother was pretty much victim blaming. I thought to myself that this was due to her upbringing, she grew up in India – a completely different world from what I grew up in, and this is what she was taught. I tried to rationally explain to her that what she was saying was painful for survivors of assault. She completely didn’t get it. Then I got angry.
If something happened to me, would you blame me for it?” I yelled at her, tears streaming down my face. “Of course not she said.” I ran up to my room and wasn’t able to stop myself from crying for half an hour. Both my parents sat on my bed with me trying to calm me down. They had no idea how triggering and hard it was for me to hear my own mother say these things.
“Did something happen to you at Tufts?” she asked when I had calmed down. I lied and I said no. I said I knew people who it happened to. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Would she ask me if I was drunk? Because I was. Would she ask me where it happened? A frat basement. Would she question why I went to a party when there was a blizzard going on? Probably. Would she blame her daughter for her assault? She might not have said so explicitly, but I believe that she would have put part of that blame on me. And I couldn’t have all those feelings come back. But they did anyway, the wounds opened, and the guilt seeped through.
A couple months after my assault, I was in a great relationship and one night I told my boyfriend at the time the story. He told me he was sorry and he would take care of me. That’s the kind of support I want from the people I love.
It is so hard knowing that I cannot tell my own mother about something terrible that happened to me. Something that changed me. I love my mom, and she is my role model because she is so strong and so smart. But I can never tell her about my assault. And I can never look at her the same again.