Our Bodies, Ourselves (31 page)

I was so confused by it, because it didn't seem to fit a “normal” definition of sexual assault. I couldn't reconcile the fact that I'd said yes to the sex but no to sex without a condom. I didn't realize until two years later that that wasn't okay. I went to a counselor on campus right after it happened and he asked me all these questions about what I was wearing, what I did and said—
things that made me feel like I'd made it happen. (I didn't go back to the counseling center until I was a senior.) At the time I was a resident assistant, and I had a hard time asking for help because it was my job to help other students.

I got into my first serious relationship senior year, after a couple of random hookups that I think I engaged in mostly to prove I was still okay with sex. I told him about it the night we were roughhousing on my bed, and he ended up on top of me. He jokingly said, “What am I gonna do with you now that I have you here?” I felt like I needed to explain why I looked so scared.

It was there all the time for years. I hated being anywhere but on top during sex at first. I hated being in crowds, where it felt like other people's bodies were restricting my movement. It was like a third person in the bed with every partner. Finally, about eight years after it happened, I got sick of that. I can't say I'm over it—you never are—but I made a decision
not
to assume every guy has the potential to be
that
guy, to
not
be nervous and scared, and it has helped. So has talking about it, to friends, partners, and a counselor.

I had an experience just a few months ago that scared me, but for a different reason. I was with a guy who I've known for about seven years. We ended up in bed and it was a little like déjà vu—very forceful, very rough stuff, and not in a way that was sexy or fun at all. I stopped him and made him leave, and he didn't seem to understand that shoving me around and penetrating me so hard that I bled wasn't okay. What scared me about it most was that I knew he'd done it before and would do it again, and maybe with someone who wouldn't feel like she could make him stop. I'm lucky I could. I'm not better than anyone else because I could. I'm really just lucky.

It's there all the time—anytime I hear about a person who's been the victim of sexual assault and hear people asking what she was wearing or why she was walking home alone at night. I make it my business to speak up when I hear that. I don't necessarily tell my own story, but I speak out against victim blaming whenever I hear it, because I'll always remember that counselor who asked me what I was wearing.

Heidi:
I have an alarm system that comes with a remote control panic button that I sleep with, which will dial a close friend's number if I push it, because I am still afraid he will make good on his threats to take my daughter.

In a relationship, I have trouble giving up control. Sexually, I cannot let go enough to really enjoy myself, and I am therefore content to abstain from sex. I need to have my own money and I kept my own bank account even when I was married, which I am told is a smart thing to do, but I did it because I did not trust my spouse to pay the bills. I was afraid that I would end up getting evicted yet again. I don't care about little decisions—what movie we watch, where we go for dinner, things like that—but when it comes to big decisions, if I feel as though I was not allowed to make the decision to a large extent, I end up getting extremely nervous.

I also can get triggered rather easily. If a person I am with gets angry or has a behavior that seems aggressive, even if they are playing around, I get very nervous and can have panic attacks. I consider myself to be a very strong person, and I am very vocal in my feminist beliefs and active in the community with antiviolence awareness campaigns, but when something triggers me I can feel so small and insecure again, regardless of how far I have come.

Nidea:
I got separated from my parents and I got lost. We always had a safe spot in case that happened, usually in front of the store. I sat there and waited for my parents, a bit frightened because this was the first time it had ever happened to me. I was a little girl who knew no English in this huge store, but someone found
me. A man, a bit older than my father, he knew Spanish and somewhat comforted me. As he spoke to me, he would touch me. I didn't understand what he was doing, his hands moving all along my legs and under my skirt. I didn't know what to think; he was saying many nice things to me but at the same time he was touching me. Maybe that was the way in America. No one seemed to notice so I thought maybe it isn't bad. I was in a crowded department store. If it was bad someone would say something, right? By the time my parents came, he wasn't touching me anymore. My parents thanked him, and I got yelled at for getting lost. I got sneakers that day, Patrick Ewing sneakers. Those sneakers always carried those memories attached to them.

Soon after, I met some of my distant cousins. They touched me every single time they visited. In the beginning it was more like a brush against my breasts or my butt. Then they wanted to bathe together, told me it was normal. We were cousins and this was what cousins did in America. It didn't feel bad, but I felt bad, I didn't know why. I wanted it to stop but they would just hurt me; they were older.

One day, my mother had a talk with me. A girl I used to go to school with got raped while waiting for the bus to go to school. My mother then had the sex conversation, what was rape and why it was wrong. The whole purity thing, staying a virgin until you marry, not letting anyone touch you. When you buy something from the store you want it new, right? Not used. I then realized how disgusting I was, how used and violated I had been. I didn't know what to do with myself and just got angry. I would hurt myself; I even attempted suicide. My parents didn't really understand what was going on with me. I was always a quiet child, so I didn't say a word. I just wanted to die.

My boyfriend of four years was willing to understand. I bared my soul and in return he taught me how to love myself, touch myself, and accept myself. But even at times when we were the most intimate with each other, when we wanted to touch each other, I would struggle. I would cry and he just let me. He was sometimes frightened, he didn't know how to deal with it. Sometimes I would be scared of the slightest touch, and to an extent I think it hurt him.

Rebeka:
I just want to say thank you for telling this story. A very similar thing happened to me, and to this day I feel disgusted with myself. The whole “it felt good but it was wrong” thing was exactly how I was feeling. I can't have sex out of fear of being touched. Your story gives me hope that I can make it through, and it really helps to know that I am not alone.

Nasir:
I too had a cousin who touched me inappropriately a few times one summer. I didn't keep it in, though. I told
everybody
that it was happening, and my mom and aunties dealt with him and the situation quickly. What makes me sad, frustrated, and upset is that the way my cousin was dealt with and the way I was able to say something at age twelve before things really got out of hand is not the norm. I unfortunately know several people who were the victims of rape and sexual assault or abuse who kept it inside for a long time. No one should ever have to deal with that kind of trauma, especially at a young age.

Nidea:
Something that is very difficult but helps so much is to learn how to love yourself for who you are. I really wish I could say definitely when these feelings would go away, but sometimes these feelings come back. But don't let them affect the way you want to live; don't let those who caused you harm be so powerful.

Some of the things that have helped me through this: reading, learning about how other
people have coped. Also, music has helped me a lot. I have my feel-good playlist with nothing but positive music: songs by India. Arie, Mary J Blige, and even “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera.

Natasha:
What has helped me heal the most have been my partnership/marriage with my late spouse and my therapist of the last six years. My spouse respected my boundaries, always was concerned about my pleasure, and was happy for me to take the lead.

My current therapist is the first one I could tell everything about the date assaults I survived when I was a young woman, and has supported me in developing my creative gifts in writing, music, and art. I remember taking self-defense and karate classes in my early and late twenties. Both were very important in increasing my self-confidence and facilitating my healing.

Jaime:
Time. Feminism. The abuse inflicted upon me was relatively mild, short in duration, and after childhood; it was a partner nonphysically forcing and manipulating me into having sex when I didn't want to or to have kinds of sex I didn't want to. I was eighteen at the time. What I mean to say is that it could have been worse. I didn't recognize it as abuse for a little bit, just as a bad relationship.

With time, it's faded, and I've been able to take it as a learning experience, so that I won't find myself with another partner who does that. And if I should find myself there, I'll recognize it for what it is and GTFO.

I mostly confide in the Internet—the anonymity makes this easier. I'm known as a bit of a strong, stoic woman in real life, so telling most friends and family would make me uncomfortable. I have told a couple of my partners, so that they could avoid doing things that trigger me. The Internet has been the most important resource in my healing. Feminist sites allow me a community, remind me that I'm not at fault, tell me it gets better, give me vocabularies, and help me process.

EJM:
Being open with close friends helps a lot. I did not follow this advice while I was dealing with sexual/emotional abuse while in college. I am a very private person, and I thought that it was best not to burden my close friends with the things that were happening around me. However, I did see a therapist who helped me gain the courage to end the relationship. It was nice to talk to a stranger and hear an outside perspective.

A year later, when I did finally tell my close friends what had happened, instead of being angry at me for not telling them, they gave me hugs. They were thankful that I was able to find the help I needed. It was a huge relief to be able to tell them, and I realized that my life might have been a lot easier if I had their support and love from the beginning.

I continued to meet with a therapist to help me move on from the nightmarish experience I had. It helped me move on from the constant fear that I felt every day and allowed me to accept different relationships in my life. I'm not saying that therapy was the cure-all. I think I still struggle every day with uncertainty of relationships (Will this person suddenly turn on me and terrorize me? Can I cope with having this happen again?), but it helped to find a very patient and caring therapist who matched my needs and personality.

Lola:
I was sexually, emotionally, and at times physically abused by a much older boyfriend from age fifteen to seventeen. Jaime said, “Time. Feminism.” Yeah, straight up. For me, “time” meant growing old enough to see the teenage me almost as a little sister. I see photos of me back then and think, “Why would anyone want to hurt her? She didn't mean anyone harm.” At the same time, with that tiny bit of maturity, I think of telling myself that I couldn't
have stopped it or done anything more than I could have at the time. There's a lot of forgiveness there, and peace, that was hard-won.

“Feminism” was definitely the other piece. Being able to connect the personal (“it was just a bad relationship”) to the political (violence against women, the overlying tropes of hegemony, power, and consent with older men/younger women) was an enormous relief when I was still unable to give myself the forgiveness I needed and helped me see myself in a larger struggle. It meant not being alone.

Also, I have to say, plain speaking was enormous: just finding the courage to say what happened without using the same tone of voice as you would use at a funeral. Stigma sucks, and for me, at least, I felt released by not acting like it was some big secret. Similarly, I was inspired by an “I was raped” shirt and hope to be strong enough one day to wear one of my own. [The shirts were created in 2008 as part of a rape awareness project.]

Gemma:
I just turned thirty in December, and while I went back and forth between whether or not it was a “big deal,” I did make a decision. This was going to be the year, I decided, that I stopped making excuses for guys.

I have had a tendency to give a lot in relationships, to think that I could do something, I could do more, I could try harder to make things work. This is not to say that I shouldn't have to work—I think both people have to—but I definitely have gotten into situations before where, even though I wasn't conscious of it, I was doing way more than my share of the work and really beating myself up when things didn't get better. I would settle for being the other person's option when he was my priority. And in most cases,
he
would end things with me, and I'd be saying to myself, “Now, why didn't I break that off sooner myself?”

So as I have gotten a little older, I have tried to stop saying, “He probably didn't call because he was busy” or “He probably didn't mean it like that” or “It's no big deal that he forgot I was lactose intolerant even though we've been dating for almost two years” (that actually happened). I think I am doing a better job of valuing myself and being frank about what I want in a partner—and not feeling bad when I have to say no. I am becoming more comfortable with the fact that it is better to be single and look carefully for a good partner than to just have any partner at all.