The timeline. —anonymous

Message: I was always tall for my age which may have been why I was treated or pushed to be more mature growing up. I was exposed to topics of sexuality way too early so it was normalized, as was drawing constant attention to my body and how I was perceived. I had a hard time connecting with my family and making friends because I didn’t “fit in” like a girly girl due to my size. I was introduced to marijuana and alcohol by my peers when I was 14 while visiting a family friend. The next year I visited, I was pushed into drinking straight rum and pressured to doing cocaine, despite me saying no numerous times. I was alone, 4 hours away from home, with a room full of peers taunting me and calling me a loser. That night I had an out of body experience from what I now know to be a close call with an overdose of cocaine and alcohol poisoning. I was 15 & I passed out at a keg party in the back of this 19 year old guy’s truck with my “peers” still taunting me and bringing me beers that I could in no way drink or wanted to. Finally everyone headed back and I left in the truck that I did not arrive in, with a few “friends”. I still felt awful and couldn’t control vomiting all over the car after the cocaine and rum stewed in my system for hours that night. My friends were disgusted and embarrassed, but the 19 year old driver was nice and gave me a change of his clothes once we got back to his place, a house we did not start out from. He was so nice that he showed me to his bedroom and said I could have the room. I assumed to myself. I went into the bathroom and showered, it was probably 3am, and looking at myself in the mirror for a while starting to feel somewhat sober. “Wow, that was intense but I made it. They washed my clothes, I get the room, I feel taken care of.” I thought as I assessed my wet hair and running mascara. I went to sleep in the bed by myself and I was a stomach sleeper. Slowly I woke up feeling like I couldn’t move and thought I was having sleep paralysis until I realized there was pressure and heavy breathing. I felt pinned down and when I was shocked awake by realizing someone was penetrating me, I shifted my weight, twisted my body, and wrapped my legs closed. I felt frozen and betrayed. “That’s right, I’m the loser” I thought. I said “stop, I don’t want to do this” he said “oh, no, you’re not gonna leave me with blue balls are you?” I just remained silent and didn’t respond. He acted irritated and just plopped down next to me on the king size bed, asked if I wanted to snuggle to which I said “no” and then rolled over and went to sleep. I tried to go back to sleep, but I just laid there until the sun came up. Once everyone started waking up, I went in and tried to tell my friend what happened and they just said “whatever, you’re just a slut” when I did not have much sexual experience. That following day we returned to my main friends house and by the afternoon it turns out that the 19 year old fell face first into a cactus and all my friends asked if I would pick out the needles with tweezers. Because I wanted to be accepted, I did, but he avoided eye contact with me as I did even though he did say thank you. I didn’t call home, it was the first night of my trip and I stayed the entire 5 days of that trip. Something shifted in my mind and I just went full force with drugs to escape. On that trip another girl told me the 19 year old did the same thing to her and we had a moment of connection but we still kept going along with these people because everyone around us was minimizing what we shared despite our cries.
I went into a downward spiral of drugs and promiscuity upon returning home and I never went back or spoke to that friend I visited. 10 years ago I found out they died in a car crash and I didn’t feel sorry.
Then when I was 16, a cousin of a guy I was seeing took my phone and barricaded me into the room, forcing me to have sex with him to be released. I didn’t know where I was or how to get home and so I had to walk back with my friend while she gave me directions on Mapquest and neither one of us ever told anyone or spoke about it again, because I was under the influence. This is also why I never told anyone the first time. When drugs or alcohol were involved, even if I was a child, it just would have been humiliating and futile, I felt. I continued to entertain friends who had access to drugs and alcohol. One of my friends at 16 got me into a club with her boyfriend and his 33 year old brother. The brother was flirting with me and I wasn’t trying to entertain it, but I was 16 and I thought I had one drink when really they somehow pushed 4-5 into my hand throughout the night as told by my friend the next day and the searing headache I had as a result. When we returned back to his place to sleep, he guided me to his 3 year old daughter’s room who was not there that night but only part time. He told me I could sleep there because I was so drunk but again, I found myself waking up to my clothes off and someone on top of me. I can still smell the sickening Dkny cologne with the 3 foot x 4 foot glamour shots of a pretty little girl on the wall and a canopy bed overhead. Once I had a moment of clarity, I stopped the act and got my clothes on and escaped downstairs where I told my friend I wanted to get out of there. She and her boyfriend were laughing like eww why did you do that he’s an old man, and I didn’t know how to say I didn’t want to. I didn’t know the concept of consent and that a teenager in a blackout drunk state, can’t consent. I didn’t talk about it again and eventually distanced myself from that friend due to the negative association. I struggle with trusting people as friends and as I have experienced adult female friendships who exhibit jealousy or possessiveness about their boyfriends or husbands, I have had a hard time expressing my outrage that they don’t realize how much I value my female friends and completely disrespect most men. My best friend growing up who was on the phone with me the second time I was held hostage and assaulted was later raped in college, and when I tried to be there for her, she completely forgot about what I went thru and started calling me and treating me as a loser. Ive struggled with how people have expressed they perceive me as someone who is weak and deserves to be mistreated or not get justice.
I carried myself through a silent drug abuse and I secretly got clean by 17 while still graduating early. When I was 22 I confided in a friend for the first time about my rape history and she responded very well but over time, her jealousy got the best of her and our friendship fell apart. She resorted to character assassination to save face and threw it in my face trying to slut shame me. The only other person I told was my long term boyfriend who was so horrified he cried even though I wasn’t crying which I felt made me shift into consoling him. When I broke up with him, he used my trauma as emotional ammunition saying “you just have issues you never dealt with” as a way to deflect from his accountability. I have found it hard to connect with people who haven’t really experienced much trauma because I usually experience a lack of empathy and a prejudice against those of us who have such scars, like were broken or damaged beyond repair. My closest friends and I find sanctuary within one another because we understand that SA is something you deal with everyday since it happened and you go thru stages where the sediment stirs back up to the top. I consider myself resilient but I still feel alienated. The most trauma from my sexual violations has been the betrayal and shaming I have experienced from friends an relationships. I am well versed in being trauma informed and have been regarded as empowering to women, but it doesn’t make me immune to harm. I learned very early on that I had myself to rely on and have my own back which has made it hard to lean on others. 2 years ago I experienced an abusive relationship after I discovered I was pregnant and my ex suddenly changed. I sustained 2 abortions in 4 months, one out of state in a panic as Roe overturned and I reached out for support only to be shamed, shouted down and have a friend show up temporarily only to stop talking to me soon after because “positive vibes only.” Reproductive abuse is real, but it’s not punishable or recognized just like emotional abuse.. and this was after I have had 15 years of “doing the work”, therapy, several periods of being single, relationship negotiations, etc… I’ve had a service oriented job and I was always able to check my “stuff” at the door but in the last few years I have found it very difficult to dole out empathy or compassion because I have been in a deficit of receiving empathy for so long.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. You aren’t stupid or at fault and there wasn’t anything more you could have done to control or prevent someone else’s shit. Keep speaking up for yourself and risk feeling embarrassed, the more we expose these people the more it could protect another woman. The world has made a concerted effort to silence women for thousands of years even by death, so vanquish all those who were burned before you.