Breaking the Silence

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a couple years now. Every time I’ve gotten closer to it, I’ve chickened out. I will hurt people I love. It will define how people identify me. It will piss some people off. And mostly, I don’t really have a point…just some rambling related to one experience I had years ago. For some reason, though, I feel like the time has come, so here goes….

Twenty-five years ago, I was raped.

I never told my parents. I didn’t tell my friends until years later. I never told the cops. In fact, it took several days for me to even be able to say it to myself.

I had been drinking and hitting on a couple guys at a party and bragging about being on the pill and bemoaning the lack of a boyfriend. Not one of my finest moments, for sure. I passed out, and when I woke up, one of the guys was inside me. I was screaming. Then I passed out again, only to wake up in the morning to the same thing. While he was in the shower, I found my purse and drove myself home, despite the fact that I was still under the influence of alcohol. At home (I still lived with my parents), I stumbled up the stairs and cried myself to sleep in my bedroom with the girly pink walls.

There are things I can be grateful for. It was not my first sexual experience, so it didn’t take something physical away from me that I’d been saving for someone. Because I was so drunk and passed out, I barely even experienced my own rape. Truly, it could’ve been worse.

I dealt with it in a way that makes no sense to me and truly no longer even matters. I found a way to feel like I was in control of something, and then I manipulated things to get the guy fired from his job. Although it wasn’t all he deserved for what he did, it was enough to help me feel better.

So I can tell myself that it was okay, that it wasn’t as bad a rape as it could’ve been, that I could’ve had it worse, and that I deserved it. Even now, I have to own the fact that my own behavior set the stage for the guy to do this to me. That doesn’t mean I think it’s my fault, but I know about guys and I know how much temptation I was dumping on him. I wanted him to make a pass at me. So that’s on me. But he shouldn’t have taken me without my consent. Twice.

Years passed. I told some friends in college, when it seemed relevant. I really didn’t think of myself as a rape victim or rape survivor most of the time. I’d done some other stupid things that seemed to be a bigger part of my identity at the time. Still, for several years, I thought about the experience at some point every day. It was part of my subconscious even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it.

When I met my husband, I told him. Eventually, I went to graduate school, married, and had children, and my identity was overwhelmed by whole new sets of experiences. At one point, I realized I hadn’t thought about being raped for years. As much as possible, I was over it.

But during the past year, I’ve begun thinking about it again. Perhaps it’s because I have a teenage daughter who is preparing to go to college herself. Or maybe it’s because I now work at a women’s college and am simply more tuned in to issues of women and powerlessness. Maybe it’s because I am approaching the age of 50 and have begun to reflect on my life’s experiences and the many things that shaped me into who I am now. So I’ve been thinking about it.

I’m not completely sure why I’m breaking the silence now. In part, it’s because too many of us keep silent. For several years in my life, I was quite close to three women. Every single one of us had experienced some form of being sexually violated—by a neighbor, a relative, a family friend—and not a single one of us told an adult, not for years. Even now, only one of us has been to counseling to deal with the experience.

I have to wonder how many other women have experienced some kind of sexual assault or sexual powerlessness. How many wounded women are walking around us and working with us every day? How does a shared experience that is never discussed affect us? And how different would it be if it were okay to talk about it? How differently would I be able to support other women if it were okay to talk about this?

Too often, we don’t yet know how to talk about it. I do know that there are a lot of women who will be angry at me for saying that I set the stage for this to happen. Slut Walkers will want to walk right over me. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wish I had behaved differently and that I had dressed more respectfully of myself. The value of me is in more than my breasts, yet I dressed to draw a man’s attention to them that night. I didn’t invite the act, but I did invite the interest. Yes, men need to control themselves—no means no, and lack of consciousness means no, no matter what the woman has done or how she has dressed or acted. But had the young woman I was had more self confidence in her worth aside from her breasts, I doubt this would’ve happened. But it did happen, and I healed alone. And it needs to be okay for women to share their feelings about their experiences, even if it upsets other women. Even one voice telling me I am wrong to feel what I feel is another violation of my sense of self and the choices I have as a woman.

We have done so much to destigmatize mental illness and domestic violence. But what are we doing to make it easier for young women to find support for experiences of sexual violation? Posting a rape hotline number or a website on a flyer isn’t enough. Asking them to talk to a total stranger after they’ve already experienced a violation isn’t enough. A piece in the NewYork Times a year ago reported that out of every five women, one has experienced rape or attempted rape—that is 1.3 million American women every year.

If this were to happen to me now, I know absolutely that I would seek and find good support and understanding. But at the age of 22, I had no one. I didn’t tell anyone at all until I had worked through most of it myself—but if I had known even one grown-up woman in my life who I’d known had been raped, I would’ve gone to her. But because it’s still so hard to talk about, even to say, “This happened to me,” I doubt that most women in my life now would know they would find an understanding heart in me.

I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe there isn’t one. This has been the experience of women for eons, right? And men will be men with their own issues of sex and power.  I doubt that we can put an end to rape, but we can at least make it simpler to surround rape victims with the love and support needed to help them become survivors.

So, for what it’s worth, after twenty-five years, I’ve just broken my silence. One more voice to say to other women, “You aren’t alone. I do understand. You can heal.” Because truly, we can heal.  The greatest thing I’ve seen about women is our ability to work together to support and nurture. I’m willing to do my part now.