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The r word
It was a light summer evening and a thirteen year old impressionable young girl was getting ready having a laugh round her best friend's house. An older boy who had been pursuing her popped up on msn and asked her to go on a webcam. Her friend did her hair for her and did what he thought any friend would do in that situation, what he thought was a favour but in hindsight it was like he was priming meat. It was not as if anyone was to know the sequence of events that evening, what would follow that night, except for maybe one cruel person.
She doesn't know how she got there but she got there somehow. He lived near her Nana's which was lucky as she had to make her way there as she left in a swift dash after the bloody horror show that occurred that evening.
All she knew was that it was light when she walked there and was dark when she ran out. She was nervous when she was walking there but she thought it was nothing but first date jitters. She was a virgin and she never expected to have sex with anyone that night. He was much older and I don't know what she expected, she should have never come. She realised what he was as soon as she got there - but she just could not get out.
That sudden realisation in a moment's glimpse, about how he spent hours in his maths lessons writing her name in the squares of his book so perfectly in each tile, how he would write poetry not even copied from the internet or a book and all the other of the obsessive, persistent behaviour that she pushed so far into the back of her mind that she doesn't even want to recall or remember because it is too dark. It all was. She just thought he was keen. She’s known boys like him before and they didn’t turn out that way, or maybe they did - who’s to say. Maybe that is some other girl's story to tell.
Whatever was the straw that broke the camel's back, in that moment as he led her up the stairs and into an old ladies bedroom with vintage looking floral bedding and matching wallpaper - I changed my mind again but it was too late. He had his set. He knew what he was doing. I tried to say no, but next thing I knew he was on top of me and whispering stuff in my ear and I was crying, shaking my head and in mounts pain and bleeding yet feeling so numb at the same time. The trauma had not hit me but I knew right then this would affect me for the rest of my life.
He stood up for a moment and I could see blood everywhere. I screamed and I ran for it.
I got to my Nana’s and I sat in the living room where my Nana and Aunt where having a conversation. My Aunt stopped the conversation they were having to make a comment about a smell and asked me if I had been ‘getting fingered by loads of boys’. I was mortified.
I immediately went upstairs to my room to the massacre that was in my pants left behind by some sick, twisted fuck.
It was never meant to be like this. I thought to myself, as I lay there on my bed, still in shock.
What I didn’t realise is that he had ran after me and knocked at my Nana’s door. My Nana come upstairs wit a big cheesy grin saying ‘theres a boy a the door saying that he loves you, are you going to go and see him?’ So I just went and said ‘go away. I hate you.’
I have checked on him on social media in the past but his ugly face still gives me the chills. He moved away and that gave me some comfort although he will probably be the same, they say a leopard never changes it spots. I don’t think the responsibility of future rapes being diminished should lie on the victims - when they are going through a traumatic time themselves and are not even sure whether their family or friends will believe them. I never told anyone about what happened to me through that fear alone. It is upto the police to bring rises in the charges in the number of rape cases considering just 2,616 were brought in the year ending September 2022 and in that same time period the highest ever number of rapes were recorded (70,633).
I am writing this now because I know people who are sexual violence survivors and you can’t say how someone should react to a situation/s like that. There is no one way a sexual violence survivor should look like. If you have ever been the victim of sexual assault it is never your fault, even if you think otherwise.
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I know for me, it feels like you’ll go to therapy and would rather talk about the weather than the r word. You can’t comprehend how that could happen to you. How can it be that you dropped it along time ago but still it lives with you all these years. You kept it from your family, your friends, safe in a locked box that nobody can enter. The big answer to all of your Mam’s questions surrounding your additions and unwanted behaviours, the key you threw away along time ago. There is no healing to be done here. No justice to be paid. How could you tell anyone when you still blame yourself, even to this day? You led him on. You deserved that. You should have said sooner. Made it clearer. It was your responsibility. Somehow, some way. Karmically you did something to deserve that because there is no justification for the unsacred. This stuff spins round my head every day, every night. The pain never goes away, but for him he just gets to move on. Where’s the sense in that?
#Bipolar #MentalHealth #Anxiety #SexualViolence #SexualAssault #Rape #movingon #Trauma
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