One night in August during my sophomore year in
college I was raped.
I had no way of knowing it would happen. I was
safe. I wasn’t in a dark alley and the rapist wasn’t dirty and wearing a trench coat. This is how Rape happened
to me.
He asked me if I was thirsty.
I said, "Yes could you get me some water."
"We don’t have any water you can have Pepsi or you can have juice." He said.
I wasn’t looking at him I was lying on my stomach with my eyes closed. I wasn’t
paying attention to his voice. Red flags should have gone off. I don’t know why I wasn’t paying attention to his
voice or anything else. I should have noticed he was different. His hands were wet with nervous sweat when they weren’t
before. I had asked for apple juice earlier but E. told me how his roommate would get mad if he thought there was a party
and people drank all of his juice. I think it was White House apple juice or Mott’s. The label was yellow and green.
I love apple juice.
So I said, "fine I’ll take the Pepsi." I wouldn’t want the guy to get beaten
because I drank 1 cup of juice.
He replied, "the Pepsi is old. I’ll have to talk to my roommates about responsibility."
RED FLAG and loud screaming sirens; once again why
weren’t they there? Why didn’t I see a red flag. E. would never talk to his roommates about anything. He wasn’t
a part of their little brotherhood. He wasn’t good enough for them. He wasn’t their fraternity. He was just nobody.
Just like me. I was just nobody. We had drunk the Pepsi earlier. I did think that in my dream. I remember thinking we drank
the Pepsi earlier. It was sitting on the coffee table or in the corner somewhere, but maybe he forgot the Pepsi was gone.
He shouldn’t have even looked in the refrigerator. "Hold on a minute." He said and I hear footsteps.
He comes back with Coke. Coke ain’t no Pepsi and everybody knows this. He
hands me the drink from behind me. I don’t know why I didn’t turn around. I ask myself this. Didn’t his
hands look different? Wasn’t his demeanor different? Wasn’t his voice different? Well, I wasn’t exactly
paying attention to what E. looked like. I wouldn’t speak to him tomorrow. I told him that it tasted funny. I wondered if he were sure that the cup was clean He assured me that it really was clean.
"No I don’t want it." I hand it back to him without turning around. I didn’t
want to die because I drank COKE from a moldy cup. "Bring me water." I said.
He refuses.
"Why can’t you go to the bathroom and get me some water?" I asked.
He explained that he paid 50˘ for the soda and I was going to drink it.
I start to look for my purse to give him back his money.
"Drink it" he insisted.
I told him it taste funny even for Coke and He could drink it.
He laughed and said, "I’m not drinking that. I made it special for you." I sit
it on the floor. He picks it up. "Don’t be rude." he said.
"You drink it." I said.
"I put ice in it and everything." He said.
I took a sip.
"Drink it all" He said.
"I’ll have to pee." I said.
"No you won’t." He said.
He made me drink it all. He put his arm around my neck and he held the cup and told
me not to spit. Spitting was rude. He made me drink it all. This was only a dream and when he told me that it happened just
like this, that was a dream too. He was a dream. A really bad dream.
I do not know how he convinced me to stay. You would think I would leave after I was
put in a choke hold and force fed something. I think maybe I did try to leave but I wasn’t allowed. I was sitting on
the floor looking for my things and I think we had a conversation. I don’t remember what about. I know he wouldn’t
let me leave. I know he said that I wouldn’t make it past him to the door alive. Maybe that’s why I am still trapped
on that couch. He told me I wouldn't leave alive. In my dreams there was always silence and then a barrage of demands. Lie
on the couch, turn on your stomach, don’t look at me, and I’m not going to hurt you. I just remember being very
afraid all of the sudden. He was holding something shiny against my neck, but I wouldn’t look at it. I only looked in
his eyes for some hint that he was bluffing. He told me that’s right I will kill you. His eyes said so. Maybe that’s
only how I remember the dream now. Maybe I used to really know that he threatened me. Maybe it’s too horrible to remember
a knife against my throat and believing the person holding it. I did not want to die. I just wanted to go home. I didn't understand
why E. was being so mean now. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t E. I didn’t understand that five minutes
ago E’s roommates had come home to a sex show and E. left me on the couch to be taken into the Mr. P’s schizophrenic
world.
He told me to lie back down on my stomach and not to turn around and not to look at
him. He kept saying that everything would be OK. I wanted to touch him and he wouldn’t let me. I don’t get this.
Why did I go back to wanting to be there? Did I put the threat out of my mind so quickly or were the drugs taking effect?
He just kept saying that everything will be OK just don’t turn around. He was kissing my neck and sliding my panties
down my thighs. Everything was going to be OK he kept saying. After a while, I thought I heard E. say what are you doing get
off of her. But then E. was touching me. I thought I heard E. say wait a minute I’m almost done. I heard E. say something
about if she stops responding don’t worry she’ll be OK. I thought I heard E. say put your shorts on. So I was
looking for them on the floor but everything was so blurry and I was dizzy. Not you E. says. You wouldn’t let me look
at you I said. You wouldn’t let me touch you. He kisses me and says it’s OK you can touch me. So I did.
I’m myself but I’m not myself. That’s how I remember the other dream
now. This is a new dream. I’m seeing with my own eyes but it really isn’t me and I’m not in there and it
really isn’t happening to me. It was like it was me and her. I was the one dying and she well I’m not sure who
she was or where she came from. She was reminding me that tomorrow everything would be all right. I had a service project
tomorrow and everything would be OK. I think I just went to sleep.
I had no way of knowing what impact rape would
have on my life.
I couldn’t have possibly known that I lost
my soul that night. I could not have known that rape would leave me scarred and forever changed.
I could not escape the voices in my head and the
accusations from people I considered friends. I would choose silence.
You know you are in trouble when the darkness in your dreams becomes safer than you know where with Him. That’s
how it had become. There was darkness and there was Hell. Take your pick. God wasn’t there in either place. Why did
it matter? There were monsters in the trees and there were monsters behind door number one. There was the moon and the Cheshire
cat. There was a little girl lost in the woods and I promised I’d find her way home. I couldn’t move because there
were monsters out there. It was too late. It was too late no matter what the monsters would get me. So I stayed right where
I was. I couldn’t face the monsters. I wasn’t strong enough. I’d wait to be gotten.
I would take all of my pain. Smash it up until it was so small and so insignificant
and I would hide it where no one would see. I’d wear a smile. I’d laugh at their jokes all the while I was dying
inside. I was just hoping someone would hear me. Why should they? I had made myself so quiet and so small. No one ever heard
me crying at night. No one ever knew how many times I woke up with bad dreams. Nobody really knew how much I really drank.
No one would ever no. It was our little secret. No one would ever how self-destructive I was very good at hiding it.
There came a time when I couldn’t take the name calling and the blame. I couldn’t
take being the one at fault. I could not take being the strong one when inside I was crumbling. I was consumed by fear and
by anger. I didn’t understand why people hated me when I was the victims. I gave up. I didn’t see a way out so
I just stopped. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. If I told someone that would mean that I acknowledged that it happened.
If I told someone people would see that I was a bad person. I must have done something bad or done something wrong to get
raped. I didn’t want to be told that I should have known better. I was afraid that my rapist would kill me. I was afraid
that it would happen again. I would build a wall around the part of me that hadn’t died. It would become so thick and
so high that no one including myself would ever get through it again. I would go through life like a zombie. Soulless, spiritless,
emotionless. I wasn’t living. I might as well have been dead, but the silence was better than the turmoil that rape
had bought to my life. I shutdown.
The silence would bring me comfort for a while.
For a while, I was a woman that wasn’t raped. For a while there were no demons for me to fight.
Heartbroken? No, that’s not the word I’m looking for. Trapped, isolated,
haunted and hunted are more like it. That’s how I got here over the edge. No one would know I was beautiful. No one
would know I had dreams. Mostly no one not even me would care. No one would ever know our little secret. I would never tell.
I kept it quiet. I pretended it away. I made it disappear. Somehow, it found me. For some reason God put you back in my head.
I didn’t ask for this. I felt like a little animal and my hunter had caught me. There was nowhere left to run. I was
an animal and the hunter wanted me. So on a lonesome road and over the edge I headed in my car because that’s where
life had driven me. So Tanith, how fast does one run when the devil is behind them? Carl Lewis and FloJo have nothing on me.
I’m a logical person ok. I laugh at all those people who claim to have repressed
bad things that happened to them. Yea right. You don’t just selectively forget things, people and faces. MY memory is
perfect. I DON’T FORGET. She and her friend were conversing. Her friend was trying to make her feel bad. I do that to
myself at times. I try to make myself feel bad. God doesn’t like pride so I can’t let myself be too proud. I don’t
understand why I live for God’s love when he had grown to hate me so much. I was chosen special to be amongst his hated
and I’ll probably be left behind. I’ll be forgotten by God forever. I know it. So God didn’t want me to
feel proud. Bravo man. Thank you God for knocking me down and reminding me of how it feels not to know what pride is. Thank
you for showing me what fear, anger and confusion look like. I had forgotten. I needed to be slapped again didn’t I
God. Well thank you it hurt.
I thought I had ran away. I thought I had left it all behind. I thought I had buried
it. I thought it was dead and gone. I thought it wasn’t true. It wasn’t possible that I was raped.
I was sure that I was going to die soon. I was sure I wouldn’t live. I couldn’t
see how it was possible that I would live. I questioned, who had I become? Who was I? My memories aren’t real. Which
life was the real one? More and more the nightmare seemed real. The façade of happiness faded. It melted away like the walls
in my dream. The more real my nightmares became the more I realized I couldn’t go back to my old life. I didn’t
want to. It was a lie. I had two choices I could give in or I could die. I could bury the old person and start again. Not
like the Pixies song. The old me wouldn’t sail away on a wave of mutilation. The old me would just die and I would watch
her. I could start again as a stronger person without her. I could start again with a solid foundation. Not one built by a
little 8 year old child. I understood my dreams now. I had to rescue myself. I had to learn to fight the monsters. I had to
learn to love myself and to think that I could be strong. I had to learn to mourn for the little girl that I lost. I needed
to be able to embrace her. I needed to be able to go back into that room where I left myself and take me away from those monsters.
I had to show that 19 year old girl that most of her dreams had come true. I’m sorry for leaving her behind. I thought
it was best. I only wanted to live. I understood that when I rescued them from the monsters that got them, I would be free
again. Together we would find my heart. Together we would destroy my old life that had left me so broken. The waitress and
her lies must die. Together we would be OK. How could anyone watch themselves at 8 years old being violated by a stranger
and not care. That is the person I was giving up. I wasn’t giving up happiness. I was giving up a lifetime of denial
and misery. The voice that was telling me the story about Mr. P was the real me. The silent me. The one that had her mouth
covered since she was eight. She wanted to live. She wanted to talk. It was her life. I was mad about becoming her, She was
mad about being me. It would be a long battle. In the end she is going to win. I just have to find the right weapons. I would
eventually be able to leave the place where I was trapped. I had not suffocated, I did not get overdosed, I did not get strangled.
I did not die. Just like it is impossible to go back and prevent it from happening, it is impossible to go back and make myself
dead. I should be thankful that I lived. I needed to bring all of me into the present. We would be OK.
This Is My Journey Back
I knew what I had to do. I had to learn to drive my own car. I used to have these crazy
dreams. I’m riding in a car and nobody’s driving. Even crazier my grandmother’s driving. I’m always
afraid that I am going to die whenever she is driving. Sometimes, I’m never disturbed by the fact that nobody’s
driving the car and I am jus being carried wherever my car is taking me.
Other times I’m silent in the back seat. I’m always afraid when I’m in the back. I’m afraid of
where I’m going. I’m afraid to take the wheel and turn around. I never know where my car is taking me in my dream.
The only difference is whether I’m complacent or I’m afraid. I knew I wouldn’t be able to drive alone anyway.
I’m never happy. I believe there is a lot of symbolism in dreams. I guess I should explain this better
for people who don't believe there is symbolism in dreams. I felt like driving my car was symbolic of taking control
of my life and the direction it was headed in.
