It’s amazing how the mind works. How time and experience remolds memories from your past that you have ever so quietly tucked away in the deepest corner of your closet. I have spent the last 8 years reorganizing that closet and there’s one experience that I have intentionally left dusty in the corner. It’s easy to clean up the chaos you feel has been placed upon you by others but the chaos you feel has been placed on your own, continues to pile up and gain grime. I admit, the vulnerability that I have made available to my readers has been empowering but there are still moments in my life that have not sat well in my heart.
Among the many skeletons that the world most recently uncovered about the ugly truth of our reality, sexual assault has been a trailblazer to uncover a mask that has plagued society for centuries. #MeToo became trendy after a number of high profile millionaires were called out for sexually assaulting women into quid quo pro advances that made headlines in 2017. Despite the sudden blast of intimate and horrific details of abuse at the hands of these well known actors and businessmen and the trickle of information coming from people I knew and loved myself, it never clicked. That’s how deep this scar tore down to my soul. I identified my rape as a one night stand for almost 12 years because I was too embarrassed to accept the reality of my assault, a blame I held for so long as fault of my own. I trusted in a person I thought was my friend, who played on one of my biggest insecurities at the time and used that to coheres me into a bathroom so her friend could rape me on the floor.
I have never considered myself a victim. I was the person who would stick up for those who had no voice to speak up. I was the friend that was intentional with my words, without fear or anguish. I was the one people came to for advice and comfort. That night, however, I was the little girl who was just violated on a bar bathroom floor and walked away from it with no emotion at all. I played it off so well, I didn’t even make it known to the other group of girls I had gone there with. I was so embarrassed, I never even mentioned it to “my friend” who walked out of the washroom as my rapist entered without word. I blocked everything out the moment I got up off that floor. Never looking back. To this day, I have no idea who that man was, even after he lingered around our group for hours after my assault. I was highly intoxicated, I had willingly entered that bathroom and I was embarrassed of the outcome.
Eventually, as it played out, I ended the friendships I had with each of the people I attended that local neighborhood bar with. For one reason or another, I now hold no ties to any of them. Yet, this has never been a topic of any of my conversations or our falling out. How could I have been in such a horrible space to not feel comfortable opening up to someone at the time? How could I have been so naïve to not recognize the space I was in and allowing this horrible moment of my life to become a burden of self hatred for so many years? HOW DID I JUST LEAVE THIS ALONE?
The answer is survival. I hated myself so much after this happened to me. The definition of embarrassment is an emotional state that is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort, and which is usually experienced when someone commits a socially unacceptable or frowned-upon act that is witnessed by or revealed to others. This unfortunate circumstance was so embarrassing, not because the whole world knew about my shortcomings but because I KNEW I did nothing to protect myself. I stood complacent for years after, with people I didn’t even feel comfortable telling that I was victim of rape. I allowed the only person that knew about this to stay in my life without consequence or even an apology. I was so uneasy with humiliation that I held not one person accountable for this, except myself. For the first time in my life, I felt weak and damaged. It never showed face in the light but deep down in the dark, I was raging.
Growing up, my mother was never quiet about her experiences with dangerous men. She had a number of scares while hitchhiking in the 70’s, including a run in with John Wayne Gacy who picked her up after being stranded by her friends at the Congress Theatre. At the time, she had ditched her long locks and opted for a short pixie haircut, a trait she knows was reasoning behind him stopping. Thankfully his kink for young men was derailed after he noticed she was in fact a woman and he dropped her off safely at my godfathers home in South Chicago. She was fortunate enough to still be alive after one of the world’s most notorious serial killers flashed around every news broadcast in the nation, showing the same big bodied blue Cadillac that stopped to pick her up in Logan Square months earlier. As luck may have it, it was only a mere 3 years later, while pregnant with my sister, that she was forced by knife point into an abandoned building and raped by an assailant who told her he’d kill her if she made any noise. Her calm nature and pleas made him feel comfortable enough to let her go, not before letting her know that he’d killed a store clerk earlier that day. My mother’s strength and resilience had always made me feel a little more conscious of situations that may be harmful to me. I felt I had the knowledge and tools I needed to protect myself in high stress level situations. Sure, her resilience has been shown in me throughout other horrible experiences in my life but for the first time, my silence became my only source of defense AND I WAS ASHAMED.
Silence saved me from the judgment of the world but nothing could have saved me from the ruminating thoughts of my mind. I was stuck with the idea that the access that was given to this man, despite the role this “friend” had given him, was all on me. A few years after this happened, I hadn’t spoken to anyone about it. My now husband and I had a conversation about past relationships and I told him about my “one night stand” that happened in a bar bathroom less than a year before we met. Even after repeating how I didn’t know his name and spoke through the embarrassment of my own words, it never clicked to me that I was a victim. I graciously sugar coated the single most gut wrenching moment of my life, placing all the blame on my own misfortune. How sorry I now feel for who I was during that conversation, a mere shadow of the fearless woman I am today. More focused on saving the reputations of people that violated my trust, that I would demolish the reputation of myself. He stood quiet in shock for a while, careful not to place blame on me but also gave me the space I needed to tell my story.
It took me 11 years to ever speak of this again. Even after 6 solid years of therapy with a woman I trusted wholeheartedly, it never came out. I tucked this away in my closet so deep behind the mess of the rest of my life, I never gave myself the compassion I so desperately needed. The very first session I had with my therapist, I gave room for every hardship that had hit me thus far. My robberies, the loss of my cousin, my substance abuse, my mother, my anxieties, my insomnia, and most of all the thought in my head that I was unable to hold any promising relationships with people. because I was that “messed up” and miraculously none of this prompted a discussion of the rape I experienced in 2008. I was diagnosed with PTSD and my therapist didn’t even hear once about this incident. It took a very vulnerable conversation with a close friend, who shared with me her own abuse story, for me to realize that I had been mistreated. 12 years had passed and that was the first time I had felt sorry for what happened to me and that was the very first time I had ever shed a tear over the matter. Releasing the angst of resentment and guilt is one of the most powerful feelings in the world. I had blocked this out of my brain so long, I didn’t even recognize the misery and overly cautious nature I had developed over the years. We cried together for hours, something that felt so essential to our growth as individuals. I needed to finally feel mercy and sympathy for that young inexperienced girl who got up off that floor and acted as if she was okay. This one discussion led to other open conversations, with my therapist, with my sister, with other trusted friends, with my husband and with my oldest son. Todd admitted that when I first told him about what happened to me, he knew it wasn’t my fault but couldn’t bare to throw a dagger farther into the stone cold nonchalant nature of my attitude at the time. Letting out the details of my account and what I remembered to my therapist, further confirmed that I was not only raped but set up. No actual friend of mine would have allowed this to happen to me and who knows what sort of pleasure she got in knowing I was in there, helpless and alone.
Now the real question begins, how do I let go of something I’ll never be able to get full closure on? I’ve asked myself this question several times since I’ve come to terms with my sexual assault. I thought that blasting my perpetrator on social media would do me justice, that all my problems would go away if the world put a face to my story and for some reason, I recently had been contemplating on writing this passage. Something in my heart made me desperately mad and instead of dwelling on all the things wrong with this picture I stopped and prayed the rosary. God has shown me that although my silence has saved the reputation of others, it will not have a place in my heart anymore. I had no idea why I had even thought about this incident after another 2 years of being placed on my backburner but a few days after, I seen. Right now, my vulnerability has helped me to help others. The life I have built outside of my own misfortunes is admirable because I am willing to show my own face in despair than to put light towards the darkness of others. I refuse to make a platform for anyone to stand on to refute the actions taken against me, I don’t need an apology nor do I care for any conversations to rectify the motives of people that were never my friends to begin with. What I did need, was to face the evil that wronged me. I was placed in a room recently that I had a chance to show the best parts of myself and guess who showed face?! You know what I did? I continued to speak on the work God has planted me on this earth to do. I continued to speak on the lives I am planning on changing despite the evil that had been placed before me. I showed up and I showed out on every last single piece of hatred I had in my heart because at the end of the day, THAT SILENCE WAS MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY ANGER I’VE EVER FELT. God hates ugly and I decided at that moment she did not deserve to see my ugly, she deserved to see my peace.
I am no longer suffering in the silence that has left me blaming that child for the last 14 years of my life. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t wish to become the victim or to use this message as a way to get revenge, I just want to let it go. It doesn’t live in my closet anymore and I pray wholeheartedly that this helps you to clean out yours.
God loves you and so do I,
-XO