In the early morning hours before the sun was up, a man quietly crept into my bedroom. I was asleep on my right side facing the wall when he slipped his arm under the pillow and grabbed my jaw. Terrified, I began screaming and he told me to shut up or he’d kill me. He shoved my face into the pillow so I couldn’t see him and he raped me.
My mind closed off what was happening to me and I lay silent. When he finished, he reached for the other pillow and I was convinced suffocation was next. These were my last moments of life, I thought, as he placed the other pillow over the back of my head.
Surprisingly, he backed off the bed, ripped out the phone, and he was gone. Still frozen in fear, I listened for any noises thinking he might be in the other room waiting for me. Trembling, I cautiously made my way toward the living room and found the front door open; I quickly shut and locked it. I turned around and hoped for a dial tone on the phone in the dining room. I grabbed the receiver.
I called my sister and tried to utter what had just happened to me, but I was too hysterical. I took a deep breath and said, “I’ve just been raped.” She yelled for me to hang up so she could call the police. In a matter of moments my mom, my sister and two police officers were standing in my living room talking to each other while I quietly sat on the edge of the bed. The officers drove me to the hospital to have the rape kit performed, and after the exam, I was released.
Two detectives came to the door of my sister’s house where I was staying to ask questions while my mind was fresh. Soon after they left, the phone began to ring from co-workers and friends wanting to know if I was okay.
I reached out for help and talked to a counselor at work in our care services. She educated me about trauma, something I knew nothing about until then. I was her first rape case and she promised she would help me through this. My friends couldn’t cope with what happened and they abandoned me; my family was in shock and other than my counselor, I was alone. It was nearing the end of August—mental and physical exhaustion were obvious just looking at me, so I went home early that day to plan my suicide. Because of my sister’s vigilance, she recognized I was in trouble and called my counselor who arranged for admission to a psychiatric hospital.
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