Once he had started, I felt completely dead inside, paralyzed and only able to cry, but he didn’t seem to care. At one point, he took his condom off—and that’s when I felt myself come back enough to say “NO” as loud as I could. He kept going, though. Once I managed to push him off of me, and the strangest thing happened: he pretended to be asleep. I wanted to chew him out, to tell him off, but he just shut his eyes and turned his back on me. I tried to sleep, rest enough to drive the hour home, but I couldn’t move or shut my eyes. The next morning, he made me breakfast and I started to rationalize again—maybe I had over-reacted. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
The next few months, I’ve had so many nightmares. I went to the doctor and got tested for everything. I found out I have an STD, which opened up all the wounds again. I’ve managed to talk to two friends about it—one of them is an ex-boyfriend who, through everything, is still my best friend, and one of my best girlfriends. He was the first to say “you were assaulted.”
I always thought of violent strangers when I thought of assault, or date-rapists putting drugs into your cocktail. I could have just run outside. I could have gotten in my car and left. There were too many great areas for it to be assault. I also admittedly did a lot of things that were unwise. I let him talk me into things I didn’t want to do, and let him degrade me time and time again. My girlfriend and I had a visit a few weekends ago and I finally was able to talk to her too. “Honey, he assaulted you. He coerced you into doing things. And it doesn’t matter. When you say no, he has to stop. You would stop if he said no, right?”
She was right. I finally could see that what happened wasn’t right. I could also see that, even though I did things—stayed at his house, ignored the signs that something bad was happening, and had sex with him in the past—no one should have to be “talked into” having sex. No one should be lied to, manipulated into doing things, or treated less than human.
So when he called, I didn’t answer, but I did listen to the voicemail. He was just calling to see how I was doing—that his number hadn’t changed and that he’s been thinking about me. I deleted the message and although I fantasize about calling him back, telling him what a horrible person he is, and how he hurt me, there’s something inside me that is still paralyzed.
