On December 20, 2010, I became another faceless name on a list that grows far too much every day- I became a victim of date rape. This is the first time that I've confessed it as such to anyone other than my current boyfriend. I still can't rationalize it. It was my first sexual experience. He made me feel the way the main character in 50 Shades feels whenever Christian Grey does/says anything to her. The flood of sexual excitement. The mega butterflies. The tingling and incessant craving. There's one major difference- I very specifically told him no. On more than one occasion. And that night, he decided that my voice didn't matter. He called himself my "boyfriend". The first time anyone had been "my boyfriend". The first time I heard the words "I love you" from someone other than a family member, it was from him. He didn't love me. He didn't give a damn about me. If he did, I wouldn't be as fucked up as I am today. But I believed it all at the time. I was so obsessed with the idea that a man could love me, that even after the unspeakable happened - even after I lay awake that entire night filled with fear, dread, and disgust, I held on to him. I told myself it wasn't rape - I let him convince me that it was my fault. My fault. I caused this. I still have a hard time believing otherwise. It was weeks later, after I told my counselor and he got angry - I've never, in all my years of therapy, seen a counselor get angry - that I started to let the notion creep in that it really was rape, and it wasn't my fault. I wish I could tell you that I accepted that thought and held onto it, but I didn't. I wanted to feel all those things that he promised me so badly, that I swept that notion under the rug. I excitedly told all my friends how I finally lost my virginity, and each time, their congratulatory praises made me feel better. I kept pursuing the relationship. Finally, in late January, I discovered that he was a massive drug addict. This made me feel bad for him. I felt like I had to fix him. Let me tell you this, as plainly and clearly as I can : YOU - YES, YOU - CANNOT CHANGE A PERSON. I don't care if you are Mother Teresa herself. There is nothing you can do or say to a person that will change who they are or what they do. I wish I had known that. I wish I had run away when he told me "I used to treat women badly, but I've come around and really learned to respect them." It's all a lie. They don't change. Even if it really seems like it, IT'S NOT WORTH THE RISK. I know I can't change your mind if you're in a similar situation, but God, I wish I could. He broke up with my around the same time I found out about the drugs (and I'm not talking marijuana, I mean some serious shit that I didn't want to be around). I grew angry, which turned out to be a good thing in some ways. I started doing really well in school, I took my anger out at the gym, and I hid every feeling I had about anything that happened with him.
Life started getting better. Much better. Out of dumb luck, I met my current boyfriend online in February of that year. I didn't want to date him. I didn't want to date anyone. I was going to be independent, and I was going to stand on my own two feet, since all men were bad news to me. But he kept talking to me, and I realized he was a good listener, and we had a lot in common. I told him that I didn't want to date, and that I just wanted to be friends. He told me that was fine (which I later learned, really wasn't what he was feeling at the time...his friends have confirmed this). So we stayed friends for a month. You know how stupid love is, and how it always happens at the wrong time...well, by March, we knew we couldn't stay "just friends", so we became a couple. For six months, everything was happiness and butterflies and all the great things that come with the honeymoon phase in a relationship. Until I started falling back into depression. I have been suffering from my latest spell of major depression since September of last year. It hasn't ended. Lucky for me, I have a partner who loves me enough to stick with me and help me through these dark times. He is the definition of love. The polar opposite of my dark experience.
This is where the current problem resides: A year after the incident, I started having flashbacks. Every time my boyfriend and I tried to get intimate, I would freeze. I would panic. When he touched me, all I could think about were those lingering feelings of isolation, guilt, and violation. Needless to say, our sex life has been riddled with frustration since then. I finally opened up to him about a month ago about everything that happened before. He had a vague idea before, but that night I spilled all the bloody details. I cried as I recounted the entire story. For a grueling six hours, he held me and listened, trying not to get bloodthirsty at the thought of what happened. I had to calm him down a couple times. The worst part of it is that the person whom I love most will never have that special part of me - the innocent, wild, craving creature full of desire and no regrets. She loved fervently, furiously, with no holds barred. She was saving herself for someone truly special - someone who truly deserved her. He deserves that woman. But he can't have her, because that monster stole her. It makes me cry just thinking about it. I wish I could give him so much more. And so the guilt creeps back in.
I am haunted. A partial life, never to be made whole. No apologies, no admission of guilt from the miscreant who ruined me. He claimed it never happened. I wish it hadn't. I wish I could let it go. But I can't.
