Please be warned that the following post contains not only mature content, but a subject of a traumatic nature. People who have experienced similar trauma and are at a different stage in their healing process may not be ready for such a discussion. My intention is not to be provocative or utilise the shock factor. This is my story and this is how I tell it. I hope in being open about it, others who are ready can feel empowered to do the same.

This is a long story and discussion so you might wonder why I didn’t break it into several posts. Well, this isn’t for the purposes of creating any sort of suspense in a series format. If it’s too long for you, you don’t have to read it. But it is an important topic, and clearly personal to me, so I won’t summarise it to make it more easily digestible. I’m a writer, so maybe I articulate my story well. Maybe I’m far enough down my road of healing to relay this calmly in a coherent fashion. But this isn’t for your entertainment; it’s for catharsis, connection, and awareness.

So here goes:

I was sexually assaulted.

Not something I ever thought up until the point it happened I would ever be able to say. And here’s why. I’m conservative (not politically, but in the literal sense of the word). When this happened in my late 20’s I was able to say I had only had sex with one person and kissed two. And I refuse to count the kisses he forced on me into my overall tally. Putting your lips on someone else’s isn’t kissing them any more than forcing the biological connection of genitalia is having sex. High-fiving someone who isn’t high-fiving you back is actually slapping them. Kissing and high-fiving, like sex, are two-person activities. So we didn’t kiss. I wasn’t someone who hooked-up casually or put myself in situations where that might be the norm. I didn’t go to crazy parties, I had never been drunk. (Still have never been drunk.)

To say my life was boringly routine would not be true, but I had a fairly tight schedule as a young mother and student. I was cautious with where I parked, where I walked alone, how late I was out. I was almost always somewhere crowded or safe. I just didn’t see a situation where someone would have the opportunity to do this to me in my busy life. The night it happened, I wasn’t flirting with him, because I do not even know how to flirt! I think I didn’t talk to him or make eye contact the whole evening. I was wholly uninterested in him personally. I was hanging out with a bunch of supposedly like-minded people at a fairly tame ‘party’ wearing jeans and a humorous t-shirt. I put ‘party’ in quotes because it was a handful of people sitting around drinking classy alcohol discussing politics. There was not a single aspect of my night or my lifestyle that suggested I would face the possibility of rape that night.

But just to be clear, I do not think that any of the factors I’ve just listed as not being a part of my life justify rape or assault. I don’t think if you’ve had casual hookups that you are asking for rape. I don’t think if you flirt or, unlike me, consider yourself a sexy person and dress as such that you are asking for rape. I don’t think if you need to walk alone at night to get to your car that you’re asking for rape. I don’t think anyone is ever asking for actual rape. I don’t think public nudity should be a normalised thing, but I think that if a woman is walking down the street completely naked, the reaction to that should be, “Hey, why is that woman walking down the street completely naked?” And perhaps, “Is she okay and should we get her some clothes?” It should not be, “I’m a man, I have the right to physically act out my fantasising on her and she can’t say no cuz she clearly wanted it, and clearly wanted it from me specifically.” And yet the blame gets put on women for doing much less than walking down the street nude.

To swing that case scenario to the opposite extreme, say that I’m married and sharing a bed with the man I essentially promised was the only man I’d ever want to have sex with again. Say that I had had sex with him the very night before, so I am clearly attracted to him and clearly have consented to that activity before and recently. Say that I’ve just crawled into bed next to him wearing something he finds attractive. Say that I’ve crawled into bed next to him wearing nothing at all because that’s how I sleep and this is my house so I can do what I want. If I don’t want to have sex with him, I do not have to and he does not, I repeat - DOES NOT, have the right to take sex from me, even though he is the one man in all the world who has the most right to believe I might actually want it from him. Sex is only given, it cannot be taken and still be called “sex.”

I’ve heard consent explained through a cup of tea and I think that’s an easy way to put it. If someone doesn’t want a cup of tea, you should not force it down their throat. Not if they look like someone who drinks tea; not if they’ve been hinting at drinking tea with you; not if they’ve had tea before; not if they’ve had tea with YOU before. If someone said they wanted to have tea and changed their mind, you should not force it down their throat. And if someone started drinking tea with you and decided they actually did not want the tea, you should not force them to finish it. If that makes sense on something as simple as accepting a cup of tea, which I’ve done before out of sheer politeness when I hate tea, how does that not make sense with sexual activity, something that demands a much more intimate contract and affects the tea-receiver infinitely more? Why is consent even a subject up for debate at this point in history?

Sex needs to be actively wanted and actively agreed to. It is an activity, therefore it is not something that should passively happen to you as though you didn’t do enough to stop it. Sex is a calculated effort. It involves choices and movement towards those choices. I do not wake up to find myself accidentally sky-diving. I am never sitting with a friend who suddenly decides we need to both be crocheting, and I then find myself with a half-made scarf on my lap under toiling hands wondering how the night turned out like this. An activity involves a conscious action and choice. Not having sex is not an action. There is no movement in that. So, one should not have to actively protest the action in order to maintain their position of not doing it. You shouldn’t need to vocally choose to not have sex lest it happen to you anyway. It should be consented to and if it is not, one should not find themselves in a situation where they are needing to fight and plead to stop something they didn’t want started in the first place. I never need to fend off sky-diving or protect myself from any other activity that, in and of itself, is not a crime. Someone shouldn’t find themselves needing to refuse sex so vehemently. And if they do, then what is happening to them is not sex. Sex doesn’t happen to you. Rape does. And when we do not differentiate the chasmic difference between these two words semantically, we blur the lines for the protection of real people in practicality.

There are different kinds of rapists. There are the violent attackers who jump perfect strangers in the park. They set out with the intention to commit this atrocity and they would probably, deep down or openly, admit that they are rapists. They would agree that what they do fits that definition and they simply don’t care. They maybe even enjoy the evil of it. But then there is the subtle kind of rapist; the kind who would look confused and offended if you suggested that’s what they are. Both are dangerous, but I feel the latter is harder to hold accountable and many times gets excused by the law and society. My attacker fell into that category.

He was the kind who had been drinking and had seen me with a drink in my hand that night. He was the kind that saw other people pairing off and just presumed I was down to do the same. He was the kind who, despite my protestations, thought I was being coy or shy or attempting to prove I was a good girl who didn’t normally do the casual sex scene. He was the kind who, despite hearing the phrase, “No, I do not want to have sex with you,” come clearly and forcefully from my lips, decided if he could just get me to give in, just keep trying, I’d enjoy it. That he’d convince me through proceeding. He was the kind that actually didn’t believe I might not be attracted to him or be the sort of person who took sex seriously enough to not want it at all that night. He was the kind who assumed, when my body and psyche did something I wasn’t expecting - freeze up entirely - that I had loosened up and he could keep going even though I had been fighting him a minute earlier and was showing no sign of enjoyment now. He was the kind of person who would never have called himself a rapist but was about one second away from rendering me someone who could call myself a rape victim. How would that make sense? How could I be raped by someone who wasn’t a rapist? The answer, plainly and simply: I couldn’t.

Another reason why I never expected to be in this scenario is because I am a fighter. I’m downright scrappy. In fact, maybe ‘scrappy’ is too condescending a word. It implies I’m small but I put in a good effort. So maybe ‘capable’ is better suited. I’m almost 5’7 and I’m a solid girl. Even in my pre-hypothyroidism days when I was slender, I was still a sturdy, curvaceous woman. I had thrown a punch and even taken one. I have done construction work as a humanitarian aid worker and have noticed I can often handle more physically than a lot of men. If someone had pointed out this guy to me earlier in the night and asked if I could take him in a fight, I would’ve confidently replied yes. The thing is, I was in a vulnerable position. I was tired and taken by surprise. And in the few seconds it took to catch me off guard and then for me to realise he did not care about my consent, he had me in a place where I was at a surprising disadvantage. I tried to fight him off at first but when I was faced with the reality that I might lose this fight, that I was about to become a rape victim, my supposedly strong body and mind betrayed me. I froze. Panic overtook me and I gave in as my mind tried to take me to a place where I wouldn’t have to fully experience the trauma I was about to endure. It tried to save me; take me out of the moment. But the result was that I stopped fighting.

Me. The fighter.

I fight for everything in my life. And I rarely panic. I’m the person you want with you in a crisis. But as I lay there pinned down, I started to think about my son and how I wished I’d just stayed at home with him that night instead of coming to this gathering - even though I rarely did have much adult interaction times to myself and it had been a totally excusable outing. Perhaps even a necessary networking event for my career. I thought, when this was over, would I get directly in the car afterwards and drive to the police station, or would I give myself a few moments? Nope, better to not give myself time to think. I always promised myself if I ever did get raped, though I thought it was highly unlikely, I’d flip the autopilot switch and not think again until I was at a police station. My body froze as my mind took me to problem solving the aftermath so I did not have to be in the present. It was like I was watching a movie play out while distracted with other thoughts. I was no longer a part of it, I was already beyond it. I was crying but I wasn’t sobbing. Tears just silently fell from my eyes and dampened my hair. I remember thinking how uncomfortable my wet hair felt, as tears trickled down my face, ears, and neck onto the bed. And then I thought about something else because that threatened to bring me into too much awareness of my physical senses. But just so you understand, dismissing that thought wasn’t a conscious choice I made. It was like my mind became a person of its own and, much like the man on top of me, was making choices for me. It's not that I didn't fight well or hard enough, though I shouldn't have had to fight at all and I do not blame anyone for freezing immediately. It's that our brains are programmed to protect us in traumatic situations. It was doing what it's designed to do, but I didn't know that. No one had ever explained that to me; people had only ever criticised (mostly) women for either inviting rape or not being able to avoid it. So I was judging myself through that same harmfully ignorant lens and it led to so much confusion and, later, incredible disappointment in myself.

My attacker hadn’t even fully succeeded yet and I was already mourning the loss of what he was about to take. I was contemplating how this would affect my family; my innocent, little family of two. How was I ever going to explain this to my son, obviously when he was older? How was I going to explain this to my parents or my future husband? And then, I was already blaming myself. I was already excusing him. I was blaming myself for coming to the party. For deciding to spend the night since it was hosted by a friend. For knowing I was spending the night and therefore bringing pyjamas, which were much easier to take off in one fell swoop than my jeans would’ve been. I actually blamed myself for wearing easily taken off clothing, as though it were my fault my cutesy pj pants facilitated him to undress me against my will. If I’d been wearing something more difficult, I’d have had more time to react, more chance to manoeuvre. That was totally my bad, not his, right? I was blaming myself for the one drink I had nursed for several hours in case it had made my reaction time to this attack slower. Blaming myself for briefly talking to this man immediately prior in case I had somehow led him on. I told myself that he did not think he was trying to rape me. He’d seemed nice enough earlier in the night, so he must really think he was doing something normal here. Was this normal for the world I didn’t live in, was that it? I’m a Christian who had decided to not have sex again until I was married. But he didn’t know that. Was there a misunderstanding??

A misunderstanding.

Seriously.

I just rolled my eyes writing that.

I am the first person to stand up and defend the vulnerable and here I was, not defending myself, but defending my would-be rapist and accepting my lot before it had even happened. If I can get to that point, then, frankly, anyone can. I had already said no, I shouldn’t have had to say it again. But also, I shouldn’t have had to say it at all.

As I lay under him helpless to the violations that were already being done to me, tunnel vision threatened me with an imminent lapse in consciousness. See, in those few opportune seconds of shock and confusion, he’d managed to get on top of me and drive his shoulder into my sternum. He wasn’t a big guy, but the weight of his body on my lungs was making it hard to breathe. Tension pulsed from my burdened chest into my face and I knew I only had mere seconds left before I would find myself waking up on the other side. And I thought to myself, I cannot believe this is happening to me. I cannot believe I’m about to get raped. A voice in my head, that I will go ahead and attribute to God, said, “It isn’t over yet. Stop acting like it’s already done and fight! Fight, for goodness’ sake, fight!”

I snapped out of the frozen shock in a way I feel would only be possible if some third party were there with me. I know that doesn't always happen and I can't explain how I was able to break out of it when I know others haven't. Again, I have nothing but compassion for those whose experience wasn't like mine and urge you to have the same. But I could hardly catch my breath, and every time I tried to inflate my lungs, I felt like he was breaking my rib cage in on my body. My mind raced searching for a way out but he was so oblivious to how oxygen-deprived I was in the darkened room, I now feared he was going to accidentally kill me. This was worse than I’d even thought. I wasn’t going to wake up having been raped; I wasn’t going to wake up at all. I felt that panic you feel as a child when you challenge yourself to swim to the bottom of the deep end of the pool. But then, you frantically attempt to resurface as you start to run out of air. My body felt like it was going to implode. Finally, he leaned back to adjust himself and air flooded into me as he prepared to do the unthinkable. My brain seemed to pulse inside my skull as I regained the ability to breathe normally. I really needed a few minutes to gather myself. But with the change of position, I had the slightest opportunity to wedge my legs between us so I could push him away. I felt the contact of our bodies I had been dreading and realised I had less than a second to react here. So with the strength of an adrenaline-fuelled mother who had been fearing she wouldn’t get home, I pushed with all my might and he flew off the bed and hit the wall collapsing to the floor.

I’ll never forget the look on his face. Confusion. Offence. Hurt. He had been suffocating me as he'd forced unwanted things on me, and was a split second away from sealing the deal, but he was shocked that I had so rudely and violently rejected him. And you know what’s crazy? For the slightest second, I felt badly about shoving him so hard. I felt badly that I hadn’t been able to more properly gauge my strength in that fleeting moment of possibility to escape his crime. What a stupid girl… What a normal, common, but stupid girl. No, woman. Women have been conditioned to take blame so much, we even give it to ourselves when it’s undeserved. I like to think those immediate thoughts maybe make me a decent person. Maybe a good person. That even in fighting for my virtue and life I still wasn’t prepared to overly hurt my opponent. So I cling to the knowledge that I have yet to be pushed to the point of feeling completely justified in hurting someone, which sets me apart from my would-be rapist. And that’s a good thing. But still, it is incredibly dumb to have felt badly at all. And yet, I bet it happens all the time.

I gasped for air and wheezed out, “No, no, no, I DO NOT want to have sex with you!” And he got up irate as if to say, Geez, you should’ve said so. Now, you might be thinking what I thought later that night: If he were a ‘real’ rapist, he would’ve gotten back on top of me and finished what he’d started. So he was just a confused guy thinking he was about to get lucky. We had a misunderstanding. But here’s the thing about that - that’s total, 100% crap. For one, there were other people in the apartment and now that I could breathe, they were in screaming distance, which was a pretty solid deterrent. And two, some guy who thinks he’s going to get lucky wouldn’t engage in sexual activity with someone who was questioning what they were doing and then refusing to consent. He wouldn’t have forced interactions on me I wasn’t responding to. He wouldn’t have thought it was normal that I stopped talking and actually began to stop breathing! He was doing the activity; he was making the choices. If I wasn’t making them with him, then he was wrong. He was assaulting me. And it took kicking him off the bed to ensure that he didn’t rape me. I shouldn’t have to throw a man into a wall to make sure I don’t have unwanted intercourse. I shouldn’t have to physically defend my own vagina with the strength of someone fighting for their life. And no man should feel he has the right to try to take my body if he can only get around the obstacle of me resisting.

So let's be clear: He was a real rapist. We've already established I can't be raped by someone who isn't a rapist. But I can be not-raped by someone who is a rapist. I am not-raped by rapists all the time, it doesn't change who they are. Whether or not I am a rape victim depends on the location of his body parts in relation to mine. Whether or not he is a rapist is not determined by whether or not I have the strength to escape before he has a chance to put said body parts into mine. A man being a rapist is dependent on his intentions and capacity to enact them, not on our inability to thwart them. Rape lies in the heart of the attacker, not in the clothes, location, words, or even behaviour of the victim.

Sex is not rainfall that happens periodically throughout the day preventing you from peacefully sitting outside without interruption. You have to move during a storm to not get wet; seek shelter because precipitation actually belongs in nature. Random sex doesn’t belong in my vagina. I shouldn’t have to move to not get raped. I should be able to not have sex without interruption as long as I choose. It should not be something I have to evade or move away from lest it rain down on me in an unsuspecting moment. And yet this is how people justify it constantly. As though sex is just rain and you should know better. It very well might be that common and persistent in this supposedly civilised society, but it absolutely shouldn’t be. And as humans, we are well aware of that difference and are not only capable of, but responsible for the differentiation.

So, did I flip the autopilot switch and drive straight to the police station? No. Because he didn’t technically “rape” me, I talked myself out of it. In fact, that whole freezing for my own protection thing that my mind did lasted for days. I totally twisted the story in my head for a while and convinced myself a guy had hit on me and I’d had to forcefully reject him, even though he went way further than hitting on me. It took days to let myself think that night through. Outside of my wet hair in the moment, I didn’t even cry about it again for some time. It took weeks to actually acknowledge what had happened to me. It took months to tell even one person. And it has taken nearly a decade to get to a place where I can be this open about it. And I admit that even now in writing this, there’s a little voice inside telling me not to reveal all this because I’m somehow wrong. I’ve made some mistake, my memory is betraying me somehow, and I shouldn’t make a big deal about it. And that’s with me. Ms. Fighter. Ms. Kick-butt, feminist, force-to-be-reckoned-with. I still doubt if I'm the justified party. My mind still wrestles with wanting to defend this horrible attacker and blame myself when I am otherwise entirely clear on where the guilt should rest in these kinds of circumstances. I can only imagine how some women in similar or worse situations must feel. And then they’re berated with questions as to why they didn’t pick themselves up from a violent and physical attack and go to the police where they could demand a perfect stranger perform an invasive and degradingly painful exam on their traumatised body.

Do you wanna know why women don’t report this enough? Because there are three possible outcomes to reporting rape and assault:

Even in the best case scenario, it is something that sheds a negative light on you personally and that is difficult to escape. I know some people lie to play the victim in certain situations. But for the average person, there is actually hardly any reason to tell the truth when they have been assaulted, and several reasons not to. So where is the incentive to lie?

I believe sexual crimes are the only ones where the victims bear the shame for the choice made by the perpetrator. If I’d been burgled, I would’ve told everyone immediately. I would’ve posted it on facebook, for goodness’ sake. And some people might’ve said, “Well, did you leave your door unlocked or a window open? Do you choose to live in a bad neighbourhood? Do you make your routine too known to those around you? Why don’t you have an alarm system?” Some people will always find a way to make it your fault somehow. But mostly, people would be sorry and they would move on. They wouldn’t label me someone who had been burgled before and expect me to carry that around the rest of my life and actually be worried about telling people.

It’s like someone walked up to me and punched me in the face with no warning or reason and I’m worried to tell people in case they see me as someone who has a black eye. And once the bruise is healed, I’d still have to tell people, “Hey, I used to have a bruise right here.” And I’d have to tell any potential husband, “Hey, babe, you know these eyes that you think are so pretty? Well, I used to have a bruise on one of them. It’s gone now, but some jerk punched me a while ago and, sometimes, having gone through that experience still affects me. I hope you don’t think about him punching me every time you look at my eye. I hope you can still find me desirable and want to be with me. I’m so sorry I can’t be someone who wasn’t punched for you. I hope this isn’t too much drama for you to deal with.”

Your value is not depreciated by what is done to you. It need not even be depreciated by what you do to you. But it certainly isn’t affected by something you didn’t choose; by something someone else did.

Another frustrating consequence of sexual crime is that having gone through it does not promote you to an authority on the subject. I am a missionary kid and I have worked in ministry myself, so people take my opinion seriously on ministerial affairs. I am a mother, so people come to me for advice on parenting. I have had health issues, so without even being a doctor, people respect my personal experience within the medical field. I suffered from eating disorders as a teenager. And even though that is something I partially inflicted on myself, though it’s much more nuanced than that, when I speak about the psychological aspects of those conditions, my input is heeded. But people who have lived through sexual assault? They are seen as biased and too traumatised to be rational. You’re the victim, please don’t contribute here.

I only told a handful of people over the years what happened to me. And having been through it made me more aware and connected to the fight against rape culture. It made me realise just how easily one can fall prey to an assault and how easily perpetrators can get away with it. I noticed the subtle ways in which society was condoning the wrong attitudes and excusing bad behaviour; the slippery slope connotations of conduct that was freely overlooked and eagerly justified. I realised how quickly we blur the lines of what is acceptable and how ready we are to fail in protecting people. I can name six friends off the top of my head who have been assaulted and those are just the ones who have confided in me. Rape is common. Com-mon. And I’m talking about the Western World. I’ve always had an activist personality. I grew up in humanitarian aid. I love animals, I want to save the environment. I was in elementary school when I picked up the mantle of my own causes and decided to protest against things I disagreed with; make my voice heard. And I majored in political science solely so I could better approach the defence of essential rights. It’s not unusual to find me passionately expounding on an issue of importance. And yet, during one such conversation on rape and sexual assault, one of the people I’d trusted with the information told me I was just being hypersensitive because it had happened to me.

My authority was immediately undermined. And my experience casually dismissed. So I started to believe that if I let people know, I would be seen as weak and my ability to actually influence this cause or make a difference somehow would be undercut. Isn’t it crazy that one could be taken more seriously in a certain field if they did not have experience in it? If they had an impartial, objective viewpoint backed by education, not involvement? And yet I saw it again and again with other people who made their stories known. Just another reason in the mounting justifications and excuses I had to keep my mouth shut.

I told one boyfriend, worried he might see me differently, but needing to share this with him to continue growing the trust of our relationship. He actually didn't react at all. I'm not sure which is worse: thinking it's so terrible it alters your perception of me, or being so dismissive it undermines the entire experience. I wasn't expecting this and didn't know what to do. It made me feel like he wasn't adequately protective of me. I wanted him to be at least a little angry for me. I wanted him to demand the name of the man, at least for a few minutes, so he could defend my honour. I wanted him to hold me and tell me he was so sorry something terrible had happened to me and that he would be there for me. But that didn't happen, which made me feel so lonely. A couple years later, I was with another man whom I hadn't confided in yet. We hadn't been together long when a boys-will-be-boys discussion arose in relation to me talking about how I discipline my son. I said I don't allow uncontrollable behaviour in him simply because he has testosterone coursing through his body and am raising him to be accountable for what he does as a young man of God and full member of the human race. He took issue with my lack of understanding of the male condition and it caused a fight. What's funny is, this boyfriend had called men pigs and animals before, but now seemed to be indignant that I'd see that exact same issue in the world and expect my son to be better. I realised many men are fully aware of the danger they pose to society, they just want to be excused for it. They will readily admit they don't want daughters because they 'know how boys think!' But then, when you challenge that mentality, you are the one being unreasonably critical of men. Despite all the experience and proof I have to the contrary, I will always have enough faith in men to treat them as people, not animals I must shepherd. But it seems some men will always want to play whichever side of that coin best suits them in the moment and you cannot have it both ways. You cannot ask us to excuse primitive behaviour as some unavoidable instinct we must control for you, then demand we respect you as strong individuals with leadership skills. Lead your own mind and body to a place of evolved discipline and governance and then we'll talk. Needless to say, I never told this boyfriend my story and I don't believe he deserved it, nor did I deserve any negative reaction he might have had. But once again, I kept quiet and felt alone.

Then recently, I was watching a TV show. It’s a silly teen indulgence of a show, but I had the house to myself and was Netflix-binging. And in one episode, a rape scene just happens out of the blue. From one second to the next, the main character is suddenly being raped. There was not only no trigger warning at the beginning of the show (neither on Netflix, nor when it was originally aired - I checked), but the scene also gave you about one second of warning to see where it was going. And it doesn’t just imply the rape, you watch it in its entirety. You see her face and you watch the men - because there are a few of them, by the way - hold her down. The scene only ends when the assault does. So basically, I went from calmly watching a show aimed at teenagers to watching my nightmare play out for me seeing this character be held in a similar position to the way I was held. A bubble grew abruptly in my chest and filled my throat erupting into sobs. I sat and wept watching this careless attempt to garner ratings and generate chatter. I read reviews about this episode later and watched people defend it as artistic or even a valid contribution to the rape conversation. And then I read that the producers of the show intended the rape of this character as a form of punishment for her husband. So it wasn’t even considered her story, but his. How ignorant. How reckless. I have worked with human trafficking ministry and seen the women who have been traumatised repeatedly by this heinously abusive crime. I imagined what it would do to one of them to catch this episode one day as they attempted to distract themselves from the nightmares within through a supposedly harmless form of entertainment. I was furious as hot tears burned from my eyes.

But I was also sad. Sad from a place so deep within me, I couldn’t visualise its base. I have spent a lot of time processing my assault. Once I faced the truth of it, I forced myself to work through it. And I believe I’m in a fairly healthy place with it. I also don’t think I need to wear the badge of “victim” forever, and I do not need to feel ashamed. But it is something that happened to me. And I think I’ve been so focused on being strong and healthy and resilient, and on viewing it with a level of indifference as though it is not something I need to bear, since it isn’t my fault, that I haven’t always faced how genuinely sad it is. I have been worried to give validation to the sadness for fear it would undermine the strength and the legitimacy of my healing and my right to be taken seriously on the subject. And I think that we really fail women, and victims in general, by not allowing that holistic understanding; by not embracing the balance of equally valid and vital emotions.

I sat and cried alone in an empty house watching a TV show. And as I did, I felt fragile and childlike. I mourned and allowed the pain; allowed the weakness. I actually felt sorry for myself without immediately telling myself to buck up. And not in a self-pitying way, in a way where I was able to give myself compassion; the compassion I would automatically give someone else. And this tragic little tear-stained moment was weirdly beautiful. I am healthy and I am strong. But someone hurt me and sometimes that, well, hurts me. That doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t erode my healing. It doesn’t make me damaged nor irrational if I can still cry about it sometimes. I actually think it would be irrational to not feel the gravity of it from time to time. And I should be able to outwardly express that in tandem with receiving appreciation of my fortitude. It’s a part of my strength, not a setback in it. The ability to still feel, still be susceptible and receptive, not be desensitised to how wrong this was or how much it hurt, is all a part of the delicate balance I have achieved in remaining the person I was before it. My sensitivity is proof of life; proof that I have not been calloused by this; proof that he did not win. He took nothing from me and left nothing behind that wasn’t there already. So can we please applaud those who are strong enough to still be vulnerable? Strong enough to still be gentle? Can we stop making people choose between their complete honesty and our complete acceptance?

I finally started telling people again about this recently. I hadn’t told anyone in years and when I did then, it was reaching out in my pain for someone to understand or help. In recent months, it has been for different reasons. One is because I finally felt like expelling it was a catalyst in my dormant healing process. I had sort of figured that because I had mostly dealt with it already, I could move on. No one else needed to know, it wasn’t their business. But it suddenly seemed really wrong to keep it inside and I just needed it to not be some dirty, little secret of mine. I am not dirty and I did nothing wrong. It shouldn’t be a secret. But also, I realised that in remaining silent, I was perpetuating the stigma. In the last couple months alone, God has brought people across my path who needed to tell me their story. And I was able to share mine freely in return. And I realised, actually, this kind of is other people’s business. If I have the strength to have a voice here, then I actually have a responsibility to use it. Many people don’t have that strength on their path yet, and that's okay. Many women in many cultures are not even allowed to have a voice or any of the platforms that are readily available to me. And many people avoid sharing and benefiting from the therapeutic solidarity because they are afraid of how they will be seen.

But me, I’m a fighter. Not just for myself but for others who have shared a similar experience. For those who can't talk about it, for those who need solidarity, for those who need sympathy instead of judgement. I'm a fighter for those who weren't protected, for those who will need protecting in the future. I'm a fighter for change, for shifting the way we build the narrative around sexual assault that cultivates the climate in which we receive victims and treat perpetrators. So if my voice is capable of making a difference, I will use it because I’m a kick-butt, feminist, force-to-be-reckoned-with. And if you want to see me as anything less because some jerk basically walked up to me and punched me in the face, then, frankly: Screw You. Sorry if that response isn't sophisticated, but two words are all you deserve - and at least I'm being fairly classy in my choice of which two words. Say what you will, think what you want. I know who I am and I know what happened that night. And I will never remain silent on atrocities like these. I will keep speaking up when I see the perpetuation and subtle encouragement of rape culture. And I will do so because I know first-hand where that leads so I am worthy of being trusted on this subject. I won’t bear the shame for someone else’s wrongs, nor tolerate those around me being forced to either. And I won’t be an example to others of suffering in silence because of shame. Rape is not sex. Consent is necessary. No means no. And I am a beautiful and blameless survivor, overcomer, and defender. And so are many of you... Please join me in protecting and promoting the good and calling out the evil. Because rape may be common, but it absolutely shouldn’t be. And as humans, we are not only capable of, but responsible for doing better.

Please reach out if you need help. You are not alone.