1,173
- Samantha Castro
- Oct 18, 2024
- 6 min read
TW: Sexual violence
One out of five women in the United States has experienced a completed or attempted rape during their lifetime, and one out of three of these victims experienced this between the ages of eleven and seventeen. When I was fourteen, I wrote my first published article entitled “The 97%: The Frightening Sexual Harrassment Statistics Facing Women”, discussing my experience with sexual harassment and assault. Three months after my outspoken vulnerability, it happened.
August 1st, 2021 is a night that haunts my memory. It’s been three years, and I’ve prided myself on being able to write about issues that have taxed my mind, body, and spirit. I tackled my mother’s addiction, my father’s terminal illness, my mental health, my sexuality, my complicated relationship with religion, and many issues that have eroded my psyche in the name of advocacy, but I’ve consistently been rendered speechless when it comes to my innocence being stolen. I knew him for years and considered him to be my best friend.
We had a deep relationship marked by discussions about our lives and similar upbringings, or lack thereof. I viewed him as a shoulder to cry on and he viewed me as a pocket pussy he had to unlock. There were so many signs. Looking back, I am consistently dumbfounded with how naive I was. I was sexualized while I cried because of the wide look in my eyes. My cheerleading skills were praised solely because of how flexible I was. He vocalized his intentions, and I met them with a laugh, or an occasional proclamation of discomfort, to which he’d reply by putting me down and destroying my mental health. If he made a comment about my growing breasts, which he did quite often, and I told him to stop, he’d follow it with a statement about my entire body growing, and in an unfavorable way. I assumed this dynamic was typical of boys and girls.
Since he knew the complexities and intricacies of my fourteen year old self, he used them to get what he wanted consistently. He drilled into my head that he was the only person who understood me, and the only person who could ever experience every aspect of me and still choose to stay. After hundreds of therapist appointments, I now know that this isn’t true, but at fourteen, I never found a statement to be more true. It horrified me, the idea of someone knowing everything about me and choosing to walk away. In hindsight, I wish he walked away from me. To be overwhelmingly and embarrassingly honest, I loved him more than I’d loved anyone up to that point, but solely platonically. I believed him when he gaslit me into thinking that nothing would compare to our friendship thus far, because nothing ever had for me. I never expected our loyalty to fade from each other, much less turn into something sinister, selfish, and degrading. We had a marriage pact- if we were thirty and unmarried, we’d change our names and move to Peru together. We thought that we’d have a nice life together, despite him disliking my liberalism and me speculating my sexuality. I knew then I’d never want to have sex with a man, and when I told him this, he told me that he’d be the one to take my virginity. When I asked why, he followed with “No one else would want to.” I perceived that as a lighthearted joke, while he made himself clear.
Rape was something I’d assumed happened to other people, like a family friend as a reminder to be wary of creepy men who tried to hit on me. I never assumed it would happen to me, let alone by my best friend. Little did I know, 8/10 rapists are people known to the victim. After years of crying in each other's arms, I never assumed he’d want my body for more, let alone do anything to get that from me. I’ve spent years wondering why, but the answer is simple: he wanted to, and he knew he could, so he did. He’s double my size, I was nothing more than an easy target.
As I drift to sleep most nights, I’m haunted by what happened to me 1,173 nights ago. I’m transported to a peeling leather recliner from the Great Recession, feeling myself break out of a sleepy haze to my clothes on the floor, a hand around my neck, and a grip on my thigh, preventing me from getting up. There’s no eloquent way to phrase my reaction and how I begged for an ounce of respect, knowing deep down that he never had any for me. Words fail to describe the betrayal behind my punch that sent him to the floor, or the quivering fingers bound together by the deepest fear I’ve ever known. I sat in the car ride home and told my dad I had a great night, and put on a mask that would remain for another year.
Over the course of several months, I disintegrated before my own eyes. My hair fell out, my body shrunk, and I morphed into a woman I didn’t know anymore. I distanced myself from my friends, I made myself more palatable, and I held onto the secret of that night as if it was my fault, because he told me it was. I had no intent to be a whistleblower. My close friends knew why I changed, and never waivered throughout a year of relentless conversations shifting back to me pondering what possessed him to do that to me. It took nine months to tell the people in my life who kept me intertwined with him, and I immediately lost the vast majority of them. My reputation was tarnished, I was framed as a spiteful liar, and my mental health plummeted. I was surrounded by a consistent debate as to whether the most degrading and crushing experience of my life was a mere attempt to seek attention, and as angry as I was, I wished they were right.
I wish I decided to frame my best friend for attempting to rape me, stripping my clothes and my ability to open up and trust, penetrating myself and my ability to form relationships, and strangling me and my dignity, draining the air from my bloodstream and riddling it with anxiety. I explained the night in gruesome detail, breaking down and apologizing, but was criticized for having no evidence. I never thought I would have to record a simple interaction with my best friend, or that him sending my friends home early was strategic and planned instead of a simple coincidence. My only witness was someone who grew up with him, and claims nothing ever happened. I was forced to relive the most traumatizing thirty minutes of my life to everyone I spoke to in my day to day life to clear my name, and physically as I drifted off to sleep. I would wake up in tears and scream for him to get off of me, feeling the oxygen escape my lungs. This slowly evolved into episodes of sleep paralysis, and I regret to say that they never went away.
Despite the direct correlation between recalling the incident and episodes, I refuse to suffer without a purpose and eventually scraped through the bits and pieces of me that he destroyed and discarded in order to find my voice and advocate for victims of sexual violence.
Throughout the last three years, I’ve felt every emotion. I changed colleges because we would’ve ended up at the same one. I could face him if I had to, but I deserve better than to cope. I can’t drive through his hometown without having a panic attack, so I take the long way to my favorite beach because I refuse to let him pollute the things I love. He’s stolen enough from me, he doesn’t get to take the sunsets that calm and soothe my soul. I’m angry, in so many facets. I’m mad that I didn’t see his crystal clear intentions with me. I’m angry that my erratic texts from the morning after to my best friend weren’t enough proof, I’m angry that I was ever asked for proof when the evidence is clear in every interaction I’ve had since my relationship with him imploded. I’m sad, for the fifteen year old girl who lost some of the most valuable people in her life, but I’m grateful that I learned who my friends are through being unapologetically myself. I met a community of women who went through similar experiences, and a horrific number with the same culprit as me. He’s charismatic and well connected societally, and has faced no repercussion for the number of women he’s taken advantage of other than my shaky, yet steadfast punch that sent him to the ground.
There’s no silver lining to my childhood best friend attempting to rape me, and there’s no hidden metaphor or figurative language I can use to make this more palatable. Although I’d never want to make my readers uncomfortable, my comfort was never a priority throughout this course of events, and sugarcoating this would be a disservice to every other person who has been a victim of sexual violence. Resources are available below. Thank you for listening to my story.
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