Touch your toes and take a breath, I love you and I’m sorry

is the advice I get every time I tell someone it’s getting bad again. So I stopped talking about it.

Then if I tell somebody that I decided to stop talking about it, they thoughtfully inquire. But then I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not a simple “it”, it’s a big it. It’s an it that most don’t expect to hear when I say “No, I don’t want to talk about it.” The it isn’t a story that’s told at dinner parties or reminisced on in any context other than my sleep paralysis. The it is an it who stalks me, who views my social media on burner accounts. It tried to break into my dorm last year. It found my current friends and tried to get information on me. It committed to my college, so I moved two hundred miles away. It, is the action of what it did, but I only ever see it as the big it.

I can’t look at a tall, Sicilian man and not imagine myself at fourteen being coerced, or the experience of losing my virginity with a man strangling me and trying to kill me. To this day, I’m convinced that if I didn’t think fast and strategically wrangle him off of me, I would’ve died, naked and surrounded by men, on that couch. I know he wouldn’t have stopped, either. It wouldn’t make a difference. In the years of sexual abusiveness, I’d never fought him off until that moment. The moment I remembered my dad was on the way to pick me up, and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s just days before. He was late to get me because he was crying about his diagnosis and his life changing forever, not knowing mine did in those seconds that he wiped his eyes and grabbed his car keys. The moment I realized that had things I wanted to live for, which was saying a lot considering how long I’d convinced myself I deserved a personal demon like him. My own Lucifer, and I found a way to feel bad for him instead of me.

I’ve counted, and I’ve spent 1,675 days fighting him off in my sleep. I wake up in cold sweats in the early hours of the morning, praying no one is next to me. If they are, they have to be far. I sleep like a feral cat, with my back as a shield and my vital organs against the wall. I sleep in fear that the second I rest my head, I won’t be able to breathe anymore. I wake up with a sore throat almost every morning from gasping for air in memorium of the night that I couldn’t breathe at all. I saw our texts from four years ago last month, and threw up on the side of the road. It’s something that never really ends. He took everything but my life from me, and I can’t quite decide what would be worse.

When I was fourteen and abused, I felt like the child who was abused. I was seven years old, in my shower, when my mom would rip open the curtain and lay her hands on me. She’d barge in, and I knew my body wasn’t mine anymore. I thought it was normal, and she’d never hurt me. But it didn’t quite hurt. It didn’t feel good. It felt achy in my stomach, it was a lump in my throat I couldn’t swallow. I don’t remember much of it. I just remember the feeling. I remember the fear as she approached and the loss of autonomy. I remember the sound the shower curtain made as it hit the floor, like a warning siren. It was so routine, I was used to every movement she made. It still gives me chills.

I say all of this, to now inform you that I don’t intend for this to be about me. Although all of that is about me, I hope my message is not, and my words remain clear. When I was seven,  I was told mommy was upset, and just wanted to make sure I was okay. When I was fourteen, I was told that with tits like that, I was asking for it. We live in a time and place where a rapist is President because people didn’t believe the tens of women who spoke up about him, or adversely, didn’t care that he did it. Rape is in the news every single day, to the point where we are desensitized to it.

We joke about rape as a culture as if there aren’t many, many women like me who were forced against their will to fulfill a man’s desire. We talk about rape like it’s a casual coming-of-age moment, but every time I’m touched, I’m scared. Even if I hide it well. Even if I initiate sex. I’m mortified of the one time he wrapped his hand around my neck and told me to shut the fuck up and stop being difficult. Every time I have to lay down after and be alone, reminding myself that I’m no where near close to death. Even if I enjoyed it. I have to remind myself how far I’ve come, both emotionally and physically. He doesn’t know where I live this year. Even if he does, he doesn’t have a key. Even if he does, I fought him off once. Even if I can’t, I didn’t die when I was far weaker than I am today. No matter how much I can trust someone, I remember how much I also trusted him. I remember how much I truly loved him.

So no, things aren’t getting bad for me again. I’m okay. I’m adjusted to this reality of regulating my emotions with trauma. But, I think of this every time I hear someone defend a rapist. Every time I hear someone support our president or ignore another man in power’s accusations as a woman who wants attention. Yes, I wrote books about it. No, I never wanted attention. This is the last thing I wanted. I didn’t want to be this way. I wish I didn’t have the words to say about this, but as he was forced inside of me, so was my narrative.

The moral of sharing, resharing, rephrasing, and reformatting my story is to encourage people to believe victims at face value. Not because I am one, but because I wasn’t believed, and still am not fully. I go through these motions knowing that there are people who think I wanted this to be true, rather than accepting that this reality was forced upon me.

It’s also obvious if you don’t believe victims, by the way. It’s clear in how you shiver when someone else’s story comes up, as if it’s painful for you. How casually you will let a rapist in your home and cover for his charges. It’s clear. You are not holier than thou for hearing someone out, you are a coward and pathetic. You are compliant in systemic abuse of women, and just as evil.