By an anonymous contributor
A quick way home.
5 years ago today I spoke up. I told a trusted teacher that my best friend, the guy I loved, had forced me into having Oral sex.
I blamed myself. After all I bore the name of my biological father, a man unlike my friend, so maybe this was to be my life.
I was destined to be the ‘sweet girl’ the girl that whilst being pressed up against a headstone (I can laugh at the irony, a quick way home could lead to this) I wished for death.
He pushed me to the ground, his privates in hand and looked me in the eyes. Those beautiful eyes I grew up adoring became the eyes from every horror movie, the monsters under my childhood bed became his essence. My best friend was dead, and in his place was it.
It has haunted me for 5 years, during in my darkest times where no one believed the cries, of my best friend sexually assaulted me! My best friend touched me in a place no man bar my husband should, my best friend got let off scotch free- because of me.
I never screamed, I never moved, I let it happen, no I am not guilty, no I did not ask for it to happen.
But I didn’t scream. I was scared, not of what was happening, not of him, but of loosing him. Because in my young, screwed up mind, I thought that if I moved, or made any noise, he would leave me and I only had him, he made sure I only had him, he conored me off from the world, told teachers that I was a lier, told friends to leave me to fend for myself, he did everything I thought he would never do.
But in my head, I still thought of him as my hero, the boy that saved me from bully’s, the guy that gave me my first kiss, the man I was going to marry. So I let myself close down, I became numb, I never moved, I think I let myself go, just go.
Now he is the boy who’s eyes are the stuff of nightmares. The boy that tarnished my past memory’s and has engraved images into my mind.
For years I have not trusted men, for years I have gotten comments, at times it gets too hard. But then I remember that even if I feel alone, even if I get shut in rooms and forced to recount every detail over and over again, until I’m in physical pain, I’v not done anything wrong, I spoke up, I thought against my demons and whatever crap the world threw at me and I carried on.
I see him sometimes, he is always with his mum or alone, and I can’t help but feel.. Something, not fear, never fear, but sad, not because of the past, but for his future.
Because I know the truth. And for along as I live, I won’t give up the fight. Not just for myself, my rights as a human on this earth, but for every girl and woman and man who have been harassed, hurt, or worse by the people they love.