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I was raped in high school, in an upstairs bedroom with blue walls and a fish tank with no fish. Those are the details I remember best; while it was happening, I was trying to think about anything but what was happening. Afterwards, I was deeply, deeply ashamed. I became obsessed with making lists of things I could have done differently to prevent it; I filled an entire (secret) notebook with just these lists. I woke up abruptly almost every night to add something new: “If I had worn jeans instead of my pink skirt;” “If I had screamed”; “If I had stayed in and watched VH1 like I had originally thought I was going to.”
I was the kind of teenager who did well in school but dyed my hair pink—your typical Hot Topic poser. I had never been drunk; I had never tried drugs; I didn’t stay out late. I met the boy who raped me at a concert, and went over to his house afterwards on a whim. My mother would have never let me go if I had asked her permission, and I knew it. Going to his house felt like an enormous act of rebellion in and of itself. When he pushed me against the mattress and shoved my face down with his forearm, I was practically unsurprised. I’d seen after-school specials about this kind of thing. This was what I got for playing the rebel. And when I got pregnant, it felt like an appropriate and inevitable punishment.
I mentioned it to a new boyfriend a few months after it happened, but otherwise kept quiet about the rape. I didn’t even tell a therapist about it until after I had finished college. She did what therapists are supposed to do: she gently told me that it wasn’t my fault, and that it was normal to be reactionary around sex.
And I
had become reactionary around sex. I started having to close my eyes and think about Mr.
Rogers when I was having sex, which I know is weird, but it was all I could do to prevent myself from having panic attacks. Still, I was very annoyed with my therapist for saying this to me. Of COURSE it was my fault. The skirt! The not screaming! The pregnancy! She was just saying what she had to say because that was her job. She wasn’t willing to be honest with me: I had ****ed up. It was all my fault.
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