and it took me the entire day to figure out exactly how that text completely fucked with my head.

CW: sexual assault, torture

“hey, i heard that you and another woman were assaulted last night during the tournament. what happened?!”

it’s a strange message to wake up to, for sure, but even more disturbing considering the context of how the evening actually went down, and a very specific moment from earlier this year in my life when i finally told someone what happened to me twenty years ago and they responded by saying “i’m so sorry that you were raped and tortured and no one was there to help you.”

it’s a heartbreaking moment, to hear someone give a name (and such a terrible name) to something that i’ve tried so hard to downplay in my head, refusing to accept the reality by using language to neutralize the truth. for near twenty years i barely talked about that pivotal night in my life as an eighteen year old... and when i did start talking about it, it was a confusing mess as i tried to figure out why and how i would even want to say anything about what happened, when silence had protected me for so long.

but the past has a way of never letting you go and during a time of very active addiction for me, parts of my trauma began to surface. i would find mysef trying to explain — i had, and still have, this burning desire to be understood, for my pain to mean something to someone else, even when i knew i had to protect everyone from getting too close to the dark depths of my trauma.

so while i was getting very busy racking up my bodycount in my early thirties, i was also begining to slip small pieces of my truth into those brief interludes of intimacy that i shared with lovers... but i tried to be nonchalant about it all, i knew what happened to me was so horrific that it’s just not something that people can casually handle hearing. i might be a mentally ill sex addict, but i’m still highly aware of the power painful stories have and tried to wield my words carefully. i downplayed the impact of my story by using simple language but hearing me say “i was drugged then he tied me up, burned me all over with a soldering iron, and raped me” is not easy, no matter how hard i worked to soften the blow.

i fumbled through so many awkward moments and i actually feel terrible for unleashing my story onto so many unsuspecting men... while also letting myself start to feel something, anything, about my past. eventually i broke down. i couldn’t handle everything that was happening... everything that i began to feel for the first time in my life. and it wasn’t until my friend gave it a name that i finally accepted the truth.

yes, i was drugged, raped, and tortured. there is no other way to say it for me now, but i have spent the last six months dedicated to my healing and recovery. for the first time in my adult life i finally quit drinking, i renewed my commitment to both SLAA and AA, i joined trauma survivor support groups, i was diagnosed with delayed onset PTSD and treated it through long months of emdr therapy, i’m medication compliant to treat my mental illness, and i also attend individual therapy weekly. i worked so fucking hard in order to earn back some control of my emotions and my life... the journey was not at all easy and it still isn’t, but living a life around a lie was killing me and i’m so goddamn grateful that i am where i am today.

i am a motherfucking badass survivor who is about to step into the legal system to seek my justice for the crimes committed against me twenty years ago. i am beyond ready to take on both the asshole who hurt me and my college who knew exactly what happened and worked very, very quickly to cover it all up, expelling my classmate who raped and tortured me within days of finding out the truth and seeing the evidence of those burns on my body. they knew exactly how fucked up it was, what he did to me, and the cowardly dean of students didn’t even tell me what the college chose to do, before or after the fact.

i learned he had been expelled when everyone else in our class learned... and it was one of the most fucked up moments of my life. he didn’t show up to class one day and there was a whisper about him getting kicked out going around the room when i walked in, my fresh burns still on fire underneath my clothes... and when i realized what people were saying i was stunned. completely fucking stunned. i froze as the words sunk in... and then i burst into tears before runnng out to cry in confusion, alone. my college never said another word to me about it and i was effectively shamed into decades of silence at that very moment.

so to wake up yesterday morning and read that text, where i was asked about being assaulted... it triggered something deep down within me. the truth about what happened at the pinball tournament on wednesday night is more nuanced than one simple word. yes, another woman and i were the victims of very unwanted, unwelcomed, and sustained physical contact when we were both matched up at different points in the evening against this one man; but we hadn’t used the word assault even though we were both upset, feeling violated, and very angry. so to be confronted with a question like that, by someone giving what happened to us a name — assault — it hit me hard in a very stealthy way.

there is power in language and when you call something what it is, that is a moment of affirmation. with the deliberate choice of a word... the actions of the past are more clearly defined and acknowledged. there is no hiding from reality when you’re not afraid to confront it, and there is such a welcome relief in feeling heard and understood when another person affirms your experience with their words.

i’m doing okay, i definitely didn’t make it this far to have something stupid and insignificant like this deter me, but i just needed to talk about it for a moment here...to raise my voice and be heard so that i can let it hurt and then let it heal.