To My Rapist,
It has been exactly 618 days. 618 days of feeling worthless. 618 days of feeling guilty. 618 days of feeling like I’m not, nor will I ever be enough. 618 nights where I wake up in complete panic from the nightmares you left behind. Two years worth of therapy where I still have yet to be able to tell my story, to anyone. 618 days of lying to my parents, and to my friends. It has been 618 days since you managed to ruin my life.
You know what sucks? Even at eighteen, before you had gotten your hands on me, I had already been through hell and back. I was molested as a child by my father until I was in my teens, and you know what? I had healed tremendously from that until you ruined everything. You made me take about a million steps backward in my recovery. You caused my already prevalent PTSD to come back full force. You ruined the work I had done in learning how to trust people—especially men. I was eighteen—barely an adult. I was drunk, and helpless, and you took advantage of me.
I admit that I was very intoxicated—but that gave you no excuse. I told you no. I have blocked so much of that night out of my memory, but I remember telling you no and that I wasn’t ready. I may not have been a “virgin” thank to my father, but I had never had consensual sex—now I am starting to believe I never will be able to.
I wish I had been brave. I wish I had told someone. I wish I had gone to the hospital and gotten a rape kit. I wish I could have buried you in a trial and had you locked up in a cage like the animal you are, but I was weak. I was young. I may still be young, at the age of twenty, and you may have broken me, but let me tell you something. It has taken me countless hours of therapy to finally figure this out but…
I. Am. Not. Weak.
I’m not weak, and what you did to me—it wasn’t my fault. It was your decision to violate me. It was your decision to force yourself into me and have your way with me. It was your decision to leave me bleeding and barely conscious on a bed at that fraternity house. It was your decision to be able to go on living like nothing ever happened.
I’m not the weak one, you are. Anyone who has to take advantage of a vulnerable girl in order to gain sexual satisfaction is sick—and weak. You couldn’t resist your urges. My only hope for you is that you never succeed in doing anything like what you did to me to anyone else. I hope if you ever have another victim that in the moment, she can be stronger than I was. I hope she buries you in court, and I hope you spend the rest of your miserable life in a jail cell. I hope you spend your days in jail while I go to graduate school--and eventually get my PhD in clinical psychology so I can attempt to fix the damage inflicted on innocent people by people just like you.
So you know what? Me too. That’s been posted so much on social media lately, but due to literally only one person knowing about what you did to me, and due to the shame of my childhood, I didn’t have the courage to post that but because of you, me too.
