Anonymous
Photography by Aneesa Wermers
Please Note: This letter contains detailed discussion of sexual assault. If this topic may be triggering for you, I encourage you to explore other stories on IfYou'reReadingThis.org. If you find yourself wanting resources, the Sexual Assault Network hotline at Boston College is available 24/7 at (617) 552-2211 and the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 at (800) 656-4673.
If you’re reading this, know that there’s no right way to grieve.
Grief has always been a complicated term for me. I used to believe you could only grieve a loss, and I struggled to view my sexual assault as a loss for a long time. It wasn’t a loss of virginity, or a loss of relationship. It didn’t impact my friendships with male loved ones; I wasn’t afraid to touch or laugh with or trust them. In fact, how I responded to my rape was the complete opposite of what every movie, TV show, or public victim statement had demonstrated to me. Yet still, I felt accompanied by an emptiness and quiet pain that I couldn’t name for a long time. Her name was Grief.
2020 is universally understood as a bad year. Grief crept into our homes and hearts in many ways; she took the place of many that we loved, of milestone moments, of lives we were used to living. But before the globe suffered great loss due to the coronavirus pandemic, I suffered a great loss of my own. In the late hours of January 11, or maybe the early ones of January 12, I was raped by a close male friend of mine. I do not remember much. I know that I was throwing up in a bathroom sink beforehand; I had been too drunk to make it to the toilet. I know that I handed him a condom when him having sex with me felt inevitable. I know that I woke up, still drunk, bed empty, legs burning. I know that I am using cruel language, because what happened to me was a cruel act.
For many months after my rape, I shut Grief out. I told her to go away, that she didn’t have a home here, that I had messed up and gotten too drunk and slept with someone I wouldn’t have sober. I didn’t believe that I could have been raped, because I had done everything right. I had known this person since I was 15. I was in my own home. I had drank only wine and seltzer, no liquor. I was wearing black leggings and a thick, tan, full-body-length cardigan. In my mind, I had simply screwed up my plan to wait for someone that I loved as much as I had my only prior sexual partner.
The thing is that we cannot choose when Grief enters our life, or the form she will take. I did not recognize her, because I did not want to. I tried to stay friends with my assailant, wanting to prove to myself that we had a relationship, that it wasn’t a senseless attack. I started drinking heavily each weekend. I slept with boys I didn’t care about, boys who didn’t care about me, to try and feel something other than apathy and numbness. I was desperate for love and desperate for companionship, for something that would show me that my “poor choice” was actually a liberating act of sexual expression leading me to the right person.
It wasn’t until many sleepless nights, a months-long struggle to read Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, and a TikTok explaining hypersexuality as a trauma response to sexual violence that I really understood my rape for what it was. My assault was not stereotypical, nor was my response to it. Grief for me was a soldier for my bodily autonomy, a desperate search for safety in anyone’s arms. She was my numbness, my sexuality, my tears, and my storytelling, when I felt brave enough. She was my companion— she is my companion— patiently waiting for me to understand her, to help me understand myself and my rape.
Writing the term “rape” is scary, because a small part of me will forever wonder if I am allowed to claim it. I know that my blurred memory would not hold up in a court of law. I also know that what I experienced was violent, cruel, damaging, and I am allowed to grieve it.
This is exactly why I write on. This is exactly why we all must write on. If you’re reading this, know that there is no one way to suffer sexual violence. If you’re reading this, know how badly someone else needs to hear your story to understand that they’re not alone. If you’re reading this, know that sexual assault is wrong and so it doesn’t matter what you did or did not do “right”. If you’re reading this, know that Grief can take any form and any amount of time that you need her to. She will walk beside you in the dark. She is your ally; she is your friend.
And so am I.
Anonymous Boston College
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