“Ruin His Life”

There's a reason that veterans who are physically held down in combat share the same complex PTSD symptoms that survivors of rape experience. It's historically one of the only times men feel implicitly powerless. The key distinction is that people validate a veteran's experience and resulting PTSD.

Veterans react to sights, sounds, smells, and people understand. Rape survivors respond to sights, sounds, smells, and people misunderstand and invalidate them. Society tells them to be more careful. To calm down. To question themselves.

And their trigger is half the population.

Rape is one of the hardest things to vocalize because it's the degradation of not only someone’s body, but of their personhood, and they carry all the consequences. They swallow the way people don't know how to talk about it; they stomach the horrible ways they do talk about it. They need someone to look them in the eyes and tell them it's not their fault, but they don't want to risk feeling exposed. They want life to return to normal, but they feel like a basket case reacting to triggers that no one understands. They want to end anyone who looks at their body, but don't want to feel that no one will ever desire them again. They desperately want people to love them, but the link between love and trust is eviscerated. They want to scream all the time, but feel they’re on mute. No one says it's humiliating, but they move through the day, mortified to be alive. Victims have to find ways to navigate life, exhausted trying not to go off the rails with what they can’t forget. It's enough to make the most stable, even-keeled woman you know feel like she's going insane.

Let’s imagine someone invaded you house and stole your stuff, people understand that your sense of trust is breached; they know that you may be in shock. But if someone invades your body and steals your autonomy, your trust in yourself is shattered, and you can't escape your body. You take up permanent residence in it. And instead of understanding, there are people who ask, "Are you sure they stole from you?” while the home inside of you is empty.

You hold a constant dichotomy in the pit of your stomach between shame and honesty. The truth becomes so undeniable that it infiltrates your body and leaks into every facet of your life while you're trying to keep your head above drowning. So you do anything to disconnect… smoke, drink, starve, scroll, sleep, work. But your body still remembers. It doesn’t stop begging you to speak.

In my experience, there wasn't a room big enough for my rage. But I felt I had to stay in the room, because every time I tried to take back the night, another man on the street would look at me like prey to devour. The social anxiety was palpable. "I thought he followed you in there,” was the last thing I remember before I woke up hours later, frozen and rigid, to someone inside of me. I went to that party seeking connection, and left disconnected from myself. I was seen as hysterical, while my rapist was protected— by people who didn’t even know him. I was made to feel microscopic under the weight of shame by people who called me their friend.

My body was violated, and I ended up feeling like the violation. 

I lost my voice 4 times in 7 months after the assault. I contracted mono from a kid spitting in my face, and I slept for 14 hours most days for 6 weeks. I moved homes, changed jobs. I floated through life with my hair falling out and my hormones raging. I was reckless, I lost my appetite, I got down to an unhealthy size zero. I felt like I was living underwater during the day, and every night I was flooded with nightmares about being chased with STD-infected needles, trapped in confined spaces, or watching my blood-covered friends in hospitals, surrounded by men. For two months, I’d walk into my dark apartment and check every room and closet with a knife in hand. I had to sleep at my parents. I couldn't be in crowds, go to parties, or have strangers walk behind me without feeling panic. I yelled at men I trusted and loved because I didn't know how to yell at the person who did it. I’d hold my thumb over my drink for dear life, and when I drank heavily, an angry alter-ego would emerge. I bolted down so many streets and cried on so many curbs. I was breaking at the seams, but terrified of people finding out. There is no other loss of control quite like it. All I wanted was to be stronger than when he held me down, and I was furious I only felt weak.

I know the questions women ask themselves when it happens to them. Because I asked myself the same questions. What happened to me? Am I sure? Who will believe me? How long will they believe me? Will gossip framed as "evidence" sway them? Will they tell me that because I got drunk, it's my fault? Would three white claws wipe my memory? Did he roofie me? What if he finds out where I live? How many people will I upset? How many of their feelings will I have to manage? What if no one says anything, or they talk behind my back? Will they look at me like I'm fragile forever now? Damaged? Will they ask me if I pressed charges, and I'll have to recount incoherent fragments? If it even gets time in court, would he retaliate, or worse, charm everyone? Will they all look at me in disgust? Will they call me a liar? How many people will abandon me when I need them the most?

Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember?

I kept asking my cousin, “What if I'm looking for attention? What if I'm wrong?” And she said, “Jill, how can you be looking for attention and going silent at the same time? You've only told me.”

That same cousin from Chicago called every hospital in Long Beach because I was too disoriented, and they said they were too slammed for rape. Too slammed for rape. I waited three hours for a hotline to tell me to go to the same hospital. Seven hours waiting for a policeman. Zero rooms to report in, so I just resigned to talking about my most debilitating moment in public. The policeman told me not to go to that side of town anymore as a solution. When I needed STD testing, the first two nurses denied me care if I did not file a report—completely illegal. One HIPAA violation while they yelled at me to talk about it in the lobby, with a line behind me. Several angry letters from doctors we trusted were sent to the rep at OptumCare, and one phone call from him, blubbering apologies to my mom about how he has a daughter too, and will train his staff better. My mom yelled when she told him that this is why women don't report (I love you, mom), and I sobbed the whole way home. Fire your staff on Willow, Optum. You are an absolute disgrace. You're the reason victims don’t seek help. 

I know it costs 60 dollars in a Rite Aid to realize safety was stolen from me, and there wasn't a Plan B for my psyche when I stood in there with my pepper spray and box cutter and flashed it at any man that got within a 10-foot radius of me. I know my period was 4 days late when Roe v Wade was overturned, and a bunch of crusty old men without a uterus, who say that the body shuts down a pregnancy from rape, made that decision. I sat in my bathroom, waiting to find out if there was a trauma inside me that they would tell me to carry to term, knowing full well that 32,000 pregnancies result from rape a year. I hope those men rot here on earth; hell would have to freeze over before they ever know the indignity of that.

I did all the "right" things, and it still didn't mean anything. I couldn't help but feel that women's bodies are a prison sentence we did not choose, and we must swallow a truth the size of a gavel—the thing we live, breathe, and experience our lives in is under constant, inescapable scrutiny.

Some responses to assault make victims question if there is any goodness left, and whether or not the only path is flippant and jaded. Women are cornered in thousands of explicit and subtle ways every day. The media glorifies rape and say that it's "important" and contextual to the story. But they never seem to worship the context of the aftermath because, ultimately, women aren't important to them. The media loves stories about women being broken. They love stories about men who seduce strong women into being a lesser version of themselves. And they love narratives about men jumping out of alleyways to commit rape because America is not ready to acknowledge how rape is not always a thief in the night. It is sewn into the fabric of every social structure. And I don't think most men are prepared to admit how they are all holding the needles that weave it into normalcy.

Imagine the men around me, thinking they were doing the right thing by telling me the power was in my hands. I thought, that's a joke. The power has never been in my hands. That's why I'm in this position; I can't change this. This starts and ends with them. So this part is for all the men. When we talk about rape, don’t back away. Don’t hold your arms up like you’re being arrested. Don’t silence or go silent. 

I wish men could understand the burden of how long it takes survivors of rape to speak, and the consequences we face when we do. Instead, men should ask how they can help. They should ask how they can do better and teach other men to do the same. And the men who tell women they are doing it for attention can go fuck themselves.

Do you give a damn? Really? Then do something about it. Because talk is so cheap.

Google it. Show victims they are worth minimal effort—a Google search on how to support them. Show up for them in court. Show us with your presence and your voice that you believe us, and do it publicly in front of your friends. Sustain that belief for as long as you live instead of slowly fading your faith in women’s credibility over time or when any man, anywhere, says something contrary. Help us install security systems at our homes. Gift us with knives and baseball bats. Don't ask us to report if you don't plan to form an army ready to night watch our homes. Don't act like that's dramatic; you wouldn’t feel that way if you knew the statistics. 

Mentor the younger men in your lives. Throw some punches. Show us good anger. Show up. When your friends laugh at rape or consent, make them feel immense shame and shift the entire conversation. You have that power. Use it for good. Stop acting scary when we reject you. Stop walking right behind us on a dark street. Stop pretending that you're too ignorant or helpless to be of service. Learned helplessness isn't acceptable anymore. Support women without wanting to get into their pants, support women without expecting praise for the bare minimum, and support women as human beings in pain. Execute an action so the women in your life don't constantly, consistently have to do it for themselves and all the women around them. 

It's a nightmare to tell the truth. So a lot of us just don't. We develop health issues. We isolate ourselves, and people stop inviting us. We tell ourselves that we are making it up for attention, even though telling one person takes all of our courage. We tell ourselves we would ruin his life, even though our sense of safety is ruined forever. The statistics of rapists that get any jail time make a mockery of the ways we put our own lives on hold. We find out that half of our fear-provoked questions are rational because most come true. Every time we tell someone, we find out if we will ever trust them again, and that cuts half of our friends out. First we lose ourselves, and then we lose our community.

The reality of the aftermath is so heavy.

I have come to terms with, and believe, that everyone is doing the best they can. Even if the best that people can do sometimes left me in a very dark place. Though I’ve been holding the tension of those two realities, it doesn’t negate what I need to say about it.

Even though I will always love them, I felt there were failures from my community. Standing around saying “this is crazy,” when someone is struggling is what’s crazy. There are horrible consequences for invalidation; we’ve seen it. As a community, it’s not good enough to merely preach safety and acceptance, it must be put into practice. No more gatekeeping on how people are allowed to show up. Caring about someone or something isn’t going to disintegrate your reputation.  To the men who don’t care, who are “too cool” to be empathetic—you’re lucky the women in your life haven't burned everything to the ground by now. 

I've seen others stand around heartbroken and hurt without being offered any safety or space for them to feel or be a vulnerable human before they reach the point of crisis. Things get talked about and posted about, but I just don’t buy it anymore. Don't erase women by asking them to be less intense. Don’t erase their humanity. Don’t erase their credibility. Don’t even dare try to erase their anger, too. Even our anger cannot belong to us? Stop brushing people under the rug. 

Some of the men or women my community would typically exile are the ones who showed up, ready to kick someone's ass for me. While some of the men it welcomed with open arms are the men who looked at me at my weakest, knew what happened to me, and preyed on me. They'd be the first ones to talk about how important consent is, and then they'd wipe my tears and try to get me blacked out or ask me to do drugs after I said no, so they could get laid. I saw self-proclaimed feminist men only become feminists when they can give up the responsibility of protecting me. I’ve watched abusers take up all the space in the room—and both men and women allow them to do so. I watched people give more of a shit about their image than going to a vulnerable place with someone who considered them a close friend. 

I needed people to ask what they could do, or tell me they were sorry or angry. I needed to stop being used for what I could do for them.  It was pretty simple. But instead, people I really cared about stepped back and said, "I wasn't there, I can’t handle it, I don't know how…” before I even opened my mouth. People were passive, silent, dismissive. They made it seem like it happens to everyone, so I should just forget about it. They got in my face and yelled, told me aggressively that I needed to heal. They talked about me behind my back. They stopped inviting me to things; saw me as an emotional problem when I was trying so hard to keep it contained, and my body was deteriorating as a result. And somehow, I ended up being the one apologizing. Even though I walked through so much of this alone.

So please…if someone trusts you to tell you they were assaulted—do anything but go quiet. Say something, say anything. Do something, do anything. Be awkward and bad at it. Just show up and try. Because it broke my heart when they didn't. It broke my heart again and again and again and again. And I reached crisis. 

I've had to break down my walls and do the work repeatedly to remain soft, kind, and strong, while others have constantly gotten away with being rude, demeaning, and mediocre. I've done it so many times. I've worked so hard for it. I keep peeling back my medieval layers while people feed off my good graces and throw a fit if I'm anything less than appeasing. I'm tired of doing that because of the repressed, docile, and destructive culture this community perpetuates. I’m done contorting myself for others. It’s time for things to change. 

It has taken me a lot of strength and restraint to calmly dialogue about a world that does not see women with value, and robbed me of my ability to see my own. Being a woman comes with a price, and I’ve been trying to carry it with all the grace I can muster. So I’ll be absolutely damned if I let another male make me feel inferior for living in the full power and beauty of who I am. I don't want anyone else to ever feel the way I did. I will go to bat for you to make sure that you don't. 

If you're reading this and there is a lump in your throat, I swear to you, it's not your fault. To all survivors everywhere-I hear you, I see you, I love you. You're not crazy. I’m sorry you were strong when you shouldn’t have had to be. I’m so sorry that the world taught him that he can consume you, and you are left to sit in the garbage he left and confront that you never belonged in it. We need and want you here on this earth, tonight, and always. We want you here, we want you here, we want you here. You are not alone, and you are so loved. Call me if you need a reminder.

And there are ways to heal that aren't flowery or bubble baths or journaling, etc.; they are concrete-they involve your body, your breath, your biology, your humanity. You don't have to believe that right now, but I hope you stay curious to discover if you might someday. Just hang on. Hold life with clenched fists until you can hold it with open palms again.

To everyone else, when the women (or men) in your life come forward and say, "I think something happened to me," do them a favor. Believe them. Your response dictates if they set the truth free ever again. If you want to know why they waited so long, think of me. 

It took a year to get here. That's therapy, boxing, eating again, sitting in the sun, and telling myself every day I am whole, wanted, believed, and going to be okay.

But honestly, more than anything, it was the first two people I told-who let me fall apart and without hesitation said, "I believe you. I'm so sorry that happened to you.” I'd be sitting in the gutter without them. Christina and Joel—my heroes, my whole heart. Thank you for being angry for me when I didn’t know how, thank you for loving me when I was difficult to love; I love you so much.

To be believed in means everything.