I am a very open and honest person. I’ll tell everyone almost anything about my experiences and myself. However, there is one thing that I’ve talked about with very few people on this earth. I haven’t even told my best friends that both of my high school boyfriends sexually assaulted me. I was young and naïve and believed the first one when he said that sexual intimacy was something that had to come with love as he touched me in places I didn’t want him to. It ate me up inside because I didn’t realize that this is what assault is. I was religious at the time and felt horrendously guilty for going “too far” with him. I didn’t realize that the nightmares I had about the experiences and the pictures I sent him were probably from minor PTSD. I told my second boyfriend about how I went “too far” and he insisted that he deserved to do everything that my first boyfriend had even though I didn’t want to do it again. He kept touching me and touching me as I begged him to stop. He later forced me to touch him too.
I only realized that I had been sexually assaulted when I took a special topics class in the Communications Department. While going through the process of creating our show about sex-ed topics, I realized that it wasn’t my fault. Being guilted into saying yes wasn’t my fault. Being touched when I didn’t want to be wasn’t my fault. And I shared my experience with this group of supportive people. I ended up writing and performing a poem for our show about sexual assault and consent and performing it for high schoolers. It was definitely the most cathartic experience of my life but I still haven’t told most of the people closest to me. I haven’t figured out how to yet. But I just wanted to share my story and reiterate that sexual assault isn't just rape that happens in alley ways late at night by some stranger in a mask. It's mostly performed by people who the victim trusts. And even being touch in places when you don't want to be counts. And no, it's never ever ever ever EVER the victim's fault.