to be fair

To be fair, I’m not positive he raped me. The doubt is what kept me from telling anyone for a year. The doubt is what made me sprinkle it into conversation with a light-hearted tone when I finally felt ready to tell someone.

What I do know is that I feel broken. What I do know is that I struggle with trust. What I do know is that I find it impossible to be intimate: either the loud voice in my head yelling ‘HE’S USING YOU! WHY WOULD ANYONE CARE ABOUT *YOU*’ stops me before anything starts, or I end up subconsciously contorting my body into bizarre shapes, squishing my thighs together as tight as I can. “what are you doing with your legs?” someone once asked. I cried for hours the next day. What was I doing with my legs?

It is possible that on the morning of my surgery two and a half years ago, I put my panties on inside out. It is possible that at a certain point during the day while I was still groggy from the anesthetic, I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans myself. It is possible that on this same day, I experienced random, non-menstrual vaginal bleeding. To be fair, it seems far more likely that these three things all happened than my doctor taking advantage of my unconscious body.

The factor that can’t be ignored is the uneasiness I felt when I went to the bathroom and saw all that blood. I have tried all this time to brush it off as my dramatic nature or something. The shame I feel to accuse (within myself) my doctor of committing such a horrible act. The shame I feel to compare what *might have* happened to me with what really does happen to half of the world’s female population. How Dare I? Who Am I To Say Such Things?

These thoughts have been crippling me all this time. They have changed my life for the worse. I am the world’s champion of pushing people away. I would rather spend all my time alone because spending time with other people always feels forced and fake. I like who I am, but I can’t comprehend why anyone else would.

To be fair, maybe these thoughts have nothing to do with my being sexually assaulted (or my impression that maybe I could have been). But in any case, I’m finally admitting to myself that I do need help and that not being able to figure out my emotions on my own isn’t a bad thing. That there is an alternative to crying every day. That sometime in the future, I may consider myself worthy of a loving relationship with someone whom I truly believe has my best interests at heart.

This realization has been such a long time coming for me. Please don’t tell me to get my hymen examined. Please don’t tell me the answer lies in me trying to see the glass half-full rather than half-empty. Don’t tell me to drink less alcohol. Don’t tell me that therapy is a joke.

To be fair, maybe I should cut down on my three drinks a week. To be fair, maybe therapy won’t benefit me. Maybe I’ll spend hours of my time and hundreds of my dollars for a stranger to stroke my ego and call me a victim and I won’t grow from it at all. But to be fair, maybe I will. These are my lessons to learn. Can’t you just support me in that?