Editor’s note: This story includes mentions of sexual assault. A list of sexual assault reporting options and on-campus resources can be found on the Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross websites.
When I got sexually assaulted, it was so obvious I refused to believe it.
When I woke up the morning after, I had never felt more alone in my life. My roommate was gone that weekend, and even though I swore we hated each other at the time, I wished she was there, turning the AC down.
Everything felt upside-down. I was parched from all the drinking the night before and a bit shaken up from what I figured was a purely consensual encounter.
Nothing felt right, but I told myself maybe it was just a “bad night.”
But the truth is, it was such a good night before it became a “bad night” — when we met at the party and flirted and talked; when we walked back to his dorm, kicking an empty can of White Claw down the sidewalk; when we sat in the 2-4, and he introduced me to all his friends, gazing into my eyes and stroking my hair (I secretly wondered if this was how all good love stories began, gazing up into the eyes of some guy you just met … or maybe I was just drunk).
I remember feeling cool, knowing this association with a boy was like cultural currency, knowing kissing boys after dorm parties meant something to people around here. It meant you were cool. It meant you were worthy. It meant you were pretty.
I didn’t know if I believed those things about myself on my own. I was 18.
The truth is, the boy before my room was great.
He was great when we played 20 questions on the long walk back to my dorm.
Question 1: Where are you from?
Question 2: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Question 3: What sport did you play in high school?
He was great when he kissed me for the first time. He was great when he broke my fall when I slipped on black ice. He was great when he showed me off to all his friends and kicked that White Claw down the sidewalk.
“At first, I liked it,” was something I told a friend days after the encounter.
It’s true. At first, I did like it.
When we got to my hall, I remember whispering to him that my roommate was away, so we went to my room.
The thing is, the boy in my room was not the boy I had met at that party, nor the boy who kissed me an hour prior.
The boy in my room was aggressive and mean. He repeated over and over again what he wanted, until I did it; he said hurtful things about what he thought I could and couldn’t handle; he threw clothes at me.
I remember I kept coaching myself through the experience, telling myself it was just a bad hook-up, that we were just drunk, and he didn’t mean it.
Before he left my room, I remember him grabbing my phone, putting his number in, and texting himself, “Hey babe.”
I remember this felt like a violation. I would never text someone I just met, “Hey babe.” That wasn’t me.
It felt strange that he felt entitled to touch my phone, command me to put my password in, and then send himself something I would never ever say. It gave me the creeps.
I figure now, it was yet another thing he did without asking.
I didn’t want to think anything bad happened, but the whole thing felt wrong — the way he handled me and talked to me and touched me. I didn’t want to believe it was wrong. It didn’t fit with my narrative. I wanted to tell all my friends about my fun night kissing a cute boy.
I didn’t want to tell them what actually happened because then they might be worried.
Besides, maybe I was just inexperienced. Maybe I was just drunk. Maybe he’s a nice guy sober, and this was a fluke accident.
The worst part is, there was a point when I tried to convince myself this was normal. I figured this is just how single people get to know each other these days.
I resisted all my strange, sinking, pit-of-my-stomach feelings and woke up the next day convincing myself I was a winner — a boy had chosen me and wanted me in that way. I was a winner when I couldn’t will myself to go to the dining hall that morning for breakfast or that afternoon for lunch. I was a winner when I stared at myself blankly in the mirror and wondered what he saw in me and also why I felt so horrible about it.
I wondered why I felt so dirty. Why the memory of his touch gave me the shivers. Why, when I eventually saw him in public a couple weeks after, I felt like I wanted to throw up.
When I told my friends the good parts, they seemed happy for me. When I showed them pictures of the boy, they said he was cute (everyone said he was so cute).
The day after the incident, I felt a strange sense of urgency to text him. I desperately wanted a do-over, wanted to make things right. I figured I must have been the one who made the good night bad. I figured if we saw each other again, maybe things would be different. Maybe it would cancel out what happened the first time.
So I texted him, “Want to play 20 questions?”
I figured 20 questions was the last thing we did before things got weird.
Question 4: So, do you like your dorm?
For a while, I blamed myself for texting him asking to play 20 questions. I wondered why I would seek out another encounter with a guy who had made me feel so awful. I wondered if somehow this invalidated my story — that I reached out to the guy again and never got a response.
But it makes sense to me now: I didn’t want to believe it had happened to me. I wanted to believe that if I saw him again, it wouldn’t be any worse than the first time. I wanted to believe that if I saw him again, it would be better and I would make myself forget.
I was 18. I was as young as my best friend’s little sister. I didn’t think sexual assault was something that happened because no one was talking about it. I didn’t think my experience would be taken seriously because “at first, I liked it.”
This boy was one of three I had ever kissed in my life at that point — he was 33% of what I knew “hooking up” to be. I thought all this weirdness and pain and angst I felt was normal.
It was only through conversations with my close girlfriends that I came to the conclusion that what happened wasn’t a “hook-up” at all.
It took 6 months for me to call it coercion, and 2 years for me to call it assault.
It isn’t always so easy to call it like it is.
It isn’t always so easy to say “no.”
Now, at 21, I sometimes feel he took something from me — because I might weep or cry if someone I like touches me in the wrong place or says the wrong thing, and it reminds me of that night. Because I can’t go to Brother’s without a friend telling me, “don’t turn around” because he’s in the back booth. Because I wasn’t overreacting when I said what happened that night was a violation. Because I know I’m not the only one who’s had a “bad night” with him. Because I can’t go to sports games without seeing him because he’s so tall and so conventionally attractive and so clearly at fault. Because we have mutual friends, and I don’t want them to figure out it was him. Because a small, sad part of me still believes I didn’t meet his standards and that the night was all my fault. Because “it was good and then it wasn’t” is often code for “it was bad. It was wrong. It was assault.”
Anonymous
Oct. 30
