farewell, so long

saturday june 12, 2004 i was raped.

me: braces, black tank top, jean shorts, curly unruly hair. virgin. 17.
him: grey t-shirt, khaki shorts, skinny. predator. 26.

his parents threw a baby shower for me in july of 1986. he's in the videos. his parents and mine were close friends. he attended acu (the university where my dad is a professor), and graduated in may of 2004. for those years he was in school, my mother and i would bake cookies every midterm and finals week then hand deliver them to a select few on campus, him being our last stop. his visits always took the longest. he was funny, sweet, full of stories, and i may have had a small 'big brother' crush on him. my parents invited him to sunday lunch after church a few times a semester. i always looked forward to it, because he would come in and play our piano with a talent i'd never seen. he bought me the brand new avril lavigne cd that was coming out because he saw all the posters of her i had in my room. plus, he had the funniest stories of life i'd ever heard. he had girlfriends off and on and was engaged for a year or so of his school time.

at his graduation in may, i dressed as cute as possible for the party at spaghetti warehouse in the mall of abilene later that day. i went to his table and gave him a hug and he slipped me a receipt with his number and email address on it, telling me to stay in touch. i emailed him a few days later, just asking how life in dallas was and how he was doing. we emailed back and forth a few times, and he told me he was coming to abilene to see friends in june and that i should come see him. i happily agreed.

june 12th. i took my SATs that day at the acu campus. once i was done, i was headed to my best friend's house for the weekend. i asked her to drop me by his room at the comfort inn, (where my wedding guests would later stay) and that i would call her when i needed to be picked up. with me i took a photo album of my best friends and my yearbook. i wanted to show him my friends and world. i was excited to see him, the cute older brother i'd never had, but had been in my life since i knew it.

little did i know, he'd made other plans. he had brought with him lingerie, a condom on a lollipop stick, tealight candles for the tub, and a few 'toys'. when he brought out the lingerie suggesting i put it on, my heart flipped. i knew this was wrong. i knew i had to leave. but i couldn't. he didn't use any weapons, but made it clear i could not leave. it took years of therapy to accept the fact that i did all i could. because i could have fought harder, but couldn't. just because i couldn't. because he told me i couldn't go. so i didn't. i called my friend to tell her he'd take me home that night, no big deal.

he raped me at 4:17pm. he ordered pizza for us around 6. forced me into a bath with him around 8. took me home the next morning, dropped me off in the alley behind my house while my parents were at church, around 9am. 17 hours of absolute disgrace and violation.

i told no one, besides my thankfully ex-husband, until 2007. that's when i started seeking counseling for it. i so wanted to tell my parents. it took months of prep for me to tell them. and i regret it. they did the absolute opposite of what i expected. they came to his defense. my dad met him, his father, and an elder in a dallas starbucks one sunday afternoon. i never got to hear what was said, except the fact that he said it was consensual. they never spoke of it again. my mother, months later, even told me about a run in they had with his family and how changed he was.

i promise you if any one of these 5 kids comes to me with a story like that, the motherfucker better be hiding in a ditch because that is not tolerable in any form, and i will protect them at all costs. i will bear my teeth and throw myself over them any day. it was almost as painful as the rape itself, as to how my parents responded to it. it reopened so many wounds and hurts, i felt so abandoned.

i took a bath last december for the first time since then. 7 and a half years later. i did it alone, because it was something i needed to conquer on my own. mark was at work. i filled my wine glass, filled the tub, and stepped in. i felt nauseous and couldn't even force myself to sit in it. i drained it, sucked down my wine, cried, and tried again. so determined to not let him control me anymore. i filled my glass again, filled my tub again, got in, and eventually ended up laying down in there for an hour. i took pictures to celebrate my victory and felt absolutely liberated.

if that bastard ever sets foot in my sights again, i swear to you i'll knee him in his tiny little balls so hard he'll never walk right again. but if he doesn't, i'm going on. happy. not letting that experience hamper my sexual or intimate relationship with mark ever again. i'll go on, knowing i did nothing wrong, knowing i can sleep at night, and hoping he can't. and i will forever hold up my middle finger to him, hoping he goes and fucks himself. because he's the one who took my innocence from me. i never gave it to him, he took it. but i'm stronger for it. i'm free of it.

finally.