The Girl Who Cried Rape

I spend my summer holidays in the isolation of my room, I am not sure when my parents noticed the difference in me but one night after a pitiful attempt at sleep I went downstairs and heard them whispering about me, about the girl that I am becoming. The one that spends all of her time alone and how concerned they are about me, it hurt in the moment but they would never understand the truth.

Sometimes when I am in a wistful mood I pretend that the night it all happened I came home and told the truth, I think of how different my life might be with the support of my parents but the thought usually dissipates quickly because I am no longer sure whose side they would take, mine or theirs.

Anxiety weighs heavily on my heart because tomorrow it all changes, tomorrow I change not because I want to but simply because I have to, because tomorrow school starts and I am not even slightly prepared.

I lay my head back on my thinning pillow, all the stuffing having been punched into submission on one of my many restless nights. I try to close my eyes but the images, the ones that assault my brain, are just too strong for my brain to resist. I am a masochist, one desperate for pain and punishment which is why I remember what little I do remember from that night and play it constantly in my head trying to fill the gaps my brain can’t or maybe wont.

I open my eyes startled and try to take deep calming breaths, my heart is hammering heavily and fast in my chest. I can feel it in my fingertips, every beat and it is making me uneasy. My breathing is shallow and quick and no matter how many times I hold my breath it won’t stop feeling that way.

At first the images were hard to decipher, they were at first hard to understand but as the nights pass and my memory began to fill in the missing details it all made sense and I realise what they were showing me. The images are parts of my fractured memory from the night, my own real life nightmares set on repeat.

I am not entirely sure of what happened that night because for a while I simply didn’t remember, I just remembered waking up. But the pictures that surfaced shortly after my fractured night of a memory certainly helped fill in some large gaps. I can assume from the naked pictures of me and the football club what really happened that fateful night.

No one bothered to believe me when I told them my truth, when I told them the truth, that I had passed out and woken up alone and cold without underwear and blood staining my pale and thin thighs. No one listened to my pleas and cries for help, I will admit I wasn’t very loud but it was obvious to plain eyes I was drowning in the lies they were telling themselves to help them sleep at night with a clear conscious.

Admittedly I never said out loud or to myself what really happened, but would they have believed me even if I had? I think not. People would believe what they wanted to believe, they would believe that because I accepted a drink of alcohol, that I followed Seth Anders to the football field I deserved everything I got. And maybe they are right, maybe in some way I am responsible for what happened to me because I wasn’t more careful.

I thought I had accepted the truth but I really haven’t and it is raking my brain every minute of every day with details I want to ignore, with truths I want to resist that make me see that maybe I am wrong. That maybe what happened to me is as big a fault of mine as it is theirs. Football is bigger that god and country in my small town and I am simply the drunk girl who tried to knock the footballers off their pedestal.

I am simply the girl who cried rape.

“Ryan, come downstairs please” My mother yells, her voice penetrating the walls I have built around myself somehow. I am in no mood to deal with my mother who for the life of her cannot understand my – in her view – self-imposed solitude.

A mere year ago I would have been going out to parties with friends and going out of the house for more than the errands she forces me to go on. She cannot understand why I lock myself in my room all day and barely speak to her, and I wish she did. But I will never tell her.

I slowly pull myself from my bed, I hate when I have to leave my room anymore, it is my safe haven. In here with music blaring I can cry at the top of my lungs for everything that I have lost, for everyone I have lost, including myself. Because somewhere along the line I did lose myself and now I am a shell of my former self. I can cry in my room for everything I have lost because it is the one place no one will judge me, not even myself and that speaks volumes more than I can.

I pause for a second trying to compose myself before I open my door and head downstairs, I take a deep breath and focus on breathing as normally as I can, it still comes out stilted and shallow, which annoys me enough to bring tears to my eyes. My bare feet hit the cold wooden floor boards and I groan in anticipation and fear.

“What is it mum?” I call as I slowly descend the stairs,

“Come meet the new neighbours honey” I scrunch my eyes closed for a second, I really hate meeting new people who will eventually judge me for the rotten thing that I am.

Ever since my ‘attack’ I have shrunk so far inside myself I am no longer sure I have any social skills left. I am not even sure I know what social skills are at this point which worries me beyond belief, because how am I even to survive without normal functioning social skills.

I sigh and stop short in my tracks nearly running into a tall boy about my age with dark chocolate skin and thick black rimmed glasses and perpetual smile on his face. He looks like the boys that hurt me and I instinctively shy away from him my heart beat accelerating and vomit rising in my throat. I try to tell myself it is okay but I barely get the chance before his is speaking over my thoughts drowning them out like I wish I could.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Eric”

“You too” I drawl in my lazy southern accent.

I take in the boy, he is fashionably dressed with an easy smile if this were a year ago I might consider dating him but here and now he strikes nothing but fear in me. I hope he doesn’t notice how my voice shakes as I talk. He has a thick accent I place from somewhere around New York apart from that he is a total mystery to me and I plan on keeping it that way.

“This here is my baby Ryan, she is a senior at the local high school, I ‘spose you to are in the same year right?” My mother is ever the gracious host, and ushers me further into the room. I remain on the outside watching ever intently.

Eric takes a tiny step back but doesn’t take his eyes from me it unnerves me to no end. I smile at my mother ever willing to play the part for her. My mother is not a bad mother she is just naïve, she sees the best in people and can’t understand why I don’t. Now more than ever being pushed together with Eric I wish I had told her, if only to get away from meeting new people and feeling more awkward than words can begin to describe.

“Ryan I’m sure you don’t mind showing young Eric here around tomorrow, I suggested you two should car pool” She says with a big pearly white smile at me, I stare at her blankly until she looks away.

I want to get in a fight with her, and I want to embarrass her in front of all these people just so she can get a glimpse into how miserable I feel on a daily basis. But she won’t take the bait, she won’t rise to the occasion and I hate her a little bit for that. My mother turns to the older couple who I assume are Eric’s parents based on looks and their mere presence, complaining about rising gas prices. I refrain from rolling my eyes.

“You don’t have to ride with me” I say staring blankly at tall Eric.

“I don’t mind” He says with an easy smile and I almost laugh because it hits me all at once,
“That’s right, you don’t know” I say half to myself and half to anyone who is willing to listen because I am desperate for someone to believe me.

“Know what?”

“You’ll see.” I tell him cryptically because as much as I want someone to believe me I am not willing to spill the sordid details of my attack with my parents let alone a virtual stranger.

Eric frowns and I fight the urge to turn and run away, run away from facing the past and the present. There is no point in making nice with Eric, I cross my arms over my chest and eye him down willing him to lose the smile and easy going attitude, to turn away and leave me all alone, because tomorrow Eric will hear the rumours and see the pictures. Today he might think of me as a potential friend, hell he might even like me but tomorrow he will see and there won’t be niceties dancing on his lips but rather hate.

Tomorrow he will simply be one more face in that crowd that no longer believes me.