Status: Active Once More
The Girl Who Cried Rape
It Hurts Too Much To Bare
In a town where football is bigger than god and its players are held on a pedestal so high I really should have expected this. Yet it still hits me with the shock and coldness of a hard tidal wave. There I was floating happily, bobbing on the surface of the water and just when I have enough air to fill my lungs, I am thrown under the water, chocked with salty water and all my air disappears, I am coughing and spluttering for air but no matter how hard I swim upwards I can’t reach the surface.
It is completely terrifying.
I am thrown under the water and left to drown on my own as Eric becomes someone other than my own. I sit on the cool grass hoping the shock on my face is not evident because I feel like I have just been tackled by the entire football team and all the precious air in my lungs is lost. I am grasping for air trying to find the surface of the water once more but I just keep sinking deeper and deeper with every thrash of my leg.
I pick a strand of grass from the ground and pretend, for a maddening second, that I can hear it screaming. It makes me feel better imagining to hurt something, because I really want to hurt Eric for being so naïve. Eric thinks he understands why I am the way I am; to Eric it is simple. I was raped by Seth not by a group of boys on the football team as well. And a part of is clinging so desperately to that one secret, it is all I have left, so I don’t correct him. I let him believe that Seth ruined me, not five other boys as well. So maybe this whole thing is really my fault, for not being fully honest what I had the chance.
The team that once broke my body and soul are now his teammates, and he is waiting for my permission and acceptance, and as much as I want to give it to him I am unable. My mother once told me that there are some secrets we cling to so tightly and we can’t tell if we wanted to, and then there are others we are desperate to tell. I think I am stuck between wanting to tell Eric the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not just the parts I can comprehend and remember late at night.
Eric had sprung his, seemingly, good news on me as we walked across the local park, him with a football in his arms and me with memories fighting to steal my consciousness. A few nights ago I had a nightmare, I had a memory and it has left me feeling exposed like the open skin of a wound, and I have made the informed decision that I simply do not want to remember.
The memory, the one that made vomit burn my mouth and heart had been a simple recollection of how I ended up in that room with all those boys ripping at me and my clothes, ripping my soul away. I had led Seth up there, and now maybe I am not the victim I once thought, maybe my rape is nothing more than consensual sex built up in my mind to be something so much more.
Eric is the only one I have told my attack to, and sometimes I wish I could both scream at it at him again and again until my heart stops hurting but I want to also take back my secret and wrap it up in my sadness. Eric and I have fallen into a comfortable quiet agreement that it is something we no longer discuss. I think Eric learned his lesson after he tried to talk me into going to the police and I refused to talk to him for three full days.
Since them we have made a very conscious effort to ignore any and all conversation regarding that topic, we have falls instead into conversations about other parts of ourselves. I have found out that Eric always eats the green jellybeans first because they are also his mother’s favourite and if he didn’t eat them quick he would miss out. He knows I only eat pink jellybeans because when I was seven and my mum would buy me a bag of pink jellybeans every weekend and we would watch black and white movies until I fell asleep in her lap, happy.
Eric is waiting for my answer, he shifts beside me reminding me that I have not spoken for a really long time and if I do not give him an answer soon all my careful avoidance of talking about anything real will be broken and he will ask my questions I am not sure I can refuse.
“That’s great” And I decide that no matter how much it hurts Eric does not need to know the truth, the whole truth. He smiles at me and I am reminded of the fact that sometimes the partial truth is better than the whole.
Eric is joining the team that broke me, and as sure as I was that I was floating I am now sure I am drowning.
It is completely terrifying.
I am thrown under the water and left to drown on my own as Eric becomes someone other than my own. I sit on the cool grass hoping the shock on my face is not evident because I feel like I have just been tackled by the entire football team and all the precious air in my lungs is lost. I am grasping for air trying to find the surface of the water once more but I just keep sinking deeper and deeper with every thrash of my leg.
I pick a strand of grass from the ground and pretend, for a maddening second, that I can hear it screaming. It makes me feel better imagining to hurt something, because I really want to hurt Eric for being so naïve. Eric thinks he understands why I am the way I am; to Eric it is simple. I was raped by Seth not by a group of boys on the football team as well. And a part of is clinging so desperately to that one secret, it is all I have left, so I don’t correct him. I let him believe that Seth ruined me, not five other boys as well. So maybe this whole thing is really my fault, for not being fully honest what I had the chance.
The team that once broke my body and soul are now his teammates, and he is waiting for my permission and acceptance, and as much as I want to give it to him I am unable. My mother once told me that there are some secrets we cling to so tightly and we can’t tell if we wanted to, and then there are others we are desperate to tell. I think I am stuck between wanting to tell Eric the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not just the parts I can comprehend and remember late at night.
Eric had sprung his, seemingly, good news on me as we walked across the local park, him with a football in his arms and me with memories fighting to steal my consciousness. A few nights ago I had a nightmare, I had a memory and it has left me feeling exposed like the open skin of a wound, and I have made the informed decision that I simply do not want to remember.
The memory, the one that made vomit burn my mouth and heart had been a simple recollection of how I ended up in that room with all those boys ripping at me and my clothes, ripping my soul away. I had led Seth up there, and now maybe I am not the victim I once thought, maybe my rape is nothing more than consensual sex built up in my mind to be something so much more.
Eric is the only one I have told my attack to, and sometimes I wish I could both scream at it at him again and again until my heart stops hurting but I want to also take back my secret and wrap it up in my sadness. Eric and I have fallen into a comfortable quiet agreement that it is something we no longer discuss. I think Eric learned his lesson after he tried to talk me into going to the police and I refused to talk to him for three full days.
Since them we have made a very conscious effort to ignore any and all conversation regarding that topic, we have falls instead into conversations about other parts of ourselves. I have found out that Eric always eats the green jellybeans first because they are also his mother’s favourite and if he didn’t eat them quick he would miss out. He knows I only eat pink jellybeans because when I was seven and my mum would buy me a bag of pink jellybeans every weekend and we would watch black and white movies until I fell asleep in her lap, happy.
Eric is waiting for my answer, he shifts beside me reminding me that I have not spoken for a really long time and if I do not give him an answer soon all my careful avoidance of talking about anything real will be broken and he will ask my questions I am not sure I can refuse.
“That’s great” And I decide that no matter how much it hurts Eric does not need to know the truth, the whole truth. He smiles at me and I am reminded of the fact that sometimes the partial truth is better than the whole.
Eric is joining the team that broke me, and as sure as I was that I was floating I am now sure I am drowning.