The Girl Who Cried Rape

I am trying to sleep, actually lying in bed and trying to sleep, and not slipping out onto the roof to stare at the stars, but I am trying, really trying, like I haven’t in the longest of times to fall asleep naturally. And it has been a really long time since I have lay in bed and tried to sleep normally, like I used to before everything happened, before my heart was fractured.

I of course cannot sleep and I want to climb out onto the roof and lay until I finally feel tired, but I am terrified Eric will find me and ask me what is wrong and I am scared I might tell him. Really tell him what happened, that his new best friends broke me. That I am surely incapable of feeling real love or truly caring and he just needs to leave me alone before I break him like they broke me.

I don’t want to tell him any of this though because I am rather attached to him, like really in attached in a way I hadn’t and still don’t think is possible. And I think what scares me most is that I want to. I want to tell him the truth and I want him to hold me until everything makes sense again. I just want him and god that is a terrifying thought.

I pull my knees a little tighter against my midsection under my covers, and lay like I did as a child and hide from the monsters under my bed. Only these monsters reside in my head, and they are memories of that night and everything that really happened, everything I did.

I don’t want to think about what I did because I am just starting to feel tired and it will certainly stop my tiredness, and I just want to sleep so desperately, almost as much as I want Eric, almost, and that seems important. Like I could never want anything as much as I want him. I close my eyes and allow myself to drift off, it is in that place between sleep and wakefulness that I remember, that I really remember.

And it is horrible.

“Hayley,” It is Seth speaking, but his voice is distorted, like he is talking underwater and my tired brain has trouble unscrambling his mismatched words, but they aren’t mismatched. It is my brain that is mismatched and I cannot work out why.

Maybe I have had more to drink that I realised, maybe I am drunk. Only I don’t feel drunk, it feels like I have no control over myself at the moment, like something is wrong, really wrong. But I am too dizzy to really be able to comprehend that something might be wrong.

“Are you okay?” In my silence Seth finds his answer and grabs my elbow leading me past dancing people and a couple dry humping against the wall to the stairs where he leads me up and away.

I feel like I am walking forever, like it never ends but it does and suddenly I am alone in a room with Seth, and I am touching him, he feels warm and smells really nice. I feel like I am thirteen and experiencing my first kiss again, everything feels okay and I am reaching out to hold his face, cup it and love it like I always have.

And damn he feels amazing, like all the wonderful things in the world and he smells like lavender shampoo and soap and it is magnetising. I want to breath him in for the rest of my life. I want to remember this smell forever, everything except for Seth is background noise. He is the only important thing, the only thing that matters, and I want him, want him like I have never wanted anyone in my life.

I lean forward and press my lips against his trying to steal whatever it is that makes him so amazing. I think it might be his eyes, they are so kind. He leads me with his lips and tongue in my mouth, touching me gently to lean me back on the bed. The room spins for a moment and then he is on top of me and god I want it.

I want him.

My eyes fly open because the memory makes bile rise in my throat, hot and heavy, and it can’t be true. It has to be wrong. It has to, it has to, it just has too… please. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was awfully and horribly wrong, maybe I am not the victim, maybe I am the slut everyone thinks I am. Maybe my drunken mess of that night is my fault? I kissed Seth and let him touch me, did I let the others too?

Was I just too drunk to remember properly?

Did my head fill in the blanks horribly wrong?

I run to my private toilet and throw everything up I have eaten and drank in the past twenty-four hours. The bile burns my throat, god it burns but it is good, it is what I deserve because I was wrong. I wanted Seth much like I want Eric, in a primal physical way that terrifies me because maybe I was wrong. But why did they leave me on the football field? And why can’t I remember? If it was so wonderful and consensual why did I want up covered in bruises and blood alone? I feel sick but manage to keep the bile in my throat.

Am I wrong?

Am I even a victim?

I spend the night in between wake and sleep, trying to remember another moment from that night, one that tells me either way what really happened. All I want is the truth even if it means I am a liar, even if it breaks me…

I just want the truth.