To be frank, writing about this was never a thought I considered just as telling was never an option I bothered to entertain. Thing is writing has been the only escape I have ever known, and I haven’t a clue as to why I’m sharing any of this. What happened has left me embarrassed and ashamed of myself. That acting as a filter every time I catch my own reflection. Even worst is the terrifying fear.

The one that traps me in silence: “What if I tell someone, my family or a friend/close one or anyone really, and they’d tell me it was my fault. Tell me I should have made better choices. Tell me I’m just being dramatic and attention-seeking. Tell me I’ve blown it out of proportion. Tell me I’m not a victim, just a girl with regrets”

Do you want to know something sort of sick and sad? I’d been the first to victim-blame myself. Whether it was telling myself it was okay or it wasn’t a big deal or worse, that it was my fault with no one else to blame. Guess maybe that’s why I am doing this. Allow some of this to crumble and chip by chip fall off of me. Stop myself from drowning tonight, even though it’ll still be there to taunt me tomorrow.

So here it is, the haunting encounter I’ve hidden and shown to only four people. Most people say story like “this is my story”, but I can’t say that. Encounter is my way of keeping it as a part, not the defining moment of my story. Now I can’t pretend that it didn’t happen, I know that.

It happened. It wrecked me. It was a rough plot twist, one that changed everything.

However, that does not mean it is the make or break of my tale. I refuse to let it be.

Of my three sexual experiences, only two were by choice. In the simplest terms: I have been raped twice.

The first by someone who’d once held the title as my boyfriend. I won’t paint it pretty, the relationship was flawed before that. He’d laid his hands on me more than once. Two kinds of apologies to be a regular thing (neither genuine or healthy). Me, giving far too many for no real reason. Him, offering empty and thoughtless ones that I accepted far too many times. Time after time apologies were tactics to draw me into a sense of forgiveness only to use and hurt me again.

Usually, I’d consider myself to be a decently honest person, aside from the few white lies, but there is one I commonly use other than the most popular one, “I’m fine”. That lie being how I used to go to countless parties with an old mate of mine, Nat, when in reality I’d only been to less than a handful. I can’t explain why I use it. Maybe it helps to diminish the situation or what happened.

That’s as far as I care to tell tonight. Honestly, I’m not ready to go into either of the assaults tonight. Not yet. But this was my first step towards getting there.