Raped

Typically when I am compelled to write, it arises from being possessed with elation. Some vision or thought calls out to me, and I discover what these are by piecing together what I can see in words, identifying something of value. This piece is not that - it is possession from a spirit of discontent. For nights now I have layed awake in bed, constantly re-reminded, feeling weird. I am not trying to piece anything together, I am not trying to understand what; I’m only confused why. There will be no ‘point’, I’m unsure yet if there will even be coherency; and there certainly won't be anything enjoyable.

When I was in first year, piss drunk in Klute, I lost my virginity to some random guy who wanted to have sex with me. I learned a year later (after by chance being recognised by his friends on a bar crawl) that he chose to have sex with me because I was drunk - which according to most people would constitute rape. It was only a year later when I myself started to begin being comfortable calling this rape. There was various Google searches to compare it to legal definitions of rape, almost an intuition that it was necessary to know if I was actually raped or not; but I tended to only want to call it ‘sexual assault’. Nice and safe; I’d already been groped and such so one more sexual assault doesn’t feel a novelty, but to be raped is something dramatically new.

I feel embarrassed to suggest I may have been raped for too many reasons; foremost is the incessant fear that ‘it wasn’t that bad’, to say it’s rape is merely being histrionic. I mean I did consent both in word and action (Even if alcohol rendered me unable to consent), and I remember feeling like I was lucid (As almost every drunk person does. Not only were you so fucked an hour earlier people were asking if you were alright; but you felt no anxiety no anxiety at the risk of pregnancy or STD’s through not using a condom - kinda suggesting you didn’t magically sober up). It’s no different to every other times I’ve had sex: being too drunk to admit to the other person that I don’t actually want to have sex (Except in every other instance they were also drunk; it wasn’t a targeted choice), and it’s not as if he was violent or coercive (Non-violent rape is still rape).

But then there is the alternate side: I feel guilty for not being hurt. And I feel guilty for playing down the severity of my rape due to my fear I’m over-reacting. I imagine a lot of people would be heavily impacted if they were raped in a similar manner, and yet it wasn’t a significant deal to me; only years later does it make me feel mildly weird and uncomfortable thinking about it. That it my experience and it is valid: but I can’t help but feel the very speaking of my experience in some way ‘downplays’ the experiences of people who were affected worse. To say ‘I wasn’t too severely affected’ feels insulting to other people, almost as if I were to say ‘get over yourself, it isn’t that bad’ - which I obviously would never dream of saying or thinking, but I am fearful that this is what people would hear. I am tempted to say I was only ‘mildly raped’ or some other diminuative description to ease this discomfort; but in doing so I actually do downplay other people who have been raped. I am forced to assert I was raped so as not to denigrate other cases, but I suffer further discomfort and embarrasment in the anxiety of having to boldly say ‘I was raped’ - therefore I choose not to speak so as not to face such problems.

I wish being raped didn’t mean I have to deal with this Seartrean ethical dilemmas.

I don’t understand why I care now. I didn’t care when I had lost my virginity, I didn’t care when I learned I was targeted for my intoxication, I only care not that I’ve called it “rape”. Would I even care or give a single thought to the instance if it wasn’t labelled ‘rape’? Of course I felt I had violated my dignity somewhat, giving up the most private and intimate aspect of myself up for nothing. To be used by someone who immediately left afterwards. But that was then, this is now: why do I care more now than then? I wasn’t shocked when I learned they intentionally fucked someone who was intoxicated, in fact I distanced myself from it as almost a funny anecdote: “Remember when I lost my virginity, turns out it was a clear-cut case of taking advantage of someone who couldn’t consent! Isn’t that funny and wacky!”.

I don’t understand why I care now. But simultaneously I don’t understand why I care so little. I suspect people would put rape up with suicidality and physical abuse in the list of ‘pretty bad shit’; but it doesn’t feel as such. Suicidality at least relates to chronic mental illness, and the complete emotional meltdown I have in response to being hit is a clear behavioural trauma response. But there isn’t any significant ‘operational marker of severity’ for the rape. I get a deeper level of upset when I get told off at work: someone might find something interesting to say about me finding disappointing someone else as more upsetting than an intimate violation of myself lmao. And yet I forget my work mistakes by the end of the next shift, but I can’t seem to shake this rumination and discomfort with being raped. 

But I doubt there  is any ‘why’, I doubt there’s any deeper ‘significance’ or ‘meaning’. I feel weird now about being raped simply because I do, and I didn’t at the time simply because I didn’t; and how I feel about it in the future will be similarly arbitrary. There aren’t any profound lessons to be learned, there is no developmental arc to go through - it simply happened, and that’s that. And I suspect that writings like this are a mistake: that writing is merely a way to create distance under the guise of ‘open honesty’. It’s a facade of vulnerability without the risk: it is the neutrality of words rather than my own voice, and the unintrusiveness of releasing into the void, rather than a specific person. I tend to see writing and articulation as the only way to process such, but maybe that’s untrue. As I finish, I think I begin to understand the importance of silence, and the importance of interpersonal intimacy and trust.