I have never written anything out and only told my story to a few, but in reality there are two stories. The first, my high school ex boyfriend who I was still “friends” with at the time. I don’t remember how I told my friend about how he and I were driving around in his car and he just shoved his hand down my pants grabbing me inappropriately after I previously had repeatedly on different occasions told him I wanted no sexual interaction. But when I told her, about a week after it happened, she was the one to tell me that it was SA. I went into freeze mode in the moment and didn’t react, and my brain didn’t even process the weight of it until she explained it to me. I told my mom and it got around the school, although I’m not sure if the true details were kept intact. I spoke with his parents but they just told me he was so so sorry and that I was the one to reject his apology so that was on me. They also tried to use scare tactics so I didn’t report him to the police. To this day he was never held accountable because I didn’t want to go through reporting it.
I want more people to know and be confident about their emotions/feelings when something like this happens. I want the whole world to know it doesn’t have to be worse than everyone else’s story to be SA. Don’t down play your own experience because of other people and their opinions. You are the one who experienced the trauma, and that is what it is. Trauma. But just like many others have said, I am a stronger woman now- but I will never thank those boys for making me a stronger woman, they didn’t do the work, I did.
