Alyssa - poet and rape survivor
When I was a child, I was molested for three years by a neighbor. He was my brother’s friend from church. He would come over every Sunday, and we would play games. I would be in my closet, and he would take my pants off and start touching me, and I didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t able to tell so many people about that part of my life. I was a little kid, and I didn’t want people to know. It was embarrassing, so I had to internalize it and let the pain out it in other ways.
I’ve been dealing with that for my whole life. I realized when I was in high school, that every relationship, with every guy, was based on sex. And I didn’t want that to be the case anymore.
There was this group of guys in high school that I was just giving blow jobs to all the time. I realized that was not okay. I decided, you know what? This is not you, you don’t have to do this to make people like you. This is not your fault.
I hit a moment of clarity when I told Laura (a friend) about it, and she was angry for me. I told someone, and the fact that they were upset and angry too, made me feel better. I finally had someone to share the burden with, and they cared, and it mattered to them. I felt like a new person. I felt validated in the things that I’d been going through my whole life.
And then all of the anger I had went away. There’s nothing I could do to change it. And being angry with him, being angry with myself, wasn’t going to make it any better. I totally forgive him, because if I don’t forgive him, then he’s still holding that power over me that he had when I was a little kid. I don’t want to be a victim anymore, so I’m not.
When I was 23, I was with my boyfriend and he raped me.
You put so much trust into someone, sticking it out through the hard times together, and he took it all away. He wanted what he wanted, so he took it. I didn’t know what to do - kept saying no, kept asking him to stop. He didn’t.
After it happened, I was really messed up for a while. I didn’t talk for like two or three days, I didn’t speak a word to anyone. I quit eating; I lost 80 pounds. We dated for five years, and I thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I still love him, I’m still in love with him, can’t be with him.
I’ve been clinging to a lot of the little things that make me happy, and things are already getting better. I don’t wake up everyday and wish I didn’t wake up, you know? I can wake up and actually be happy.
Everybody deserves to mourn what they’ve lost when this happens to them, but don’t give up. If you give up hope, then you’re letting that person have power over you longer. What they’ve done to you, you’re never going to just forget about it.
But you have to have hope that things will get better, and you have to try to make them get better. If you give up, they win. And you really don’t mean anything, if you don’t think you mean anything.
