#metooAND. My story.

Here is a tough one. I have a lot of anxiety about sharing this, but I’ve been I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time. A REALLY long time.

Maybe I’m writing this today because I had a really bad week. Bad-bad. Not like dying-of-ca

ncer bad. But more like, friend’s-child-died-of-typhoid, one-work-fiasco-after-another, selling-childhood-house-full-of-memories, crying-multiple-times, listening-to-weakerthans-on-repeat bad. That kind of bad. Not serious bad, but more like cumulatively bad. (But what is this, the grief Olympics??)

I know I’m late to the #metoo story. It took me some time. But here’s the story—my story.

#metoo.

Like 1 in 4 American women, I was raped. More than once.

There, I said it.

And by “raped”, I do mean raped. As in, forced to have sexual intercourse against my will. And you’re probably wondering who, or when, or how, or what were the mediating factors. Was it someone I knew? Was there alcohol involved? How did it happen? And the ever important question, did I say no? Did I say no enough?

But this story isn’t about the act or the details. It’s about saying it. And why I didn’t, for so long. Even in an era where EVERYONE was speaking up and telling their stories on social media, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it now for the same reasons I couldn’t bring myself to do it years ago. The questions reverberating in my mind—

Is my experience “bad enough” to be real?

Will I be put on trial for my experience and judged based on whether it is valid enough for me to say my words and feel my feelings?

Is this really necessary?

Why are you being so dramatic?

Do you really want your parents/grandparents/siblings/boss/coworkers/friends being able to know about this?

Nope. Not really, actually.

I don’t want everyone knowing about it. But when I asked myself why I didn’t want everyone knowing about it, deep down, the answer was, because I don’t want them to judge me. I don’t want them to think I’m “too dramatic”. That I’m “weak”. That I’m “jumping on the bandwagon”. That I’m “damaged”. That I am “overreacting” and that my experience “wasn’t really that bad”.

And that’s the problem.

Because we can say #metoo, but we can’t say #metooAND.

#metoo AND I’m survivor. #metoo AND I’m not a victim. #metoo AND I’m an advocate. #metoo AND I am whole.  #metoo AND I am not ashamed. #metoo AND I forgive you, or  #metoo AND I’m still pissed as hell. #metoo AND I’m confused in all this noise.

I thought about, for years, whether or not it was worth saying it aloud or on paper to you, my 12 loyal readers (ha). But recently I just kept hearing these quotes on radio and podcasts and social media that brought me to my knees. Sometimes literally. A year ago I heard a caller to the podcast ReplyAll talking about her own sexual assault and it just killed me because it was so close to home. She was talking about whether or not she should tell her partner about this part of her past, after all these years:

“Because then he knows stuff that I don’t really want to tell him. I think that if what I had to say about what had happened to me was like, “There was a dark alley and a stranger,” I would have said that 10 years ago. But that’s not what I have to say. What I have to say is, like, a nice person… who is a nice person that everyone liked, blah blah blah, like did these things that… you know, in retrospect, were bad.”

And then she TRAILS OFF.

Why is it so hard to put it into words, this thing that we face as women? (or people. Note that sexual assault can happen to anyone regardless of gender.) And why is it so hard for us to claim it when it wasn’t a dark alley and a stranger?

Last week, This American Life had an amazing piece about this. And not just about sexual assault, but about the culture that creates it, and all the shades of gray. And the way that we talk about it, and how words are just. So. Potent.

In this passage, the host is interviewing a girl, who was raped as a teenager. And her friends were also raped. And they all struggled with how to describe it:

“Kristen noticed her friends doing the same thing, describing their experiences with boys in different tones, in different arrangements. And then there was the friend who wouldn’t say anything about it at all, except she was upset and didn’t want to talk about it. …

Kristen: All those times when we were mad at those boys because of what they did to us. We were mad because they raped us, you know. And there was like, several of my friends where it took us a really long while to put the word to it.  …Like they [the boys] were playing a game to see what they can get away with, that’s what I kind of realized from it, the way a guy is going to screw you over most likely isn’t going to be he’s going to rape you in an alley. It’s going to be something that people might doubt. And it’s not going to look like the worst examples of things or the most clear cut. And it’s intentional, and that’s why it’s scary… actually, I think maybe they don’t believe that what they did was wrong, because it doesn’t look like what they consider rape.”

And that’s the whole thing. No one is allowed to say they were raped unless they were “capital R” raped. It takes women and girls years to say this. And I feel like after all this time, not much has changed. (Side note, I have A LOT of feels about this concept of what is sexual assault, abuse, harassment and general uncomfy-ness. And frankly it makes be ENRAGED that we’re still in this place where the reporter is the one whose “on trial” about whether their experience was real, valid, and worth responding to. But that’s a separate post.) Because even now, when someone posts a #metoo story, EVERYONE including women, including victims, (including me, I confess–) are really quick to judge—

Does this count as Rape?

Who is the “villain” and who is the “victim”?

Let’s figure that out real quick so we can black-and-white this shit and box it up and feel better about ourselves. Where is the line and who is responsible? Then we can all shake our heads in contempt and go on with our days feeling better because we are more aware about “social issues”. But we don’t really hear the real story. (Don’t get me wrong, I 1000% believe perpetrators should be held responsible. That is SO important.)

That’s why Five Women really spoke to me. It wasn’t about the act or the reporting of it or the news coverage. It was about lives. People. And who they were before and after. And why it took so damn long for everyone to call it what it was. Their stories, and realizing that their story is not everyone’s story. And there should be no “right” or “wrong” to how we tell our stories.

So here’s the truth. Not THE truth, but my truth.

I was raped by two different people, one man and one woman. I loved them both. Neither one truly remembered the event, for different reasons. One acknowledged the situation and was willing to have an open dialogue about it, and one denied my experience and told me I was making it up. Other people told me I was “overreacting”. Some people didn’t know what to say at all.

And then I got silent.

I got more than most—many women don’t ever acknowledge or confront the people who hurt them. Both times, it destroyed me. I still feel the effects to this day. My relationships, my self-worth and confidence, my job, my heart. Never a moment without second-guessing my decisions, my responsibility. (I did get a lot of healing and recovery through therapy, hard work, and loving relationships. But don’t think for a second that it very “goes away”.)

I forgave one easily, harder with the other. I never saw them as Rapists, I saw them as humans. We are all “victims” and “aggressors” in our own way. We all lived on, impacted by this in ways seen and unseen, acknowledged and unacknowledged.

No one of us less valid than another.

#metooAND #beyondblackandwhite #grittyisgraceful

**Note: if you want to learn more, do more, and expand the conversation, I encourage you to visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (https://www.nsvrc.org/). They have a wide range of valuable resources, useful and accurate information, and research-based programs to prevent sexual violence in all forms.