"Write your story..." the blank box I'm supposed to be typing in keeps prompting me...but first one must fight through the tears and emotion.
I've been staring at the blinking cursor for several minutes trying to hold back the tears I feel swelling in my eyes again. Ugh, I feel absolutely ridiculous. It's been this way for the past couple of weeks now...which is why I'm going to write it down and hopefully leave it here, out of my head, for good.
A million lifetimes ago buried by life and happiness but now it pops into head randomly and my eyes start to burn....from anger, pain, sadness, frustration or...I don't even know why. I just know that I can stop it sometimes and other times it takes me several minutes to heavily cry it out before I can move on. Uck, it's ridiculous really...smh.
ETA warning: This is just cathardic self therapy below. A way to sort and analyze where my feelings were coming from. In the end I think I figured out the root of my new found angst and pain & once a problem is identified it's a lot easier to work through and fix.
While it took me a couple of days for me to sit down, pause for days and then come back again, I finally feel the release I was looking for in writing this out. A part of it is just to tell it, even if to an empty audience. They always ask why didn't you tell it before now....Because to tell it is to give life to those memories when you only want to forget them. The less you remember, the better. And to tell it is to point out yourself as well and the only thing you want to do after is to run and hide from it....even now so many years later. Leaving it here seems a compromise to me; I can tell it and still stay mostly hidden.
My story....
It's two stories that make up the same one. Really not that different or exciting from others I don't think. So much so that maybe that's why it hit me so hard for me to hear someone else tell theirs. Hmmm...I'll ponder that more in a bit.
It started when I watched Ford testify about what she says Kavanaugh did to her at a teenage summer party 3 decades ago. I believe her 100%. Nothing political for me, I just know that she knew exactly what happened that night and by whom and her memories, the way she told them, it made sense to me as if it was my memory. I understood how she could be so sure 30+ years later and some basic parts of the night could be foggy at best.
Let's start with my second story. It's the one that is most present in my mind most lately.
I was 17 years old and at the end of that November I met a guy, Randy.
Randy was a little older (21/22ish), dark haired and the hottest guy I'd ever seen at the time. He had a cool jeep he loved and we met while "cruising" the main boulevard in my little town. I was a shyer good girl who had never had a teen "romance" beyond a couple of kisses earlier that year so I was beyond clueless and scared when it came to guys. I couldn't believe someone like Randy (older, cute and cool) liked me. We met up a couple times in between him going home for the holidays a few times in the neighboring state he was from and he also invited me to his New Year's Eve party at his house. He had a roommate that was his good friend from "back home". I'm can't remember his name now since it's been so so long ago but I think it was Justin. I'm bad with names in general but I'm pretty sure if you told me a list of his friend's names it would come back to me as soon as you said it. I'm going to call him Justin here though.
New Year's Eve came and Randy picked me up and took me to his house that evening. I had been drunk only a couple of times before (last time didn't end well for me as you'll read later) and I can only remember smoking marijuana once before that, but most all of my friends smoked and I was around it and always said no when offered. I had no problem saying no to it and my friends knew I was more of a good girl and didn't pressure me at all.
I didn't like beer at all....still hate it to this day and can't even sip it - ick.... and I was nursing my mixed drink and hanging low. After a bit I lost track of Randy until a little bit later I saw him in the kitchen with his arm around another girl and obviously hitting on her. I was in the living room with some other people just talking and chilling and when I saw him we locked eyes for a long moment as I tried to process what was happening and he seemed to be waiting to see if I was gong to flip out psychotically, run from the room or some other silly teen girl move.
A memory jumped back to me of meeting a girl in a make shift "parking lot" at a desert bonfire party which was common for us high school teenagers in a boring sleepy country town (my dad had partied the same spots when he was my age) a week or so after I had met Randy. I don't know how she knew who I was as I had only lived there since summer and I didn't recognize her. She asked if I was (my name) and dating Randy now. I told her yes. She was calm and a bit solemn as she said something along the lines of she had been "the girl" prior to me and to be careful. At the time I took her to be a recent ex-girlfriend that was sad she wasn't with him anymore.
So in the moment of our locked eyes & that memory flashing through my head I came to the conclusion that she had been warning me of him being a player and played it cool so he didn't see how much I was hurting....looking back now I don't think that was what she meant.
By then another person had joined and was offering me a joint so while Randy watched me waiting for my reaction I casually looked away and took a hit. In an attempt to block the hurt I was feeling I finished my drink and smoked quite a bit while talking with people that were joining and leaving the smoking circle that happening in the living room.
A little while later I had gone into the kitchen for something to drink as my mouth was dry and after I had come back out to the living room a few moments later, Randy's roommate, Justin, followed me out. I don't recall his exact words but he was trying to get me to go downstairs with him and I wasn't going but instead about to sit back down. I remember that he was happy and laughing like in a joking manner as he picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and started to take me downstairs. I'm telling him "no", "stop it" and "to put me down". I'm trying to wiggle out of his hold on me but I'm pretty high and had finished my drink as well at this point and I'm not effective at all at getting down. I can barely move. At first I think he's just screwing with me but when we got half way down the stairs where it hairpins I started to get scared.
Randy watched it all from the other side of the room
There are at least a dozen people around us - guys and girls - and most are watching. Justin says something to his friends in the kitchen, laughing and carries me downstairs into the bedroom he and Randy shared and lays me on his twin sized bed. I'm still telling him to stop but I'm weak and I can't even get up. There's another guy and girl I don't know having sex on Randy's bed.
He pulls my pants and underwear off and tosses them on the floor next to his bed. He's telling me I'll like it as I'm saying "stop" and "no". There was never a mixed message or flirting or any interest shown to him ever. I was very much stuck on Randy 110%. I said no, stop, don't, put me down, I don't want too, let me go many times. He wasn't mean or threatening to me. He starts to go down on me (which I had never had done to me before). I'm still trying to move away although any effort to move away he easily stops. I can barely move my limbs and I just keep telling him to stop and let me go although the words are heavy and meek coming out of my mouth. The other couple might've left by this point...I don't really recall them anymore by this time.
Justin sits up a bit, he was undoing his pants maybe bcz I remember thinking that this was it, I had to get out of there somehow and I use all of my effort and concentration to roll off to the floor to grab my pants. I'm down on the floor grabbing for my pants when he comes off the bed too. He's behind me and pushing me down more trying to get on top of me from behind.
The door opens.
A guy come in and says something to the effect of "Can I be next?" He stands just inside the doorway. During these few moments as the guys chuckle I grab my underwear/pants and Justin doesn't stop me from putting them on and getting up to stumble out the door.
I'm crying and sit down outside on a curb or something low in a garage I think. Details like what I was sitting on and where are foggy. Randy was my ride and this was way before Uber. I didn't even know where I was at as I didn't drive yet and didn't really know my way around outside of the main area of town. I was 17 and had no money for a cab. My Dad's wife wouldn't have let my Dad come get me even if I had known where he was or how to reach him. I tried calling my BFF at the time but it was NYE and I got her voicemail. Another girl came and sat by me and asked what was wrong and I told her the basic of what happened and she was trying to be nice but told me that was just how they were and at least Justin would go down you first so we weren't dry (aka painful) when he did it.
I worked in a dog groomers/boarding and I was the one scheduled to go into work on New Years Day to feed and take care of the dogs that were in the kennels at 6am. Randy and a couple of his friends had to drop me off in the morning and they did. I rode shotgun in his beloved jeep just wanting to flee from them as fast as I could but sitting silently until we arrived.
My BFF and another good friend got there shortly after me to console me for hours. It never entered our heads to call the cops. I was at my boyfriend's house with most of us underage drinking and smoking pot. I didn't want anyone to know as I didn't want anyone to know an he didn't stop me from leaving at the end.
A few months after that my BFF met Randy at a party she was at and all 5 feet/100 pounds of her ran up to him and started cussing him out for allowing what happened to me to happen.
Later that summer she got pregnant losing her virginity to Randy.
You see. As I write this out, I think that's what I think has me upset now. This was so common to us young girls that we accepted it as normal. I wasn't overly traumatized my whole life bcz I didn't see it as anything other than normal. I thought, "It happens to all of us young girls at some point"...but a lot of times it happens more than once. At 17 this had been the second time for me.
Here's the first story that makes up the rest of this one same story.
The first time I got drunk - not tipsy on sipping on a glass of wine with my BFF that we stole from her mom's party but actual black out drunk - I had been drinking with friends and I had my first shots of tequila.
I was just straight out blasted and had no idea what I was doing at this party.
I decided to be dropped off at my close friend's house. She was at her boyfriend's house (her parents only had one rule in their house - don't get pregnant) but I had talked to her brother and he knew I coming over bcz I obviously couldn't go home in my current state.
I remember "Brother" coming outside to meet the car I was in. The guy dropping me off was a nice guy that I actually liked but felt I had screwed it up by being so stupid drunk. He asked me if I wanted to stay at his house so I would be safe and that he wouldn't touch me but would take me home in the morning when I wanted.
I should've stayed with him but I didn't know him very well and thought my friend would get home in the early morning and I would just rather crash there.
I don't know why I wasn't in my friend's room but the next thing I remember was him telling me to pull up my shorts early the next morning.
My friend called and said come over to her boyfriend's house so Brother & I walked a block or two over with Brother and she & I ended up leaving shortly after.
The next day she told me her brother had told her boyfriend that we had had sex. I told her he was lying. It wasn't until then that I knew for sure he had raped me...No, that's not really accurate as I knew I had had to put my shorts back on...I guess it wasn't until then that I had my layer of denial ripped away for good as I had to admit to myself what must've happened.
I don't remember him on me or touching me at all so it's almost as if it didn't happen, except I'll always know it did. It's an embarrassment I'll always feel. I know that a counselor would say it's not my fault and I shouldn't be embarrassed but despite knowing that, I still feel it. I shouldn't have trusted. I should've known that "boys will be boys". But I trusted my surroundings and trusted when I should've stayed alert and I was there wasted with him and staying the night in his house....It just never entered my head that someone I knew would do that to me.
I learned my lessons and was always took precautions after that. I try to make sure I'm always with at least one person I trust if out and am very aware and cautious of how much I drink. I also don't accept drinks from people I don't trust Having lived in the Los Angeles area for several years I've seen many girls learn the hard way too there too. It's normal in little town or big city. The girls still hang in the same crowd with their "friend" that had their way with them while passed out or unable to fight back. They cry with their friends and are mad for a bit but that's about it.
That's what I'm angry about I realize. How normal it is. How no girl thinks to report it or even thinks of it as a crime. How the guys don't think of it as a crime either and will just let it happen knowingly. An impoliteness seems to be how we all think of and treat it.