Yes. You read that right.
That was a questionable part of my life. It was eight years ago. According to a lot of people I should have already got over it.
You never get over something like this.
Let me start you from the beginning.
About eight years ago a friend of mine introduced me to someone who was tall, dark, and handsome. He was an ex-marine and charismatic, seemed to dote on me in the first night, and paid full attention to me. At this time, my life was full of "am I pretty enoughs." This was a big deal to me. Here is this guy who all the girls keep looking at, clad in his leather jacket, only looking at me.
A lot of drinks were had that night, I even went home with him that night. I am not ashamed of my past decisions in life, while some of them may have been stupid, they were my decisions to make.
We started dating at that point. If it's what you call dating. Our outings involved a bar and back to his place or mine. But as far as I was concerned it was perfectly what I wanted at that time. He still made me feel special.
About two weeks in is when I started seeing little things change, but I pushed them out of my mind. He made me feel pretty and that was all I cared about at that time, someone to take away the issues I had with myself, and he seemed to do that, even if it was just with physical contact. Sometimes that's just what we need.
I remember the night vividly.
You don't just forget something like that, I wish it was as simple as some people make it sound. BLINK and POOF it's gone. If only. We had all been hanging out all day, a big group of us, and I called the guy I was dating to come get me. I had been drinking all day, it was summer and I didn't have to work so we had fun at the lake. The guy came and got me, and much against the pleading of my friends I went. In retrospect, they obviously saw something I was making myself blind to. We all met up at our favorite bar until bar close and once again I left with him, and once again against the advice of my friends. Ladies, you should listen to your friends, they really do have your best interest in mind when it comes to guys.
His room was in the basement of the house.
We automatically went downstairs and I just wanted to sleep. It was dark, I was sunburned, water logged, and drunk. At the time, my mind was really fuzzy, but I still remember everything vividly. It all happened pretty fast. I told him no over and over multiple times. At that point I rolled over and put my back to him.
I would have never expected him to do what he did next or I would have left.
He forced me to roll back over and climbed on top of me, his forearm came down on my throat and his other hand started pulling down my pants, or trying to. I was kicking and crying and smacking at him as much as I could, screaming as much as I could. His roommate came down at that point and asked us to stop yelling and fighting because he had to work the next morning, so the guy's hand went over my mouth. At this point either a fist or knee or foot connected with something, or he realized what he was doing because he shoved off of me and screamed at me to get out. I ran up the stairs in hysteria and called my friends who wouldn't even let me speak before they beat down his door and put him in the hospital. While I understand some may not be okay with that outcome, suggesting that I should have called the police, I was terrified. I did not know what to do
During the fight, he stabbed one of my friends in the back with a butter knife, and while he was fairly cut up, they were shallow cuts. We sped off at that point, me curled up in a ball in my friends lap hyperventilating and her trying to calm me down by playing with my hair and my other guy friend holding my hand while bleeding everywhere. It was a truly terrifying experience.
I get it, I know what you are thinking.
At first I did not call the cops. I called my dad, my father, who pretty much told me that it sucked it happened and that was the end of it. I explained the situation to the friend who introduced me and her words were, "yeah, he got violent with me once. He has PTSD." I told my roommate who shook her head but offered no support. The three friends who were my escape that night even barely believed me. It has taken a long time for me to piece together why. I was dating him, I was drunk, and he has PTSD. Apparently all three of those things excused his behavior.
Everyone was missing the big picture.
I said no. Plain and simple. I never deterred from that "no." I never said, "Oh okay. Fine." I never gave in. And he still tried to do it anyway. That. Is. Not. Okay. To this day, no one fully believes me, and no one, woman or man, man or woman, should have to fight with getting someone to believe them that they were raped. Or that someone attempted rape, while assaulting them.
What happened next is crazy. We knew that while my friends were trying to get me, they shouldn't have attacked him like they did. His roommate did nothing but watched it happen. We were scared to call anyone. We saw him try to break into my friends' neighbors house, and we do not know what he had, gun, knife, what. About a week later I called the police. I could not handle it anymore. The detective assigned to the case had already actually spoke to someone, my friend who had been stabbed with the butter knife, apparently the guy that assaulted me had been put in the hospital two days later with a concussion and broken ribs caused by my friends. He had so much rage that he didn't even notice how hurt he was. The detective never called me back. The case had been dropped because when they asked the guy's roommate to testify, his roommate refused by simply saying, "he deserved it."
Eight years later this still effects me.
My marriage is effected by this man's assault on me. My husband believes every word, but others never did. I stopped trying to find help because all my friends looked at me like I was crazy, and because I couldn't afford a therapist. My family thought I was just looking for attention. When you have no where to go for help, you lock it away. Thanks to this site, I have a way to let it out. I haven't talked about it in awhile, it's a scary thing to relive, but I feel better just by getting it off my chest.
In closing...
If you are someone who has experienced something like this or worse, please immediately reach out to your police department, please remember no matter if you are dating them or not, no means no, and if one person won't believe you, move on to the next. We have to stand up and say what happened to us is not right.