Salt and Peper

I've been sexually assaulted three times in my life.

I use this term more broadly then most people would.

Each time I didn't think it was at the time, I just knew after the fact, that I didn't like it and felt ashamed of myself.

Most of the shame comes from me thinking myself a coward. My envisioning of myself is often as a strong woman. Most of my female characters are fiercely independent one way or another.

The first time it was something minor. Something sprung on me, and I didn't care for it, but it last only a second and after I said that I didn't like it and it was never done again.

The other two times time were related. I was heavily intoxicated on both occasions. What I was after was companion ship. After months and months of feeling rejected and abandoned, and largely isolated from men, I craved the attention, something to make me feel a little more human. But the person I sought comfort with wanted something else. Whether or not he was too drunk to realize it, putting his hand over my mouth as I drunkenly tried to protest was something I'm not comfortable with. Something that still lingers when I recall that instance.

It lingers when I saw him there after with other women.

There was an ignorance afterwards, and it was because of the shame brought about him. The shame of being a notch on the belt. The shame of having succumbed. The shame of being thought weak, when I was only reaching out in the wrong way.

I thought laying with him was taking the choices of my body into my own hands and in a way it was, for I chose to lie next to him and be associated with him.

No one should be shamed for their choices. What I didn't get to choose should not be my shame, but his.

Emotionally, I didn't know what was happening and afterwards, I really came to realize who I wanted to be as a person and how much making a stand for what I truly wanted, and hiding behind farces was not going to make me happy. It was going to make me quiet and ashamed of the person that I was, rather than proud. I am proud of what I did after, of how I it made me change my decisions afterwards what I wanted in life.

There is a sad a bitter silence I've noticed about this topic. Women unsure, startled by what has happened and feeling ashamed they let it happen to themselves when it shouldn't have happened. When we go into the arms of another human, we seek and desire comfort and trust. If its taken from us, then we should hold no shame for what someone else has done to us. We should be proud, always.

I've only ever spoken once to one other person about all this, properly and more than this piece lets on.