Finally I told my psychiatrist, and she called it rape. When I admitted that to myself, I flipped out. I was a mess.
And then I had another incident, and this was the worst of all. Afterward I thought, “What is it with me? This doesn’t happen three times. This is absurd.”
I had flashbacks and anxiety and I went from never drinking to drinking a lot. It was really rough and that forced me to have compassion for myself: “I can’t keep doing this.”
A month later, there was publicity about a sexual assault case involving some football players. I followed it intensely. Watching that trial, I started to feel. I felt passionate about making a difference. And one day I just decided to call the district attorney’s office and see if they had any internship opportunities. Now I’m a victim witness intern. It’s really cool. I’m trying to raise awareness and to advocate. I can make a difference in people’s lives. My goal is to work on criminal sexual assault cases. I’m still very hard on myself, but definitely on the upswing.
I’ve come so far since my freshman year, when I started binge-watching Law & Order: SVU. It was one specific episode, “True Believers,” that really flipped a switch for me.
* * *
“Healing begins when someone bears witness. I saw you. I believe you.”
* * *
After a grueling trial and subsequent “not guilty” verdict, a young survivor lashes out at Olivia Benson. As the girl turns to leave, Benson grabs her shoulders, looks her in the eye, and exclaims, “Sending him to prison isn’t gonna heal you. Healing begins when someone bears witness. I saw you. I believe you.”
When I watched this scene I broke down. In one line, Olivia Benson shattered the self-blame and uncertainty I had endured for years. In that moment, I could finally show myself compassion. It was like Olivia Benson was speaking directly to me, and for the first time I didn’t feel alone.
Olivia Benson is much more than a TV character—she’s a support system and role model. I can count on her.
The After
SARI RACHEL FORSHNER
It used to feel like there was horror
in my DNA.
I tried changing the color of my hair;
I dyed it repeatedly, almost to the point
of destruction. I became a redhead,
but the roots still grew in raped.
Never again will I be that bright little person from the before, poised
on the brink of my life, poised
without the knowledge
of how horrible the world can truly be;
I am so sorry, darling, but we cannot
unknow what we know.
Recovery is not
waking up in the morning
and everything is back to normal,
but recovery exists.
It is waking up one morning,
and your roots are just roots, so you go to CVS
to pick out a completely different color, just because.
It is waking up one morning and your body is not
a reminder, is not
repulsive, is not
broken—
it’s just sleepy. It just wants you
to press “Snooze” one more time before class.
Recovery is having rape remain
only at the back of your mind, instead
of in all of it.
I cannot promise you
that it all goes away,
that you will never
be afraid to go to Trader Joe’s alone
ever again. I won’t lie to you.
I cannot promise you that the sex you have will only be easy
and fun, that you will never need
to stop in the middle because
you can’t breathe, because you need to go
cry in the bathroom, again, because you
are supposed to be young
and adventurous, but everything
still scares you, sometimes.
I can promise you only this: change.
I can promise you progress.
I can promise you that
it is possible to look in the mirror
and really stop blaming yourself, someday.
It is possible to stop
thinking that you are shattered beyond repair,
or not worth loving, anymore.
It is possible to begin to smile
in such a way that it reaches your eyes again,
in such a way that you are not always lying
when someone asks how you are (curse that question!)
and you say, “Good, and you?”
It is possible to find someone who
does not mind any of it, who knows that none of that
is who you are, it is only
what happened to you.
One day, someone will ask, first,
if they can put their arms around you when you’re sobbing.
They will look you in the eye, with understanding, and say
“How can I help?”
To them, you are a whole person who happens to be
in pain, who is not pain itself, who is not contagious,
and you will shake your head and answer “Oh, oh, sweetheart—
you already have.”
I must begin in the darkness
so as to show how light
the light is, to understand how far
from the beginning the now is.
I must pause in the middle of the race—
not to reflect on the fact
that the finish line is still too far away
for comfort, but to turn back and realize
that I also have to squint
to see where I began.
I must start with loss; I must mourn the girl-child
whose ignorance really was bliss, then the woman
with head trauma, heart trauma, trauma of the soul,
so that I can show you that no matter how obscure the night is—
no matter the depths of depression or the heights of panic—
it is still possible for there to be a morning, someday,
when you celebrate the person you have become.
When you stop trying so damn hard to imitate who you used to be,
because you’re starting, ever so slowly,
to prefer who you are.
Slowly,
You Start Forgetting
ANONYMOUS V
Slowly, you start forgetting. Then one day you realize you haven’t been thinking about the assault all day. Then one week you can’t remember the exact date of your hearing or an appeal or the way a letter from a dean was worded. You start to forget, and you feel a bit guilty. If you’re forgetting, maybe it wasn’t as traumatic as you said it was. Shouldn’t this be burned into your memory? Then you start to feel lighter. It is nice to not have these images readily available 24/7. It is nice to go back to daydreaming or to more recent memories. Then you feel a bit hopeful, like here is a new beginning.
Then you feel unsure. What is the new beginning? That’s where I am now. I had my life before this assault. I had my life after the assault. Now I think I’m in my life “after the after.” I’m again in a new territory where I’m no longer measuring things in firsts (first time I’ve had sex since the rape; first time I’ve gone back to school since the rape) or thinking in terms of “before that night” and “after that night.” So I’m trying to navigate this new territory now and figure out who I am, as someone who has integrated “rape survivor” into her person but is no longer consumed by it. It’s a little bit frightening, honestly, after this singular event having defined so much of my values, thoughts, and even activism and aspirations over the past almost two years. But it is also freeing.
ƒ(Survival)
A FUNCTION OF SURVIVAL
ADITI
When I was thirteen, I strove for invisibility. I struggled with my weight, my hair, and my lack of belonging. I had few friends in a school where I was the one angry
brown girl. The popular (read: white) girls never missed a chance to tell me I wasn’t worthy of sharing this world with them. I reached out to my family and was met with silence. I learned to keep my pain, ideations, and everything else hidden, and to assimilate. I planned my life to protect myself.
I was assaulted during my first year at college. My best friend, S, was at the party and gently comforted me while I blankly sat in the backseat of the car afterward, speaking only to mumble an apology to the driver, whose room had been the setting for my assault. S let me stay with her and sat with me that night when I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t cry.
• I didn’t black out. Will they think I consented if I wasn’t wasted?
• He cornered me in the bathroom. Will they say I could have gotten away?
• It wasn’t that violent. Will people think it’s assault if I’m not physically scarred?
• I tried to joke and stop it, but he didn’t care. Will they think I tried hard enough?
• I got away the second he was distracted. Will they still blame me?
My healing was analytical; I proceeded in the most efficient manner, as I had with the other pain in my life. Going home for the summer, I pretended everything was okay so as not to alarm my progressive, but still very Indian, parents.
Life in an immigrant family is complicated. You learn to celebrate the highs and lows as more than your own individual achievements and failures. You become the culmination of everything your family sacrificed in order to provide you with this life. Email chains about your successes are sent to family members far and wide, so that everyone knows you (and by extension they) are one step closer to the ever elusive American dream. My mother constantly tells people that when she grows up, she wants to be just like me. It is utterly sweet, stressful, and heartbreaking all at once.
* * *
Life in an immigrant family is complicated.… You become the culmination of everything your family sacrificed.
* * *
While home, I became reclusive. I dissociated when I was alone, told my family that first year was okay but “I wish I could have changed some things,” and counted down the days until school started.
During second year, my assailant lived one floor above us in the dorm. He was in clear sight. He would lean over the railing outside his suite and taunt me with a wave, as if to remind me I was still within reach. S and I made up names like “Sharkboy” so that I wouldn’t have to say his name and so she would know he was near. We would laugh about it, and through that laughter and quiet normalization I began to heal.
But soon after school started, I entered into an abusive relationship. It was as if the world were playing a cruel joke. I so deeply craved a safe male relationship that I ignored the little ways he was trying to control me by denigrating my analytical tendencies. He made me feel I was so undeserving that I wasn’t even worth breaking up with; he just disappeared. Everything I had ever relied on to persevere was destroyed in the span of a few months. To this day what he did still affects my psychological and physical behavior with partners.
Fearing his retaliation, I spoke only to S and one other close confidant, M, while we were together. After the relationship, I involved myself in every kind of activism that wouldn’t compel me to personally share. I managed to hide from my emotions because there was always an exam, a rally, an experiment … anything could distract me from myself. Everything was okay; I was fine.
Despite everything, I still couldn’t reach out at home. It’s not that my parents aren’t people you can talk to; my mother is incredible. She has lived through every individual, career, and familial trauma I can imagine, yet she is still warm, self-sacrificial, and an absolute badass. She is one of the strongest people I know, and I’ve always tried to emulate her. She carries our jumbled mess of a family on her back and keeps moving forward.
But my mother also hides. She speaks about her experiences as if she’s recounting a particularly compelling memoir; as if these aren’t pains she’s struggled through, as if they don’t still affect her. We are more alike than I am willing to admit. Almost every one of my friends has a close relationship with my mother. They go to her for advice, and they openly talk to her about their lives. Almost everyone has a close relationship with my mother, except for me. Maybe I’m still holding on to my teenage grudge of not being heard. Maybe she’s reaching out, and I’m too blind to see.
I still relied on M and S for my peace of mind, but at the end of fall semester, in less than twenty-four hours, M died of a bacterial infection. I wasn’t just mourning my friend, but one of my only confidants. Our relationship was well known, and people reached out to check in on me. For the first time I experienced pain not just within myself, but throughout a community; the pain was sharp, but it was good.
I became obsessed with using art to work through my grief. I painted, did woodwork, and made jewelry to surround myself with memories of M. I ornamented my body with reminders of my trauma, wearing my pain for the world to see. I allowed people to see the pain I had trained my whole life to hide; it was a freedom I had never felt before.
It took until after college for me to come out unapologetically and feel safe calling myself a survivor. I slipped my survivorhood into conversations where I thought it relevant, or simply told the friends I felt should know. Being open about my experiences was and still is the biggest risk I take; but it has also been a way to normalize, to take comfort in shared histories, and to heal. More people than ever know I’m a survivor, and not because I need them to be my saviors, but because the trauma of hiding my experiences was unbearable.
I’ve finally found a community of trauma survivors, radical Asians, queer folks, and southern activists who are the family I’m my true self around. My new chosen family supplements and complements my biological family in every way. They not only know my truth but also understand my responses. They’re a family that calls me out on minimizing my experiences, because they’re dealing with similar struggles.
* * *
For a long time, I thought my own pain wasn’t legitimate because I know survivors who have dealt with so much worse. I wasn’t left for dead … it wasn’t that violent.
* * *
For a long time, I thought my own pain wasn’t legitimate because I know survivors who have dealt with so much worse. I wasn’t left for dead; I wasn’t abused long-term by my primary caretaker; it wasn’t that violent—I even thought my story boring. My assault, like so many, just didn’t fit our societal narrative of survivorhood. We live in a world where the only media representation of survivors is that they’re perfect (usually white) young women who are violently assaulted by strangers. While recounting their story, they always cry just enough for sympathy but not enough to make you uncomfortable, and it’s always at the perfect time. It’s either that, or they’re absent, and endless droves of talking heads discuss them in the abstract, as if they’re not in the room. But what about the survivors who are in between; who aren’t included in the publicized narratives? Where is our space to share, cry, joke, and live?
I never understand why we don’t treat survivorhood like we treat grief. Grief is something traumatic that happens to you, and that you always carry. But grief is only a part of you; it does not define you as a person. My assault was terrible, and I’m different because of it, but it in no way defines my personhood. It’s important that people know I’m a survivor, but I don’t want it to be the first thing they describe about me. I want to be called driven, goofy, a science geek, unapologetically political, a caring friend, confidante, and mentor. Those are things that describe who I am; being a survivor, like the death of a loved one, is something that adds complexity to my lived experience.
* * *
I never understand why we don’t treat survivorhood like we treat grief. Grief is something traumatic that happens to you.… But grief is only a part of you; it does not define you as a person.
* * *
For so long
I squirreled away my pain, feverishly putting back together who I thought I was before my assault. When people said they didn’t know any survivors, I never spoke up. I just cried out, in the smallest voice, “But you know me.”
Now, I do activism around Asian identities, science literacy, and survivorhood/Title IX, making sure to empower myself to enter spaces and speak my truth. I’ve found the power in my voice that I avoided for so long because it “othered” me.
Living openly hasn’t been easy, and many of my romantic relationships fall apart when I come forward. I’ve done this so many times that I’ve perfected when I’m going to tell them and exactly what I’m going to say:
I have to tell you something important. I’m a survivor of sexual assault and relationship abuse. You can ask as few or as many questions as you want. I won’t judge you if you don’t ask any questions, but I felt like you needed to know this much at least to understand why I sometimes act the way I do.
No matter what I do, many disappear like my ex. Every single time I tell someone and they vanish, I question whether or not I’m doing the right thing. I question whether or not I am broken, and I fervently fight the temptation to hide. With time, I have learned to catch myself or let myself be caught when I spiral, knowing that the person who deserves to be with me will see me as more than my past traumas. I stand in resolute defiance, refusing to censor my experiences because these men are not strong enough to see me as anything less than perfect.
I will never be fully healed, but I am so much greater than the sum of my traumas. I am endlessly more interesting than a few select experiences, but thanks to my chosen family, I will never again hide my truth. Now, when people claim not to know any survivors, I demand to be counted because the idea that a survivor can’t be successful, funny, complete—anything but utterly defined by their assault—is infuriating.
We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out Page 17