Alice’s Story: Shouldn’t have had so much to Drink

Know this happened at the Pennsylvania State University, at the frat DKE. I was 18 years old.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Nail biting.

A nasty nervous habit I have had since I can remember.

I guess you could say I am a nervous person.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A painful, melancholic buzz in my brain keeping me from soaping my body with my own hands in the shower.

Because I’m disgusted to the touch.

I’m disgusted to the touch of my own hands.

Because as I scrub from my left shoulder to my upper left ribcage, I feel his nasty hands reaching for what he considered was caressing of my breasts.

A melancholic buzz in charge of reminding me when I am finally free to shut my eyes at night that I need to shake, and tremble, and let small cries of panic escape my mouth. A mouth that was too small for the “no” that came out that night to matter, yet wasn’t small enough for him to keep kissing against my will. My fight or flight instincts come up to life, ordering me to escape from the possibility of undergoing another nerve wrecking nightmare again this night. Not today I hope to myself, but to be honest, the shakes and the nightmares have lasted so long that I have begun to wonder if this is what I truly wanted; to be wrecked.

A melancholic buzz that has made sure I remain caged in the disgusting filmography that haunts my long term memory: of being pinned down to a bed while a complete stranger strips me out of my curve hugging dress as I lay, coyly asking for mercy over and over again with every touch he insists on pressing down against my skin.

Over, and over again.

Over and over again until my unstill mind decides it’s better to slip out of consciousness, to not allow itself to witness further trauma.

Over and over again my body was pounded, like a drum at a carnival fest, with the same intensity one would apply to such drum during a performance: unnecessary force, consistency and determination, as you hear the drum scream out loud beats.

The only difference is that I was not a drum, and neither was my body.

I didn’t deserve to be woken up again, to a second painful beating of the drums of intercourse, without being told I was going to be an instrument.

A stiff, uncooperative, unhappy instrument, forced to perform a melody she did not know the rhythm to, since it was a complete stranger who was mastering the piece. A disgusting, filthy piece.

Filthy.

I was so drunk and high, and completely out of my mind, that even others at the party expressed their concern for me as he insisted it was okay for me to rest in his room while my friends had fun, as I didn’t want to be the reason why a fun night came to an end. I had had somewhere around 20 shots, which for a girl of my size, 5.4, 114 pounds, is a lot by itself, not mind the drink he served me although he saw how I stumbled: a drink which I failed to resist to, and a hit from some kind of bong or, pipe, or god knows what because I honestly can’t remember, which pretty much made me feel like a vegetable, as I crawled onto his bed, shaking off the strong statement of “please don’t kiss me” that I gave him when he tried to put his hands on me while I sat next to him on the couch. When I escaped his side, and layed curled up like a little ball of misery on his bed, head spinning, consciousness slipping away, he said it was okay, and put me to bed, I guess, as I vaguely remember being put to sleep at some point of the night.

And the next thing I knew, he was already on top of me, rocking his body against mine, taking my clothes off, taking his clothes off, as I laid flat. Not moving, not touching, evading his forceful kisses and asking him to please stop. And he didn’t stop. He didn’t care. His mind was already set, and he was going to do what he wanted to do. He didn’t give a quarter of a half of a care of how much damage it would cost me.

I didn’t deserve not to know what was happening, where I was, whether or not it was a dream, and not be able to escape due to fear of being kicked out of this dim place without a dress that I didn’t even recall removing from my hips.

No matter how many drinks I took, nor how many hits of whatever drug I couldn’t even recall consuming I took, I did not deserve any of this.

Nail biting.

I decided to quit it on my New Year’s Eve resolution of the entering year 2016, a festivity which took place before the accounts of what could be known as one of the very worst nights of my life.

Little did I know that on January 31st of the same year, my New Year’s Eve resolution wouldn’t matter anymore, because I would lose whatever sense of control of my nerves I thought I had when I couldn’t bring myself to go to the hospital the morning after to get a rape kit.

Little did I know that I would neglect the event until a month or so after it’s occurrence, just because I refused to believe that any of it ever happened to me, or that anyone but myself was responsible for the situation I had found myself in.

Or that the fuzzy pain and confusion would be so great that I would be wishing I could just be lying on my bathtub floor bleeding my life out, and hoping I could build up the strength to finally end my misery, every single day, for the next year and a half of my life.

I am only even able to write this today, because I take medication that sedates my sadistic mind enough to type these words, instead of eyeballing my drawers of pills so I can consume them to my death. And regardless, I am only writing this to evade falling asleep, and allowing my mind to go to that place that I never want to be in. That film full of grain and blurs and sadness and lack of control of my own body, as it is being domesticated, as my underwear is being taken off, as he hits the inside of my body with his genitals like I’m just some dead body lying on his bed.

The hardest part. I think, has been being able to get out of the shower.

I sit inside it, for hours, letting the water run and music to play loudly to muffle my desperate, endless hours of crying.

The crying always starts as I scrub from my left hand upwards to my shoulder, down to my axila, close to my breast. I do not know why, but somehow, that tends to do the triggering trick to get me to remember the horrible thing that was done to me.

Sitting, naked, helpless in the shower. Behind a curtain, where no one can see me, just holding my razor, debating or not whether to slit my wrists and make it all go away. For the hundredth time.

Walking around school was also hard.

For some reason, every single face started to look just like his. I couldn’t look anywhere but to the floor as I walked the streets of my little town, because I was always petrified by the idea that I would lock looks with the person I feared the most. Soon, the fear turned into uncontrollable shaking.

Soon, the shakes became a face to face encounter with this disgusting piece of human being, which followed a long hour of involuntary vomiting on an empty stomach in the nearest restroom, as I cried, and cried, and cried, asking myself why it had to be me. Why, why, why? Why did it have to be me?

After a few more encounters, the fear became so great that I just stopped leaving my house altogether, to evade at all costs the possibility of running into him again.

He never apologized.

And when I tried to stand up for myself, and my boyfriend tried to help me, he called me nothing but “another normal night.”

And that was painful.

And that was rape.

And I want my fucking life back. But I can’t seem to get a handle on the rains.

And this is just a very poetic story of my case. Imagine what that gross night actually felt like. Inside of me, inside of me until I fainted. Inside of me until I had to beg for him to be gentle in fear that he would actually break me. Inside of me, where is now completely broken and refusing to mend again. Inside of me, which will always feel impure, disgusting, worthless, and up for anyone’s grabs.

And I want my life back.