Amber’s Story: Secrets Are Armour and They Eat You at the Same Time

It started in the bar where he flirted with me and I liked it. I flirted too and my friend was happy to have introduced us. It started in the club where he kissed me and I kissed him back. It started when we left the club and I begged her to come with us, to keep drinking. I didn’t want to be alone with him but I couldn’t seem to communicate that a different way. It started when she left and I didn’t know what else to do so I invited him in. It started when we had sex and I didn’t feel great about it but I consented and it was fun in the end. He didn’t climax but I did – the opposite of such encounters, generally. It started when we woke up and he tried to roll on top of me. It started when I said no but he didn’t stop. It started when I thought about pushing him off me but I didn’t. It started when I just went limp and let him do it. It started when he came inside me then got up and left.
It didn’t really matter. It was an extension of worthlessness that many sexual encounters brought me. It didn’t really matter till it did. It mattered when I started to feel queasy. It mattered when my boobs felt tender and began to swell. It mattered because I knew then as millions of women have known before. I knew and it mattered and I felt panicked and numb at once. I went to buy a test although I knew. I went and begged a receptionist for an emergency appointment and did a test at a doctor’s although I knew. I knew what I had to do and this doctor was not that kind of OBGYN and there were pictures of untold children born to her patients everywhere but I knew what I had to do and despite her hostility I made her give me the information. I knew what I had to do and I went to the mandatory counselling appointment and I lied so they didn’t try to give me extra options and I made the appointment because it was what I had to do and I knew. I didn’t have anyone to pick me up so I had to have local anaesthetic and I won’t give you details but I wouldn’t recommend it. I try nto to carry this as a trauma but I carry it as a marker of being a female in a misogynistic society that meant I couldn’t tell and even when I did I didn’t tell it all because that would have invited something I couldn’t deal with. Telling would have made it real and would have made the trauma real. Secrets are armour and they eat you at the same time.