Anonymous Story: Fitting In & Guilt

Because of what happened recently, I’m filled with hurt and anger with Kavanaugh’s case.

From the beginning…
I was in 5th grade, at my elementary school. I got bullied a lot, I was never noticed. Girls would tell me my crushes had a crush on me, and gave me the confidence to go up to them and tell them I liked them. They would look at me and say Never I would date you! I would see the girls smirking and laughing. I only had that one best friend and that was it.

One day at recess, the group of girls in my class and group of boys in my class and next-door classes, wanted to play a game called “Grab Ass”. Pretty much the girls and boys would grab each other’s asses, and that was that. The game went on for a couple of weeks. I felt left out and wanted to be part of the game, so I went on ahead and said that I wanted to play. I did not want to be bullied anymore, even though I did not like the idea of feeling grabbed, but I assumed it was innocent and nothing would go beyond that.

One day, I was being chased by a boy who wanted to grab my ass, and I went up the playground, and he grabbed me, and I’m like okay, we have to go back. Then I got surrounded by the guys on the playground, and they started to grab my ass and my boobs. I wasn’t even sure how to feel about that. That wasn’t even part of the game, and one tried to go down my pants, but thankfully the teacher blew her whistle to let us know we had to go back.

I did not want to play the game anymore when that happened. Then a couple of weeks later, this one boy was 6 feet tall and he was the same age as me, (I’m pretty little, like shortest in the class), during an English class session, my teacher left the room. He was sitting at my table, and he slid his hand down my underwear to feel me and to try to finger me. I did not know what to do, but just try to get away from him. I did not like him, I did not want to be touched. Of course, I blamed myself because I wanted to “fit in”, and not get bullied anymore. I never told anyone about at the time.

Around 2016, I was going out with my ex-boyfriend, and he wanted attention from me all the time, I could not balance everything in my life (there was parent divorce, money problems, college, work, etc). He would harass me, call my phone, spam me messages, and stalk me. He blamed me for everything that happened in the relationship. He would manipulate me, and turn my words against me, making it seem it was his idea. I was getting really bad panic attacks, and I told him for our sake, this is toxic (only less than a year relationship), and we need to find help for ourselves, I have to go therapy, cannot deal with this. So we broke up, then two months later, there was festival in my city, and he bought a ticket four months before to come to my city (out of state). I told him fine, we could be only friends, and maybe we can try it again, but not at this time.

September 2016, he arrived at the airport and I was waiting for him at the hotel lobby, to get him settled into his room. We went to the hotel room, so he can put down his things. Around this time, I was going through an eating disorder (I was really in bad shape), and I was about to faint, couldn’t breathe, and I was laying on his bed, and I asked him to please get me something, a snack or water. Instead, he got on top of me, and started to grind against me, saying he missed me, and he loved me. I told him weakly to stop, to get off, I was begging, I wasn’t feeling well, and he didn’t stop, he felt me up, forced kissed me. I froze and I just felt paralyzed. I trusted him, what was he doing to me? He shortly got off, and went downstairs to grab me something.

I laid on the bed, paralyzed, and crying. I started to feel guilty, sad, I remember calling this guy I was talking to, and he was telling me to get out of there, and I just felt ashamed, embarrassed, he told me that I was stupid.

When he was there for a weekend, he made me watch porn with him, so I can try to have sex with him, I felt weak and sad. He tried to anal-penetrate me, and I screamed NO STOP. He wanted to “surprise me”. I just..didn’t know how to feel.

I ended up going back with him and he started the mental abuse again with me. After what happened, I tried to kill myself, I would come to my job everyday to think about how am I going to kill myself. Jump off the garage? Jump from the 13th floor in the building, on top of hard concrete fountain? Hang myself in my job? I had on going panic attacks, guilt, and depression driving me along with eating disorder and anxiety.

In the end, I had the courage to break up with him, and he kept trying to manipulate me, and I told him no, that he was a bad person, and I did not want to speak with him anymore. He tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills, and he will blame me if he dies, it would be my fault.

He told every friend of mine that I didn’t give a shit about him dying, which was untrue. He turned people against me, and everyone told me I was a bad person for what I have done. I never told them what he has done to me, because I was too ashamed. I felt like I did not want to be those people who speak up about abuse, and only to get “Oh, you are over-exaggerating” or “you are doing this for attention” . Then why do I feel the way I feel? I felt very violated. I never opened up ever since.

He then exposed pictures of me he had on his phone and sent my pictures to his guy friends, and tried to blackmail me.

My best friend was there to help me when I was drowning.

From this, I still have nightmares about that day in the hotel. Two weeks ago, I had a dream about my ex and he was trying to penetrate me again when I said no. Honestly, I try to ignore my past, when I went to therapy, it was hard talking about it, because I questioned myself was that consider sexual assault? Why did I feel that way at the time? Is it okay? Was I being too overly-exaggerated?

Talking to a friend about the Kavanaugh case, she was saying that she had friends that were raped and they remembered the date and the time. It isn’t the case for every person. I remember the year and month, and where it happened. I just created a block in my mind to not remember all the details, or I at least tried to. I’m talking about it now, so that means I will always remember this memory back in 5th grade and back in 2016.