Hannah’s Story: He Left Scars

When I was 16 I snuck into a trendy city bar with my other underaged friends and some college students. We drank a whole lot and I met a man in his late 50’s. He was put together and decent looking and I liked his attention. He bought me drinks, danced with me, and invited me to his place after the bar. I took a cab to his apartment, having to stop the cab to vomit in the street the entire way. I was really drunk and disoriented and don’t remember much after the vomiting began. I woke up in an apartment with the older man having sex with me. I didn’t have clothes on and was scared. I moved around a little, and tried to say something, but he pushed my head into the pillow and told me to shut up. He held me down when I squirmed and ejaculated on my face and body. When I thought he was finished he instead got more physically and verbally aggressive. I was frozen. Petrified. Drunk. Confused. I didn’t move, but just watched him angrily look around the room and grab an umbrella. I thought he was going to beat me with it, but instead he forcefully used it for anal penetrating. I could hear my tissue ripping as he repeatedly jammed it inside of me. Then I blacked out. I dint know if it was from pain or alcohol. I woke up in a shower, naked. Someone had rinsed my body off. When I tried to get up I noticed a pool of blood around me. I crawled on my hands and knees out of the shower and noticed my clothes on the corner. There was a trail of blood from the shower to the toilet where I tried to clean myself up so I could escape. I quickly dressed myself and shoved toilet paper in my underway to absorb the blood. I wiped up the rest of what looked like a crime scene and flushed everything down the toilet. I fixed my hair and tried to make myself look presentable. This is the part I will never understand – who does that? Who tries to fix themselves and hide any issues after something like that? I guess I do. Outside of the bathroom door there was the sound of music and people. It was some sort of crazy party full of adults. I quickly excited through all the people and left. Got a cab home and never told anyone about anything that happened that bizarre night. So many questions, so much that remains unclear. My body was so sore I could hardly walk, but I blamed being sore from exercising and sucked it up. I was mortified, ashamed. I stayed silent. A few days later i noticed there was something coming out of me when I went to the bathroom. I learned it was a rectal prolapse. I had to get a 5 hour surgery to repair my colon. I never told the doctors or my family or my friends what caused it. No one guessed. Everyone was confused and thought it was some sort of medical anomaly. I knew the truth. Better yet, I didn’t even allow myself to get it checked by the doctor until 5 years after the incident. I learned to push my texting back inside of my body each and every day instead. It was my new normal. Over 10 years later, and I still haven’t told anyone what happened. I get nightmares, I have terrible anxiety and depression, I am stuck in the throes of an eating disorder, and I haven’t been able to have a relationship with anyone since the incident. I also have flashbacks of someone else violating me once I got to the shower. Until this day, I think there was a second person involved. The night haunts me, but all I’ve done to cope is haunt and hurt myself. I hate every part of my being and blame myself for everything. I’m too scared to tell my story. I fear no one will believe me. I don’t believe me half the time, but I know the truth. It happened and it will never go away.