Ella’s Story: My Own Friend

I’m 18. A junior in high school. I have many male friends. You see I often get along better with males as opposed to females. And that’s what I planned on doing when I went over to my friend R’s house a couple nights ago. It was eleven people total, five boys and six girls including me. He told me we were just going to chill, play some beer pong and flip cup, and smoke some weed. Nothing too crazy. But when I smoke, it doesn’t take a lot at all for me to get absolutely rocked. And I did just that. Get rocked. On top of that, I was drinking beer. I’d say about five total over a two hour period. I only weigh about 115 pounds, so that was plenty for the lightweight I am. But I had to keep up with everyone else. Didn’t want to be a buzzkill. The good thing was that I was drunk but not to a point of me just blacking out. Yet. The main issue was that I was extremely high. I could not even open my eyes, much less process the environment around me. It became a running joke that I was in another realm as I sat down away from everyone else. Just trying to steady myself. That did not work. Anytime anyone tried to converse with me, I was convinced they were talking in another language or something and could do nothing but laugh. There was just a complete loss of inhibition. Someone could have told me to jump in front of a car, and I would have stupidly thought, well, alright, they probably know what’s best for me. At least I had my girlfriends there with me. However, later in the night, people started to leave. It soon came down to just me and S, my friend who had taken the both of us here. We had decided to sleep there at R’s house with him because she was too drunk to drive home. He kindly offered. We are just sitting in the basement. I watch as R plays video games. We are sitting next to each other on a couch. S passes out on a recliner soon enough. And that’s all I wanted to do was to sleep. And I was just about to plop myself down on the couch in laying down position when R starts getting up. He says come upstairs, I have a bed for you. I was confused why he wasn’t letting me sleep downstairs with S or why he didn’t invite her too, but I didn’t really know what was going on in the first place. My eyes were rolling back in my head. Just to give you perspective. My lids were heavy. I could barely walk at this point. Keeping my neck up was my main battle at the moment. And all I wanted to do was sleep. Most importantly, though, I had no reason to suspect what I was about to get coming to me. R had been my friend for years. I told him my boy troubles all the time, with an intention to establish him safely in the friend zone. Which he had been in, and it was well known between us that the only type of relationship we would have is platonic. Trust me, R was far from my type. I had not come close to anything but friends before. I purposefully did not cross the line by flirting with him ever because I didn’t want him to get the wrong message. Anyways, I vaguely remember getting up from the basement to the second floor, but I do remember him saying you want to come see my room before you go into my brothers room? Which was empty because he wasn’t home at the time. And I was like well why not? I sat down on R’s bed but realized that I couldn’t hold my body up straight for long and slumped over within seconds. Much to my surprise, R then turned the lights off and got into bed next to me. I remember feeling very awkward as we sat there in what seemed like silence because I simply couldn’t move or speak. And, then, all of a sudden, he just shifts his weight on top of me. He starts kissing my ear. It’s slobbery and disgusting. I absolutely hate it. It feels like dead weight just crushing me. I couldn’t breath. His entire body weight was just resting on top of me. As I sat there limp and just shocked that the situation had progressed to this. I just wanted him off of me. My lack of movement wasn’t so much the effects of alcohol but it was the paranoia I almost always get from smoking weed. I couldn’t move because I was paralyzed in fear. And I had never faced a danger so great until this night. I remember looking out at the window at the moon and stars trying to hold back tears so he wouldn’t see that I was crying. They fell anyway. He eventually shifted so he was just spooning me. And that’s when he started to guide my hand towards his lower region. I don’t know why I didn’t just get up and run out of the room. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. So I started to make excuses instead. I didn’t have control of my body yet, but my voice was finally active again. I start saying I can’t do this man I’m too fucked up, and I laugh it off to play it off well. Nothing too offensive, right? I don’t know if he didn’t hear me or did and just didn’t care but he did not acknowledge my statement whatsoever. I said it again but this time with a please stop, and I tried, I really did, with all my might to get up. But he just pulled me back into the spooning position. He then stuck his hands down my pants. And that’s when one last excuse popped into my head. I blurted out wait no please don’t I didn’t shave let’s not do this I’m tired please. But he goes I don’t care. I don’t mind, you’re fine. My face became flushed as I felt nothing but panic. He shot down each and every excuse. I didn’t know what to do next. And that’s when it started to get blurry. I don’t remember us starting to have sex but I remember it later on while we were doing it. It felt so odd to be doing it with someone other than the person I had been doing it with months before prior. I didn’t like it at all. He then started to talk me up. Saying that he’s been wanting to do this all year now. And that I’m so good at it. Some weirder stuff that I’d rather not repeat. It’s honestly freaked me out. He then says suck it. He pushes my head so far down I throw up everywhere. The beer that had not yet been processed by my liver still in my stomach. Now, all over his bed. But guess what? Blacking point had still been reached regardless of the gag reflux I just endured. I had already had enough. And this is where my memory just stopped. I don’t remember “finishing” it. I don’t remember leaving the room. I don’t even remember getting in the guest room. But I wake up in the morning. Just knowing that something bad had happened. Funny thing is I look at my phone, and I had saved three kind of odd videos of myself. I’m sitting on the toilet peeing, presumably after this incident with R, and I’m just crying. Just absolutely sobbing. It’s honestly kind of hard to watch. I caption the videos R raped me. I don’t know what made my heavily inebriated and drugged up mind to take those videos but I did. It’s almost like they were reminders for me to have of what just happened just in case I didn’t remember it at all. All I wanted to do was leave this house as quickly as possible. I tiptoe down the stairs from the second floor to the first floor being so utterly careful not to wake R. When I get downstairs to S to tell her that we need to leave now, she asks me if anything happened between us because she said he gave her the vibe that he wanted to do something with me. The thought of that repulsed me. I would never ever hook up with R at least willingly and in the right state of mind. So I lied. And said no way. It was still hard for me to accept as it is. I still was so confused on the events of the night beforehand. It was such a blur for the most part, and, at one point, the memory was just nonexistent. It disgusted me to admit that I hooked up with R. So I refused to. It was only till about an hour later as I sat at home that I realized I did not “get with” R. He took advantage of me point blank. I shouldn’t feel ashamed, but it’s a feeling I simply cannot avoid. I just feel gross, dirty, and disgusting. He tells me that I was super into it. He is probably referring to the period in time in which I blacked out completely. I remember about thirty minutes of us being in his room, but according to my Snapchat videos, I was in there for around an hour. That thirty minute mark must have been when I lost control of everything in general. Not just my body and my voice. Now my own thoughts. He sends me pictures of his sheets now covered in my liquid vomit. What bothers me is that it shouldn’t matter if I was asking for it by the time I was blacked, which he says I was, and I highly doubt that, but whatever. I had to search up on google if my predicament even constituted rape. That’s how confused I was. But the fact of the matter is I was so drunk and high that I could not have even given consent at all. Even if I had said yes, he should have known not to because everyone knows that’s wrong and that drunk people don’t really mean what they say, especially super drunk people. But I had said no three times in the beginning in an array of excuses designed to not hurt him to a point where I’d feel unsafe about his reaction towards my rejection. Turns out that didn’t even matter, because I felt unsafe, terrified, and helpless regardless. This is the stuff they teach you in schools. This is health class 101. How does not know know this? Or why doesn’t he care? The latter is much more grim reality. In my opinion, I would think a relatively intelligent person like him would know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong. Not only that, he had been one of my close friends. I would have never expected something like this ever. Nor would I have wanted it. I have never had second thoughts about R in the romantic way. I like another boy. We’ll call him C. Whom I’m trying to pursue and have been for months, but it’s complicated. Why would I fuck it up with this? I’m so scared now that it could jeopardize my pursuit because plot twist: R is the newer ex-boyfriend of C’s ex-girlfriend. They do not like each other. In fact, they hate each other. What I begin to realize is that I really only want one thing from R. Well, maybe two things actually. An apology would be nice. But, more importantly, I just want silence on his part. In my friend’s words, I recommend that he keep quiet and I will too. I’ve seen what it’s like to go after someone for rape. And I know his group of friends all too well. I made one mistake in the beginning of the year by crushing the heart of one of them, let’s call him Nick, because I had stopped liking him. And they wouldn’t let me get over it for a month. They made me feel so bad about myself. I was guilty but their treatment towards me was just cruel. They taunted me and popped jokes that were just not appropriate. And all of them revolved around the notion that I was a cold-hearted whore. Anyways, I went off on a little tangent there, my bad, but point is, I cannot imagine the backlash I would receive by accusing their friend of rape? It would be a nasty battle of picking sides. Because he’s a respectable person. Even I wouldn’t have expected this from him. I would have even vouched for him if I wasn’t implicated in the situation at hand. And it is such a rare event where I live. In all my 10+ years here in this school district, I’ve only heard of one girl maybe two from our school and it becoming a huge thing. I would have rocked the course of next year, my senior year, for everyone if I decided to take this further than what I am now. Not only the whole slut-shaming aspect and people calling me a liar, calling him a liar, I really just wanted to burn this memory from my mind. It makes me cringe inside. It makes me feel so stupid for not running out of the room. I constantly wish I could go back and redo it. But this type of thinking isn’t healthy. It’s just making me anxious and depressed. I couldn’t even sleep last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about the what if’s. That’s why I’m choosing not to go after him. I really think it would destroy me in the end more than it would ever help me. I don’t think I could take it. And this is why I’m at this forum. I’ve tried internalizing the thoughts within me, but who am I to answer my own questions? Who am I to know how to cope with a situation like this, something that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind a week ago. And trust me. I’ve partied in dangerous places. In the streets of Philadelphia for godsake. Little did I know the biggest danger I had yet to face would be in the house of my friend. A good friend, too. I turned to my own girlfriends the day after to see how their support could help me. I’ve only told three of them. No one else. But they don’t know what it’s like. I’m glad they don’t, though. I’m happy they don’t have to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and pissed off at themselves for not fighting back harder. Not being smarter. And feeling dirty, even after taking two showers. I came to this forum to just vent. And I really think getting it all out in this novel of sorts already has helped a little. Helped me piece together the night as closely as possible. I want to know when do the thoughts stop? When will this memory start to fade away? When won’t I feel anxious around people? Because God knows some can’t be trusted and he proved it to me well. And if they can’t simply be stopped, how do I cope with the anxiety and depression? How do I manage it? Because I‘m miserable here thinking about how stupid I could have been. When I know I’m just not. Biggest pet peeve is being set up in a situation in which I’m bound to fail because I am a smart person. I’m at the top of my class in school. I’m not an idiot. I’m physically fit. I used to wrestle with my older brother all the time. This doesn’t happen to capable women like me. Rather, this shouldn’t happen to capable women like me. But it did. And I can’t help but feel a little responsible in regards towards my lack of action. It’s a fucked up ideology but I can’t help how I feel. I hope someone here can at least aid me in overcoming it. I tell my three close friends I’m mad I didn’t make sure I had one of them there to watch out for me, because it’s really only a select few friends in your friend group that will actually consistently look out for your well-being at a party, none of which could be present that night, I’ve noticed. But really. I’m mad at my own self for not being there for me. For not putting up the fight I know I had deep down in my heart. How could I be so foolish? I know I have no one to put the blame on but him, but I could have at least stopped him from raping me. He was going to sexually assault me and there was nothing I could have done to expect that but I could have stopped him before he went the furthest mile and did what no one is supposed to do to a drunk girl who can barely open her eyes. I could have literally ran out. But nope. Legs just wouldn’t function. If only I knew how affected I would be now by the constant haunting of my lack of action, maybe I would have realized the pertinence of me saving myself from rape. Because this sucks. And I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.