Kirsty’s Story: The Aftermath

Dark hair, looked a bit like Skylar (I think that’s his name – I could look it up on imdb but I’m trying to keep writing before I get bogged down in emotion) from Heroes, those are the only physical characteristics I can really ascribe to the man who raped me …

Whoa, dramatic much… I don’t know why I have to do that, it is a reflex for me to try to downplay the event (let’s just go with that until I can come up with a better word) but that is what happened. Rape is constantly made out to be a grey area but the reality is pretty black and white, it’s when you try and look at the situation through other people’s eyes that the lines get blurred.

There are things I remember about the night vividly and this is what I hate thinking about, things I could have done differently, all the warning signs that I was oblivious too, in hindsight they are glaring. As much as the event affected me, it is my own actions following it that haunt me more.

Choosing to deny it, pretend it never happened and even let my friend think it was consensual. You could say I made my bed but I felt that I had dug my own grave. When times got bad and I felt the need to share I couldn’t, how could I? I had carried this lie around for so long that I had made myself a questionable victim, not that I really wanted to be a victim, but I needed to be something other than what I portrayed myself to be, which is fine. Just okay. A normal person living life, no real scars and nobody of interest …

Bizarrely that was a real issue at times, there is no badge for coming through a rape and more often than not no-one ever knows, but it can be so frustrating when you have come through it, you have survived it with only minor wounds and no-one ever knows. You’re never rewarded for it and it’s impossible to feel proud because its a secret. Talking about rape makes everyone uncomfortable, myself included. This happened over 7 years ago, why am I still thinking about it? Being that bitch who’s stuck in the past is never a good place to be so it’s best not to talk about it, and when the memories do come up, when you’re drinking wine alone on a Friday night, its best to put them in a box, drink the rest of your wine and let yourself fall asleep in a wine-induced coma. Tomorrow, it will be like it never happened …