Tobias’s Story: Alone Since That Night

More than three years ago, during my freshman year of college, I was waiting to take a bus back to campus and a stranger approached me and asked me for a lighter. We started talking and he gave me a cigarette. After a few minutes, he asked me if I wanted to hit up a local bar. I thought why not, and got into a cab with me. I had sized the guy up and determined that if he gave me any trouble I could easily lay him out. The cab ride took about ten minutes and we arrived at what from the outside looked like an open bar but upon entry I realized was a bar under renovation. In my arrogance, I didn’t leave right then and there. This guy and I started drinking and he pulled out a small bag of cocaine. I probably did 10 lines in the span of 2 hours. But after a while, I realized something was wrong and what I was taking hadn’t been cocaine at all. Alarm bells had been ringing in my head since the moment I entered the bar but I was too intrigued (or stupid) to get up and leave while I still could. I knew I was in trouble when I could no longer feel my legs and had a complete inability to move any part of my body. More than that I became strangely compliant. The last thing I remember was taking off my pants before I blacked out. When I came to I knew something bad had happened as I was shaking. I was still drugged out of my mind when my rapist and I got in a cab and dropped me off at the bus station. I took the bus was still very confused and drugged out. As I came to I started crying and texted my parents and told them what happened (something I would never have done if I was sober and wish I hadn’t). My mom came and picked me up and drove me home where I stayed for a week. My parents arranged for me to speak with a detective and she said that there wasn’t much she could do because the evidence I had was little to none. She promised to try anyway and within a month had called me to arrange a meeting with a prosecutor. I ignored her calls as I just wanted to put it all behind me. I completely stopped going to class and slept 14 hours a day when I got back to university and failed out that semester. I spent that summer getting black-out drunk constantly with my friends and the following year working and moved to another continent soon after to continue university. That was two years ago and while I’m almost done with school, I don’t feel worthy or get excited about anything. I have very few friends at my new school and generally distrust people. I have also not kept in contact with a lot of people back home. I pushed my ex-girlfriend away for so long that she just couldn’t take it anymore and we haven’t spoken in 6 months. She knows what happened and told me to get help many times but I can’t bring myself to. My parents have tried to talk to me about it but I generally shut them out and I don’t contact them often. I’ve never told them the whole story. I feel intensely alone constantly and don’t feel like my life will ever be normal. I see people having fun and enjoying life like I used to but I just can’t.