A disclosure
I talked to Mallory for my whole drive out to Kyle’s parents’ house and she pointed out that the reason I may be so hesitant to tell people about this realization is that telling someone other than her or Kyle would make it less possible for me to put this all back in a box.
That’s so tempting. I feel like I even spent most of Tuesday evening thinking, I imagined this. But I didn’t. I do not want to be part of this. And these feelings could not be manufactured.
Plus, this realization feels like a twist in a story that makes so many other parts of the story make sense.
That night was my first time having sex in a shower or hot tub, and I have defended that sex in hot water is awful. My body doesn’t work that way.
Tonight, I remembered that the first time I had sex in a shower after the hot tub, I cried. Uncontrollably. In a scary way, the kind of way that makes your partner wonder what the hell they did wrong. I didn’t know why I cried and I couldn’t explain it.
Until today.
I probably ought to tell people. If only to take away the temptation to forget it. To tell people, I need a word to describe it.
So, I spent the day thinking about the right word.
In my first conversation with Mallory about this, I said at one point “I think he did it to me one other time, too.” When I read the text as I sent it, my eyes glassed over. Through our whole conversation, we spoke in euphemism or generic pronouns.
When I told Kyle the next day, I worded it, “I realized that I haven’t given them enough blame.” In my conversation with Mallory yesterday, we spoke around it completely. We used words like realization and recontextualization.
A few hours ago I realized that whatever word I chose, it would be accurate.
I want to call it date rape. I know a script for that, and it feels a little bit right because there was alcohol involved. Alcohol that made me pliable if not compliant. But we were not on a date.
I was raped.