Why didn’t you report? {~Age~} I have always been the person who hates talking about my emotions. I didn’t grow up in a home where I wasn’t allowed to talk about feelings and had to be strong—I was encouraged to share what I was feeling, so why didn’t I want to? My mom always wanted to know how my day was, if someone was being mean to me again, etc, but I learned at a young why your feelings can cause you to look “weak”. I was always the girl in the resource room, and the girl with disabilities, so I knew what it meant to stand out. Let's face it, kids can sometimes be jerks, so you learn to not give them anything else they can use to pick on you, when you’re already so different. Or maybe I’m full of it, and I have just told myself this lie my whole life and I'm really insecure and scared to show myself to others, who knows, I’m not a psychoanalyst. But what I do know is that I have never been good at opening up and sharing myself to others. It’s not that I don’t trust people, I am very trusting. Growing up I was too trusting, but I never want to look weak so I rarely let people know when I was upset. Getting older I’ve only got worse. High school was difficult for me to say the least . If you knew me back then you would have seen a sarcastic, quiet, and awkward kid, but on the inside I was suffering and completely depressed. It wasn’t until I almost jumped off a ledge that people knew I actually had a real issue. Up until then, I was just a loner, who maybe didn’t have that many friends, but didn’t look unhappy. I spent my whole senior year of high school on medication going to a lot of therapy and not allowed to touch sharp objects, but it all worked. I ended up a totally different person, one who was happy and loved herself for the first time ever! Then came college. I started school in the big apple in the fall of 2015, and like most 18 year old freshmen I was away from home for the first time. College was a weird tradition for me. I struggled to make friends but I had anticipated this before I even went to school. That first semester was big for me. Besides school, I had my first failed “relationship” (he refused to use any labels, but we basically dated for 4 months till I got tired of his bull), got ghosted for the first time, and received my first of many unsolicited dick pics. That fall of 2015 had it’s issues but I never knew the horror that was awaiting for me that spring. Now I know what you're thinking, “Why does her childhood story have anything to do with this?” or “ I thought this was a rape article, she ever gonna talk about the assault?”, and yes I understand the intro to this abuse story was not brief. But I feel like it was important. Maybe it helps you to understand my actions or lack thereof. It all started while on break right before school… I started talking to this guy on tinder and he seemed nice. I had lost my virginity around November and honestly, I couldn’t wait to keep having sex. Everyone says your first time for a woman is horrible, but mine wasn’t. It lasted a while, he was nice and did his best to make me feel good, and I ended up having a lot of fun, so naturally I couldn’t wait to do it again. I saw him again once more to have sex, then he ghosted me, but I didn’t really care. I really just wanted him for sex, but I felt obliged to be nice to him and try and have a relationship because he was incredibly depressed, and given my suicide history I felt like it was the right thing to do. After that guy I couldn’t wait to have sex again, and maybe that makes me sound like a slut, but let it. Wanting to have sex doesn’t make you a bad person, but judging others for having sex does. I was talking to this guy on tinder and I made plans to see him on my first weekend back to school. I remember I was really nervous getting ready, because he wasn’t coming to me, I was talking to the subway on 86th street to see him. I wasn’t all that great with the subway yet and I remember being really worried I would get lost or hurt along the way. When I got to 86th street I had to wait 10 minutes for him to walk to me because he didn’t give me his direct address, the first red flag!! But I was 18. I didn’t think about it too much, though in hindsight I should have. He walked me to his apartment, up the stairs to the 4th floor, and led me to his rooms as fast as he could. His room was really small, and the image of it still haunts me to this day. Let’s have imagination time to really visualize what it look liked: The first thing you noticed when you stepped into this room, is that there is nothing personal about it. No posters of favorite movies or bands, no books stacked anywhere, no pictures of his family or anyone important, just a bed, a dresser, tv, and a closet. There was nothing in there to indicate anything personal about this man, except for a suitcase on the top row of the closet that looked straight out of a harry potter movie. Behind the door was a coat rack that only ever had one black peacoat on it. The most noticeable thing in this room is the bed that practically takes up the entire room (NYC apartments are not really designed to fit… well anything). The bed was queen sized that always had these dull white a blue striped sheets, plain gray comforter, and always smelled way too strong of aftershave. The bed pushed up against the wall on the left side of the room next to a large window (NYC large, not normal big) that had a beautiful view of the city… just kidding, it was a view of other apartments. Across from the bed was an old looking dark oak dresser that had his small flat screen tv on it. The only other things in the room was the closet (on the right wall) that pretty much just had clothes in it (and the suitcase), and two folding chairs stacked neatly in front of the closet. The first night I went over there he ushered me immediately into his room, and pulled the two folding chairs from their spot and put them next to the bed by the door and told me to take a seat. I never got to see the rest of his apartment, no tour, nothing, second red flag! He gave me his backstory of being from turkey and how he went from wanting to be a doctor in his country to going to Germany to be an engineer to coming to the states to study film. We talked about our lives and families growing up, but the whole time I had this weird feeling in my gut. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but it was like the feeling you're told to have as a kid when you see a stranger. I didn’t realize this wasn’t a great idea until he started kissing me, then it hit me. I felt every fiber of being scream “GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW”, and I didn’t know what to do. He tried to take my underwear off and I said, “Oh… I can’t, I just got my period this afternoon”. I lied. I didn’t have my period. I said what my gut told me too. He said it was fine, I think we talked for some more and then he walked me back to the subway and said he would wait to see me again, and I said goodbye completely in a fog, barely understanding what had just happened. I've never liked lying. It makes me want to throw up, and I’ve never successfully lied to anyone. The person I have ever lied to, is my mother, and almost every single time I have been caught. But this time was different. Something deep inside of me told me to lie right then and for the first time ever, I didn’t feel guilty about lying. I got on that 6 train and had every intention of this being my last interaction with this man. I truly didn’t want to see him again, and when I got back to my dorm room one of the first things I did was text my friend. This friend who was my best friend at the time, pretty much told me I was just nervous and there was nothing wrong and I should see him again, and you know what? I listened to her, why? Because she was my friend and I wanted to believe her, so I went back that next weekend, which is the decision that haunts me every single day since. I went back the next time and again he met me at the subway stop, walked me in a different direction to his apartment, said it was a “nicer view”, again a red flag, but I didn’t run away. I thought about it, but every time I did I heard my friend's voice in my head to breathe, relax and continue walking with him. When he got to his room he had the democratic debates on, talked about how amazing Bernie Sanders is, and how horrible Trump is (this was pre president Trump), and he put on a classical music playlist (before any of this happened to me, classical music was my all time favorite). But he wasted no time getting to business. Before I really knew it my clothes were off and he was like, “how much do you want me baby?”, and I heard that voice again “GET OUT OF THERE”, but I didn’t know what to do. All I could say was “um”, and before I could even process how to say no, it was already happening. I froze. I didn’t say no, I didn’t fight him back, I just laid there and took it. I keep hearing that voice in my head, “FIGHT BACK”, “SAY NO”, “GIRL DO SOMETHING, MAKE THIS STOP SOMEHOW”, but I couldn’t. I felt frozen in fear. I felt like one of those men that pissed off medusas or the white queen, just completely and helplessly frozen. All I could do was pray it would be over soon, and after a few minutes he pulled out finished on my stomach and told me how great my vagina was. I didn’t know what to do, so I just agreed with him and let him go off again about politics and classical music (he was trying to impress me with his “vast” knowledge of the genre). And again before I felt like I had enough time to process and relax for the first time, he was inside me again. This time was a little different, maybe he actually noticed there was something wrong and I wasn’t doing that great, and he asked me if he was hurting me, and I said yes. He paused for a few minutes, changed positions for the 6th time and kept going. Again I still froze. He asked me if there was something wrong and even though every fiber of my being begged my brain to say, “YES GET OFF OF ME'', all I could manage was “yeah, I’m really tired, I’m not really in the mode right now”. He stopped again for maybe a minute this time, had me lay on my stomach and continue till he finished. He had me sleep over, told me it was too late and dangerous to leave, so I had to stay. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Basically had one panic attack after another from midnight till 7:30 in the morning when he woke up. I remember I just kept staring at the suitcase in the closet and for some reason I used it to try and calm myself down. I kept planning an escape. Ways I could get out of there with my stuff and run. Find a cab and go back to school, but I was physically trapped under the weight of his body and my own mental fear. By morning I kept saying I needed to get back to school, but it happened again. That time I just gave up. Saying I didn’t want to have sex didn’t work. Asking him to stop didn’t work. So I just let it happen and silently cried to myself. When it was over he said he wanted me to eat with him. He told me to come with him to whole foods to pick out food he liked, walk back to his apartment and eat. He got us yogurt which I’m not really a big fan of and coffee which I also don’t like. When I told him I don’t like the things he said, “ no you’ll love them, I know better”. I remember he was upset with me because I didn’t really eat any of the yogurt, and it was “expensive greek yogurt from Europe”, and that I just wasted money. Once he was done he finally let me leave, but there was a catch… He not only proceeded to walk me to the subway, but also rode it with me all the way to school because “it was on his way to work”. Now I now know that what I just described was rape. They tell you as a kid we have a fight or flight response, but they forget to tell you that freezing is a response too. Rape according to the department of justice is “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim”. Resources like planed parenthood say, “If they say ‘no,’ or ‘I don’t know,’ or don’t say anything, they’re not consenting, and anyone has the right to change their mind at any time”, and their resources also inform consumers that phrases like ‘stop’, ‘your hurting me’, and ‘I don’t want to keep doing this’ all need to be addressed before sex continues for it to be consensual. A few states including NY, now have policies that yes means yes, and nothing else means yes. Dr. James Hopper describes freezing during rape as, “Freezing occurs when the amygdala – a crucial structure in the brain’s fear circuitry – detects an attack and signals the brainstem to inhibit movement. It happens in a flash, automatically and beyond conscious control”, he also described how people have this state like going into a drug like trance, or crying. I froze during my assault, I didn’t say yes, I asked him to stop, and I had this blackout feeling where I welled up, but none of that triggered as rape to me at that time. I grew up watching shows like law and order: svu and criminal minds, but they never talked about freezing up. It was always these very clear black and white descriptions of rape. Mine wasn’t like those shows. I came home that morning and cried for hours, so scared that what I had just gone through was rape. I kept asking “why didn’t I say no?”, but I knew the answer. Saying no meant it was real. Meant that in that exact moment everything they warn you about being a woman was happening and I wasn’t gonna be able to stop it. I thought if I didn’t say no, it couldn’t have been rape. I know it sounds stupid, but that was my 18 year olds way of protecting my self. I eventually called my friend ( the same one that told me to go back to this guy to begin with) and tried to tell her what happened. Both her and her boyfriend (who I was unaware was listening to me until he started giving me his view) told me I was fine and “over reacting”. I believed them. I don’t know why I did, but I did. They told me to go back again, and I put it off until all the text from him started. He would text me everyday and say all these things about how I was his and we were dating and how much he cared about me, and I feel for it. No, I didn’t have feelings for him, but I knew he knew where I lived because he reminded me of it often, and I worried he would come find me and hurt me, so I went back. At this point I figured if I went through this with him, at least no one else does. I truly convinced myself I deserved it, and who would believe me if I tried to come forward? My best friend didn’t. Her boyfriend didn’t, who would? I didn’t say no. I didn’t fight back. I just took it, over and over again, completely helpless and alone. Even if would be considered rape, no judge in the world would believe me, especially, now, knowing I went back more times, and this guy called me his girlfriend. I went back. That's the big kick to why people don’t believe me. I WENT BACK. That second time it wasn’t as bad, he listened to me more, but I think I was just broken by that point. He told me to get on top, I let him put me there. He woke me up already, I just turned my head, looked at that suitcase, and waited for it to be over. I felt dead inside. That's when my grades started slipping. I couldn’t concentrate on anything and panic attacks happened all the time. But this also happened right during Kesha’s trial against Dr. Luke, which was all of a few blocks from my dorm. I would walk by there all the time and see/hear the horrible things people said about her, and I knew that if I ever said anything no-one would believe me so I lived in denial. I would text him back when he told me I had to and I would pretend like I cared about him. And again I went back. That time I think I pretend to fall asleep during a movie to get him not to do anything with me and it only kinda worked. He thought I was sleeping but it didn’t stop me from motorboating me, or touching me in ways that if I was asleep I could not consent to, and while pretending to be asleep, I didn’t connect to them either. That morning was the real icing on the cake though. See I had just found out that my mom had health issues and I was coming back home for the summer and I saw my window out. I could use my mom as an excuse for not seeing him again because I didn’t have time to commute back and forth from my home to NYC just to see him, and I used this as my fuel. I remember he was going to town, doing his normal changing the position every 5 seconds and it hurt more and more each time he changed, when I looked out the window and saw a woman. There was nothing special to her but she was washing dishes, and I don’t know. Something about watching her gave me strength. I looked up and told him to stop and I didn’t want o have sex with him, and he gave me this puzzled look. He looked like he had zero idea I would say these things, and he paused for maybe a few seconds and I’ll never forget he said, “baby just let me finish”, then kept going. I tried again to ask him to stop and he ignored me, until I said “no”. For the first time ever I said no to him, but it was too late. By this point it didn’t matter he had already raped me many times, what was one more to him? The next day I texted him and said it was over, and he called me every dirty word in the book, but I didn’t care. I was proud of myself. A few days later he texted me again like the breakup had never happened. Said he had forgiven me, “I wasn’t going to get away from him so easily”, that “I was his”, and he was by my school and wanted to get lunch, so I ghosted him. Over that summer I jumped head first into working. I worked about 16 hours a day, two jobs, and really never had time to myself, and I like it that way. It was a good distraction. I never had time to think about what happened to me until august. I was getting ready for my second job and I came across this article that talked about how this girl dismissed her sexually abusive ex because she thought since they were dating and she didn’t say no, it didn’t count as rape. As I read each line my own stomach dropped and dropped. Everything she went through I went through. All her descriptions of rape and the trauma that followed I had been living everyday. As soon as I got to work, I clocked in and headed to the office (I was a manager for a grouchy store, so when I say “office” I really mean the tiny room above customer service, with the safe) I immediately threw up. Denial could no longer comfort me. I couldn’t use it as a security blanket to protect myself, I had been raped. End period, raped. I did tell my mom after that realization, but only because she prided it out of me. She wanted to murder this guy, but I convinced her not too. But he started texting me again all the time. I actually tried to tell this guy I was friends with that this happened to me. I don’t know why but he was the only guy I felt safe around (probably because he didn’t believe in sex before marriage, or because it was the same guy that I had my failed relationship with, and I knew he was an idiot, but not a bad person ), but he blew me off. The end of the summer I had to go back to school. This guy who raped me moved closer to school and would send me messages that I looked pretty that day, and he saw me walking with friends, or how he liked a jacket I had on some days, which meant he must have been stalking me or really good at lying, so what did I do? I blocked him from everything, phone, social media, and I deleted every text, every insta comment, every tinder message. I tried to erase him from my life completely and I did a good job. I went on living my life but I wasn’t the same anymore. I was constantly afraid, I could sleep at night because I kept having nightmares, my eating habits were all over the place ( I developed an eating disorder, fun!), and I had random panic attacks at any time, anywhere. It's been over five years and each of those things still affects my life. Even though I have been in one relationship since the assaults happened I am still scared of the idea of sex with people, and scared of opening up to people. I don’t like being touched by anyone anymore, my weight has been all over the place, I still have panic attacks, and I now normally do not go to bed until the wee hours of the morning when I can barely keep my eyes open to avoid seeing his face again. Not a day goes by when I don’t remember what he did to me. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel guilty for not reporting my assault, but back then I couldn’t. Here's where my sad life back story comes into place, I couldn’t go through a trial or put my mom through one. She could barely handle the suicide thing nor could I. I knew a judge and jury wouldn’t believe me and even if they could what’s the worst that would happen? He gets deported? Some other girl in some other country has to deal with him? Yeah probably, but I know once a rapist is always a rapist. I knew my trail would lose and I would be free to keep doing it so I decided to be selfish. Stay a coward, but at least my name didn’t get dragged through the mud. That's always what I believed…until now. Why now you ask? WHY NOW? Because I am tired of being quiet. We post the times up movement, post me too, but it wasn’t really until I had a mental breakdown, took a medical leave from grad school, and started therapy again, that I knew the peace coming forward can have. It will never go away. I am not perfect, but I am a survivor at least, and to be honest, finally after five years, I am angry and ready to fight. So I’ll #metoo, #timeup #NoMore, and scream it from the rooftops, and I don’t care if you believe me. If just one person believes me, then I'll be happy if no-one? I’ll still be okay, why? Because telling my story will bring me peace, even if that man always roams free. Maybe you are asking yourself, “if she is sooooo comfortable with what happened, why report now?”. First and foremost, I’m not comfortable with what happened. His actions haunt me every waking and sleeping moment of my life. Like a mirror or a sheet of glass in an old wester movie that someone runs into, I am shattered. But I am still here and I’ve recently started to glue the pieces back together. The mirror will never be perfect or complete again, it will still have cracks and places where the shards where so tiny they couldn’t be glued back together, but that doesn’t matter. I am not yet at peace, but this story should not be at rest. Everyday I feel completely guilty for staying silent. I shouldn’t. I didn’t rape myself. But even knowing that, the most logical response, that I didn’t do anything wrong, does not stop the never ending feelings of guilt and shame. Every hour of every day for over 5 years constantly panicking and completely breaking myself down. I keep describing it in therapy like I’m in this never ending sea—-most of the time I’m just trudging through water—struggling, but at least doing the best I can——but other days I’m completely and utterly drowning, and there’s nothing I can do to save myself…except to sink. The blame should entirely be on that man, but I constantly think about how if someone else gets hurt by him, then indirectly since I chose to stay silent, it's my fault, which leads me to my second point: something needs to be done about this. Somewhere out there, is some girl out there who is going through exactly what I went through and needs help. There is some girl who is at risk of meeting the same fate as me and that CAN NOT HAPPEN. No-one should ever have to go through the trauma that I went through, so even if telling this story doesn’t help me, at least it will help someone else. We know that a rapist doesn’t just strike once. This man will not be satisfied with just the damage he has caused me, he’ll do it again, and probably has. I wasn’t ready to speak out before and talk about what happened, to share my story to help others, but I am now. I know this doesn’t take back the pain other girls have mostly had to go through in the last five years, but it will help them, and more in the future get justice. Maybe I do not deserve justice for staying quiet and I am at peace with that, but the rest of the women who went through this do! Not reporting an assault does not equal weakness, everyone fights for themselves in a variety of different ways, this is mine, and just like Lauren Hasley Anderson wrote in speak, “ I am broken and confused, but… I am still here”. I have always hated talking about my emotions and the difficult aspects of my life I have lived through, and I honestly still do, but if putting myself out there can help even one person, it will all be worth it.