Nobody Said It Would Be Like That

It wasn’t anything

Like I thought

Something like that would be

Um…

After it happened

I didn’t even think that…

That it was…

I thought—

Well, that sucked

Honestly, that was my first thought

It wasn’t until—

This other girl

That I met

Who was a friend of a friend

Told me that the same thing happened to her

With the same—

Um, with the same guy

That was when I was like—

Well…I guess, um…

The girl was like—

You were raped

And I—

I said ‘No’

‘No, I wasn’t’

Because at that time

I really didn’t think—

It didn’t really feel that way

Based on what I thought

That would feel like

So basically

My experience

With it was—

It was this feeling of—

Why is this guy

Not stopping?

Why is he—

Why is this happening

And then—

I guess I just shut down

I mean—

I’ve never done that before
Just—taken myself out of—

Out of where I was

But that’s what I did

I don’t remember

All of what happened

But I don’t remember

Feeling like

This guy was going to kill me

Or that he was, uh—

A bad guy

Like, I thought—

Maybe he doesn’t understand

That I don’t want this

So I said ‘Stop’

I do remember

Saying ‘Stop’

And he didn’t stop

And I said, uh

I remember telling him ‘No’

A couple of different ways

And trying to push him off

And—

It was really like he—

Like he just ignored me

It—

It was like I wasn’t even there

Like he was—

He was just with himself

And I thought—

My mind went to—

How do I get through this?

So I checked out

And it was easy

Because he seemed

Kind of checked out too

And then when it was over

We, um…

We went and got a drink

And we didn’t talk about it

We never talked about it

I still, um, saw him

For about a month after that

And then, I just—

Every time I would see him

I would think about it

And I didn’t want to think about it anymore

So I stopped returning his calls

And, uh, at that point

He did get a little, uh, aggressive again

But, uh, not in a scary way

And so I just—

But it really stuck with me

For a long time

And, uh, in a way that

If it hadn’t…

If it hadn’t been something…

What it was

I don’t think

It would have stuck with me

Like that

Because the thing

That rings out

In my head

Isn’t him

But it’s me

It’s my voice

The sound of my voice

Asking him to stop

That’s what—

That’s what really

I—I can’t get away from

Even after all this time

But I didn’t want to say

It was rape

I didn’t—

I really didn’t want to say that

I mean, who would?

Who would want to say

That happened to them?

And if you don’t think—

Uh...

Because nobody said

It would be like that

And so--

If you think

It means one thing

And it ends up

Being something

So—different

From what your opinion

Of that experience would be

It’s—

It’s even harder

It’s even harder

To accept

So it took me a long time

It took me a long time

To accept

That that’s what it was

And then it was like—

It was like

Having to go through it

All over again