#MeToo

*Trigger Warning* This is about rape.  If this will negatively affect you, please stop reading now.
 
I wrote this in October 2018. Last year brought up so much of my past traumas, things I didn’t even realize I was still carrying.  It was fucking painful…. but has also allowed me to really work on these things.  I’ve lived with these in secret.  Carried this pain while pretending it didn’t exist.  It wasn’t until I said them out loud to a friend that I recognized I have been carrying this darkness with me for over half of my life.

I have been in an internal struggle weather I wanted to share this for the past 6 months…but I know that it is time to share. 

I spent years not speaking this because I was worried about him.  Worried about people who would know.  Never once taking into consideration that not sharing was taking so much away from my life and my happiness.  How internalizing this, created a space in my life that made me completely crazy. That by not sharing I was giving away my power.

I didn’t report because it was someone I loved.  A man I thought I was going to spend my life with. I now see that this moment changed me in ways I didn’t even know.  That I walked a darker path for years because of it. That ignoring it did so much damage.   
 
I had been drinking with someone I trusted with my life.  I said no…. repeatedly.  He still decided he was going to take what he wanted.  People saw, honked their horns, gave him a proverbial high-five as they drove by. 
They didn’t know that I didn’t want that.  I never wanted what happened to me.  It was a painful realization that I wasn’t even safe with the person I loved.  A person I thought loved and respected me.

I spent years listening to people talk about rape as something far off that couldn’t have possibly happened to someone they know.  I was standing right in front of them, but they didn’t know, and I wasn’t ready to tell them. 
I’m not sharing this for sympathy.  I am sharing this because it is part of my truth and it needs to be told.  It changed me….and is still changing me.  If one other woman who reads this doesn’t feel so alone that is all that matters to me.
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I am letting this go.  Sharing this is me taking back my power.  Accepting that I am not what happened to me.  From this moment I am stepping forward with my power, with the understanding that I am here because of this moment and being proud that I am no longer giving him my power.