Stronger Now
October 2014
The semester before her assault she met a group of people in her class and they stuck together. One night a few of them went to a party. She hadn’t eaten much before so she became drunk faster than she expected. She was all the way out in the suburbs and planned tostay with friends that evening so she didn’t have to drive home, back to the city.
She felt sick, went to the bathroom and closed the door. She passed out near the toilet. Her friend who was hosting the party came in and she remember him taking her upstairs to put her to bed. She was telling him that she wanted to stay near the toilet because she felt sick but he picked her up and moved her anyway.
“I remember flashes of things, being thrown on a bed and covers billowed over me.”
She woke up because she started to throw up and fell out of bed. She saw her clothes were in disorder and didn’t know how that happened. He was laying on the bed next to her, on the side she fell off and took her into the bathroom again. He told her she needed to clean up and change her clothes. She passed out again.
She woke up to a sensation of something cold and realized what was going on. She asked what he was doing and what was going on but he didn’t stop. She suffers from anxiety and began to have a panic attacked. She was crying and hyperventilating. He told her to be quiet, he didn’t want anyone to hear.
She was able to finally make it downstairs where her other friends were. Two of them helped her get into another bed. He never emerged from his room. He was the one who was supposed to drive her home in the morning, but he just stayed there. She was able to get a ride with another friend and tried to continue with her life like nothing had happened.
After the assault, one thing that was very difficult for her was recognizing that what she experienced was assault. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because he knew she was in a relationship. She messaged him on Facebook asking him about he and he replied to her that he wasn’t the type of guy who takes advantage of girls, that she seemed into it. Later on, he mentioned in a group chat that all of her friends were having how drunk she was, how she had passed out, so he knew exactly what state she was in.
“When you hear rape, you think of something really awful and it always involves penetration, so I had a lot of trouble identifying it as sexual assault”
She tried to be positive and the friends who she told tried to help her through it but said things like “it could’ve been worse, he could’ve raped you” and that continued to ignite her struggle to really recognize her experience.
She visited the UIC Counseling and Advocacy center to help her work through her experiences as well as reading about what other survivors experienced and tried to cope with how she felt.
Eventually, since she couldn’t control her reactions, she began to try to control her environment. She began restricting her calories to 100 calories a day and would go for 5 mile runs. It helped tire her out so she could sleep at night and gave her something else to focus, something less painful than her assault. She also stopped going to class.
At the end of the semester, she went home. She thought “Ok so I have a month. This is my time to get over it and really have a break”
She didn’t tell her family. They would have been angry that she had been drinking and they came from a conservative background where any type of sexual activity would be frowned upon.
After the break she went back to school and finally told her then partner. He reacted how she expected. He was upset and she had to take care of him through that time period. This made her realize that she needed to break up with him.
3 Months Later
She began to eat again and had started feeling better, however, even though the break up with her then partner was necessary, they spent the last three and a half years together. It was very hard to get through.
She went to a Catholic school and at her home she was raised to believe that sex was shameful and wrong, so she decided to wait until marriage. She had never had sex before this, so assault was her first type of sexual contact.
“I was upset that someone could else could touch my body without my consent and I hadn’t even had a consensual sexual experience”
She worked on adding consensual experiences to her life to help her reclaim the power that was taken from her.
She said that in her reading many victims are portrayed as not wanting to be touched after their assault. For her, it was the complete opposite. She set up multiple dating profiles and scheduled a date every night. She began getting into what she thought was BDSM where she was the submissive, but looking back then men who she talked to were not healthy nor was this a true BDSM relationship. She wants it to be known that there is a healthy way to have a BDSM relationship and just like any sexual relationship, they can be healthy or unhealthy.
She met one man who wanted to participate in the physical and emotional aspects of BDSM, the humiliation and other things. They didn’t have sex, but he gave her a safe word just in case.
She was being interviewed to be one of his submissives. The next morning, he climbed on top of her and pinned her down with his knees on her arms and began to orally rape her. She wasn’t able to use the safe word to make him stop. He finished and she had a mess of tears, saliva and semen on her. He showed her to the shower and she went home.
This pattern repeated itself over and over. Her behavior became riskier and riskier. At the time, she didn’t see it as unhealthy, she just thought she was exploring another side of her sexuality, a way to take power back over what was taken from her.
She met another man through her dating profiles. They had only messaged but he had wanted her to sleep with other people for him. She wasn’t comfortable doing that, but he kept pressuring her. She decided to toy with the idea to placate him. He decided to set up a hotel room and 2 people for her to sleep with, he would meet her afterward. She told him no, she didn’t want to and that’s when everything changed.
He sent her the name of the school she went to, the place she worked, list of names of her friends and family. He told her if she didn’t do this, he would send screenshots of everything they talked about to everyone she knew.
She had a panic attack when all of those messages came through. She felt weak and worthless. This time, she went straight to the police who were able to contact him. After that, he sent her one last group of messages about how worthless she was and how she’d never find anyone to love her because he was as good as it was going to get and never contacted her again. She filed a police report in order for the police to contact him initially, but decided not to press charges or have him arrested because she didn’t want to go to court. She didn’t want her family to know what happened and happy to have it disappear at the time.
Forward with Healing
“Going through harassment at that level, that was my wake-up call that I was getting into dangerous situations”
She began to focus on herself, on being happy and healthy. It took almost a year to get through many of the big triggers. She’d wake up from nightmares, screaming. She’d dream about the man sending her text messages, that she was interviewing for a job and from his file he would pull messages that man sent him.
Those dreams decreased over time and now she has a healthy, caring partner who helps her through those moments. They have a healthy sexual relationship. She now experiences what a healthy sex partner is like.
“It’s all about communication. I can always say no. No matter what, he’s been really supportive”
He’s helped her grow and move past her experiences. They’ve been together for a year now and have signed their first lease together.
Combating Triggers
While she has always struggled with triggers, her anxiety worsened after her first assault. That was the first time in almost 4 years that she had a panic attack. She went to the doctor a couple of weeks after to seek help for her anxiety and the doctor just told her they should talk about her alcohol consumption because that wasn’t healthy.
“I felt blamed for what happened, like it was my fault.”
She was given a prescription for Xanax but eventually stopped taking it. Now when she experiencing anxiety, she removes herself from that situation because her triggers are all situational. She focuses on her breath and taking care of her body. Normally they pass withinabout 20 minutes.
She focused on school and now work since she’s graduated. She has become really successful when she puts herself into something healthy.
Her supportive relationship also helps her move past her abuse. In her previous relationship, she was the emotional rock for both of them. Now, they equally support one another.
When she has nightmares or flashbacks, she doesn’t typically like to talk about them, but her partner will be there for her and hold her until she falls back asleep. They normally won’t reoccur the rest of the night.
Telling Her Partner
It was on the 3rd or 4th date. She was at his house and they were kissing. All of the sudden she began to cry. He asked her if she was ok and she asked if they could stop for a bit. He sat with her and waited until she initiated again.
At that moment, he knew there was something in her past. He told her that many women in his life have experienced some sort of violence. For the next few months, she slowly shared details of what had happened to her.
“We were learning and growing together. It was a process”
Advice for other survivors
“The things that happen to you after are normal. I tried to control them because they really scared me and I think I wouldn’t have had to go through a lot of the things I went through if I knew they were normal. I think reaching out to support networks is really important.”
She received a lot of support from her campus advocacy network who got her in touch with both the police and a counselor.
Stronger Now
“I chose the words ‘Stronger Now’ because I really feel like I am stronger now because of what I went through. Before, I got good grades and did what I was supposed to do and never really had anything bad happen in my life. I thought that I was over having panic attacks and experiencing strong anxiety. After the assault, everything changed. I’d lock myself in the gym bathroom too afraid to walk home alone. I found myself crammed in a corner of my closet, because I felt safe there, on the phone with crisis hotline. I had to work through a lot of fear and anxiety and pain through therapy, but it also became my own personal journey. I was single, and my best friend was largely unavailable because she was dealing with being diagnosed with a genetic heart condition that changed her life forever. It’s for the best that I dealt with this mostly on my own because I now feel much stronger. I have a much better understanding of myself, how to care for myself, and I feel like I deserve that. I also developed much more compassion, for myself but for others as well. I should never have been assaulted or abused, what happened isn’t okay, but it did spark in me a personal journey of growth. I am much happier with who I am today, and I am Stronger Now.”