Being an “Atticus”

I didn’t leave anything out when I was interviewed, for fear that it would be brought up and used to paint me as dishonest. I didn’t care anyway - if they slut shamed me, well, my mindset could best be described as “I wish a bitch would.”

I was too busy stressing over who they had interviewed before me. I wondered what lies were being told about me. I wondered who was helping D out. I wondered if one of them was the girl he was now screwing, if she knew what was going on.  This was four days before I graduated from college.They were a blur. That Friday was the best night of them all. I went out with a great number of people, some of whom knew what was going on. A couple I hadn’t seen in years (one of whom is a really good friend). It was so bizarre, like a throwback. I felt like I was a sophomore again, when most of my older friends were still around. It was like a time machine, and I was the happiest I had been in months.Unfortunately, I was brought back to reality by the same device that helped me let loose: alcohol. I went to a club that night, and, while D left as soon as I got there (so I was told) and I felt safe with my company, the alcohol did its work. I became emotional that any of this was even going on. It was just the start, and I wanted it all to be over already.Most of all, I realized how drunk I was. I never intended to get that drunk. I was almost at the same level of drunk as The Night. It was a trigger, as it turned out. Something could’ve happened and I would’ve been as weak as before. But, unlike The Night, I had two nice girls I’d known casually walk me home. They soothed me when I drunkenly cried about how much D hurt me, how I knew that my former friend was involved and should I ask her if they were dating? They said no. They held my hair as I puked. They took my keys from me, walked me into my apartment, covered their eyes as I got into my pajamas, and tucked me into bed like I was a baby. I remember thinking the next day, nursing a horrible hangover, that if friends like that had surrounded me on The Night, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.I hung out with those girls the next day, humbled by their kindness, as we went to our Baccalaureate. I was so sick I had barely made it.I think it was the hangover, but then there was seeing D prior to the ceremony. I was running to get to the chapel. I saw a man in the distance, walking on the lawn, checking his phone. The pit of dread that permanently lived in my stomach grew. I knew that walk. D was allowed to stay at the school, you see, because he was helping with graduation preparations – classes were over and he wasn’t graduating, but the little weasel fuck got to stay.As I walked up to the chapel, D was talking to his new girl and her mom. Standing in line, not even 200 feet from him, I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. The school said I wouldn’t see him, but there he was. I can still feel how neurotic I was, being that close to him, knowing not one school official was keeping an eye out for him. Even as I remember it, the bile was growing in my mouth. I can remember the anger, the rage, like mercury was in my blood. I knew two things: one, the school did not care to enforce their own rules of us being apart – sacrificing my psychological well-being in the process. I could not rely on them to do the right things without taking additional steps. Two, I never wanted to feel this pain ever again.I fixated on that. I graduated a neurotic mess, even with a best friend from home coming up that day for support. I was scared, not fully enjoying the moment, wanting more than anything to leave this shithole and never come back. I kept thinking I would see D, now that I knew I couldn’t rely on the school to keep him away. I was scared someone in my family would see him and react. I will never forget how wrong my graduation day felt because of D, but also because of the school.It took me a while to fight back, because I basically had to play the waiting game. I was interviewed one more time, and I elected to do it over the phone with my parents in the room. That was a difficult day. I wasn’t eating well and had stress headaches just thinking about it all in the weeks leading up to it. When the day came, they told me all of his lies: I was his stalker, was just alleging rape to be vindictive, jealous of his new “relationship.” None of it was unexpected, but hearing it all was something else. I was crying and they asked me personal questions that I never wanted my father to hear. I think at one point he almost broke down, crouched over my window, and my mom comforting him. I will never forget that image.I spent about two weeks on my parents couch, watching Netflix and any of my old feel-good movies. The montage of Bridget Jones pushing herself to her limits as she kept picturing every awful thing Daniel Cleaver did to her hit a new place inside me. The skillful handling of a scandal by Claire Underwood to finally avenge her rape from 20 years ago gave me a sense of satisfaction. I nodded when Pennsatucky stalled her own hand and did not violate the man who had raped her in a truck. Dumbledore’s words about it taking as much bravery to stand up to our friends as our enemies reminded me of reporting D, when I knew that we had so many mutual friends and acquaintances. But, after a couple of weeks of decompressing – I had also just finished my most stressful year, academically – I went to my first counseling session. My counselor was a middle-aged woman who had been date-raped “before date rape was a ‘thing,’” as she put it. She knew about injustice. She knew how important it was to not rely on the school’s ruling for my emotional health, and she made sure I knew it too. She prepared me for that follow-up interview by reminding me to do something I knew would comfort me: journal, read, exercise, talk to a friend.The counseling was much needed. In additional to a rather scarring phone call, I had to deal with being reminded of D everywhere I went. I remember a particular vivid moment of going to my small, hometown theater with some friends to see Jurassic World; I was late, as usual, and as I hurried into the theater lobby, a tall boy with the same haircut as D was standing with his back to me. My heart dropped, possibly stopped, before my mind caught up and reminded me he wouldn’t be here. If he was, then it was a good thing. I could easily arrange to have him beaten with an inch of his life, and no one would get in trouble because we could hide our tracks.Not happy thoughts. Not kind thoughts. I did all I could to stop them, because I firmly believe that evil thoughts only beget evil within oneself. But because I tried so hard to not think those things, I’m not sorry for when I did. It was necessary for my healing. Part of being gentle to myself is realizing that I’m not an evil person for those thoughts. I had a lot of help in the coming months: from my counselors, from the people who proved to be my friends when I most needed them, from my old professors. One (Professor C) would talk with me months later through Facebook chat or text. He often would talk me through anxiety attacks and see how I was doing, would tell me about the difference in campus culture regarding rape; how he credited me for getting people to pay attention and for the school to take reporting more seriously. It helps, in hindsight, to think that. I couldn’t stop wishing it never happened. That’s all I could think about: I wanted to go back and do something different. I wanted so badly to shut off my phone before he texted me, or to just text him “no,” or to block his number before that night.  I wish I could go back to the morning after and go to my professor’s room instead of mine.But it’s that same professor in whom I first confided (Professor M), one who proved to be a great friend and a better mentor, who told me what I needed to hear to not drive myself insane. “The problem with wishing you could change it is that I’m worried it will always turn into you blaming yourself, and it’s not your fault.”

I knew she was right. I knew it before she even told me. I just needed to hear it.

Still, my hands shook every time I got a letter with my school’s crest on it. Still, I had a near heart attack when I opened the letter saying that the school had found D “more likely than not” to have raped me. Then…I felt some relief. The only downside was it said D could appeal if he fit one or more of three criteria; it didn’t appear he did. One of my best friends came over. I had him read the letter since he was good at deciphering extraneous details. He too didn’t think D had a case and the appeal was just part of the process.Around this time, I had begun job hunting again. I finally felt like I could do it. I succeeded and accepted a job in another state. While I was scared I would make a bad decision, I also felt like if I didn’t get out of the state, I would suffocate. I felt like I couldn’t escape D because of social media, and I was terrified of somehow seeing him in reality. I unfriended, unfollowed, even blocked some people. Some didn’t know what was happening yet, but I thought of them hearing D’s story, of them believing I would lie about it all, and it was much easier to cut them out of my life. I didn’t have the luxury of “assuming the best” of the situation. I knew the reality of what happened, and if anyone wanted to believe otherwise, they were no friend of mine.His specter still followed me out of state. One day, in late summer, I was told that he did file an appeal. I was told it was rejected. I was told his sentence stood. After school started, I heard he was on campus from a reliable source, and that the residence life team in his building – a co-ed building, mind you, where girls got drunk all the time and D could easily assault someone else – was told to keep an eye on him. I called the head dean to see what was going on, and she said he did fulfill his “punishment” – which was counseling for alcohol and consent. Later the shock would wear off and I wondered how in the hell counseling could be seen as a punishment, when the whole nature of counseling relied on it being voluntary. Oh, and he was on “social probation,” which I had no confidence would be enforced after my last few days on campus. He would not be allowed to be a president of his fraternity or hold any leadership positions.That last part was a request of mine, by the way – that he shouldn’t get to hold a leadership position. They asked me what I wanted his punishment to be, and I said I wanted him removed as fraternity president. I didn’t know what else I wanted, other than I wanted someone to tell him that he did rape me. I guess I assumed they would do the right thing. It was their job to punish rapists, right? Not mine. Like so many other college students, I got a rude awakening. While I have no doubt rumors circulated about his being removed from the fraternity, some of which were quite truthful, it really did not feel enough. I felt bereft of justice. I got angry again – at D, but also at myself for trusting the school, and at the school for betraying my trust. It was a vicious cycle. I struggled at work. I still got triggered at the thought of alcohol, at men looking at me, at reading about rape, at rape “jokes” on the Internet. Even the gym was a trigger, thinking of times when I would go at school and see D there, although I worked through that because without exercise I would have been much more unhappy.I also found out a bombshell: I could have appealed his sentence by asking for a harsher sentence. I remember reading that original letter about what D could do to “appeal” to my friends, to old professors. The professors said that yes, it was in there technically, but the language used would be confusing for anybody. As usual, my school didn’t do as good as they could have. I felt angry all over again. Maybe I wouldn’t have asked for anything – maybe I would’ve been too scared of being perceived as “vindictive,” which D called me in his testimony to the investigators. But maybe I would’ve. I never would know, all because my school didn’t bother to do their job well.So, one late September night, I filled out a Title IX form alleging discrimination based on gender. It was my last hope, because after how the school handled it, how the school would kick out students for cheating but not for rape, how the school let D hang around when he had no academic reason to be there…It just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t let it go.I don’t know how that investigation will turn out. I have no doubt in my mind the school did its best to spin it and sabotage it, set up the Title IX investigators with their “prize” students who will say everything is rosy, but what I do know is that I tried. I told them all the facts, supplied all the paperwork.I also told a newspaper my story. I took a lunch break, parked in a gas station’s parking lot and spilled my story to a total stranger. I don’t think he asked a single question beyond the first, he just let me talk. It was good for me. It also ended up being front page news. My school got some “bad press,” and after years of knowing all the shady things they have done, it felt so damn good. I wish it was under better circumstances. I wish I had not been raped. But, I can’t change that. I changed how I reacted to it. I fought, even if nothing comes of it all. Maybe it was  a “lighthouse” moment for someone, as Emily Doe wrote in her letter to Brock Turner (as reported on Buzzfeed). Maybe nothing came of it all beyond that it was cathartic and helped me heal.What I am really proud of though can be best understood through “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Atticus Finch talks to his son Jem about defending a black man accused of rape in the 1930s. He knows he won’t win, but that’s the point, he explains: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."I know what Atticus was talking about. This situation was a defining moment for me because I never could have imagined just how hard it would be to show courage. I never could have imagined how hard it would be just to get out of bed, to go to work, to seek psychiatric help when I was suicidal. It was so hard to talk to people about it; it was so hard to relive it. It was so hard to put my story out there. It’s even hard to write these blog posts, to an extent.

But it also has been completely worth it, and in that way, I did win.

I now live in a big city, typing on a laptop in a coffee shop, hair on my clothes from an old cat I adopted earlier this year. I pay my own bills, I work two jobs, I don’t have toxic relationships, I’ve dated again, I take my medication, and I love my life.You know where D is? He got expelled. The fall after he raped me, I found out that he got kicked out under mysterious circumstances. I heard whispers, and for a while that tore me up because the whispers involved him being in a girl’s room that he “wasn’t supposed to be in.” I should’ve done more, I thought. I should've done more to warn people about him, warn more women.Eventually though, all the people in my life got through to me, telling me it wasn’t my fault and that I did all I could. I didn’t let the rape control me, and while that meant taking time to grieve for all that I had lost, it also meant that I stopped letting it keep me from living my life.That’s what it’s all about though – finding your identity because it means taking control back. It's not easy. It has to be done on your time. Some people won’t understand. They’ll tell you to get over it and not understand how that isn’t helpful; tell you, even gently, that it’s time to move on. But you won’t, and you might bristle when you’re told this, but you don’t lash out because you’re done being angry with people who don’t deserve it. Instead you’ll turn to yourself, and you’ll seek help on your own, and you’ll move and switch jobs and set up a nice little apartment for yourself in a big city that is filled with things to do. You’ll be lonely sometimes, but you’ll also reflect. You’ll slowly give yourself some confidence back. And the idea of a new you really settles in, makes you proud instead of sad. You had to say goodbye to every dream, every version of yourself that you’ve ever had. It takes over a year. But once it feels right, man, does it feel right.The new self feels like it’s your choice, and that realization makes it all better. You even see a picture of him, and just like your therapist from so long ago said to you would one day be the case, you hardly feel a thing. You aren’t angry or feel sick or have a horrible feeling encompass your whole body. Instead you snort, because he got fat.Your thoughts are off to somewhere else – plans for home, for New Year’s Eve, trips out of town, new friends from the side-job you take to pay for a new car. You’re you and you don’t feel sick about it. You’re growing up. You’re not who you were two years ago, and it’s because you can’t be. You’re too busy being better.