I Chose Kindness

The last two weeks of my senior year were just the beginning of a very long journey.

I told a couple more professors, and a few friends – I always knew who I could tell. It was like, after ignoring my inner voice screams for so long, I was determined to never ignore my instincts again. I knew who I could trust and who I couldn’t. I knew who I could tell and who to wait.The hardest day was, probably, the day I officially reported my rape to the school. It was a few days after I told my professor and a couple of days after I met with a school counselor. The timing could not have been better: I confronted my rape and already had an appointment set up. It was a small blessing, and I told her with the sole intention to never report it – to the police or to the school. I didn’t see the point – I had no physical evidence. The police wouldn’t do anything. I didn’t have any confidence in the small town police department where my college was located, anyway.What I didn’t count on was that my fire came back. After keeping silent for so long, after fighting down so many memories and emotions, I found that I finally found relief through talking about what D had done. Telling people who he really was finally gave me the absolution I had been begging myself for since the morning it happened.I wasn’t numb anymore, or at least not every moment. It’s like I was awake after being asleep for a long time – and I was madder than hell. I felt alive again. I wanted people to know the truth, and I wasn’t going to let cowardice keep me from reporting what had happened – not unless I thought that reporting would be too painful. I decided, after talking to the counselor and a slur of wonderful and supportive people, that my best course of action was to report the rape to the school.

As such, May 7 dawned, and I remember I lay there in my dorm bed for a while, asking myself if I was really going to do what I was going to do. I felt so tired, not physically but emotionally and mentally, and I told myself that I could back out. The one highlight of all this was after so much pain, I finally was kind to myself. I thought that, while I can’t control everything, I can control how I treat myself, and I chose kindness.

It didn’t take me long to swing my legs over the bed and get ready for the day. As I walked out the door, I remember feeling that this entire day was surreal; my roommates had no idea what I was going through, and neither did my family nor some of my best friends. Seniors everywhere were day drinking, playing beer pong, laying out in the sun, talking about how much they were going to miss our school. Meanwhile, I was waking up to go tell someone I didn’t know that I had been raped and wanted something to be done about it.I showered, wore a shirt that reminded me of my grandma – I think I knew I needed her strength – and I put on some light makeup. I was preparing for battle the only way I knew how. I felt a cocktail of emotions: anxiety, determination, fear, discomfort, and even excitement. I made sure to get to my counselor’s office on time, and soon after, she led me to one of the assistant dean’s offices – a woman, at my request, and a stranger.It was surreal. I don’t know how to feel about how the report process had gone; I didn’t know this woman and didn’t know her ticks, what her behaviors meant. I knew a lot about administrative people, but not her, and looking back, maybe that was a good thing. It was like talking to a blank page of a diary instead of someone who I had some sort of past encounters with that would color the page.At the behest of my counselor, I had written a letter to D detailing every horrible thing he had done to me, how I had felt. I can’t read that letter, a year and six months later. I don’t want to because I no longer need to. Believe it or not, that’s a happy ending. For a while, I wondered if it was honest enough, if it was real enough, because I submitted that letter to the dean as a confession. She ended up going over it with me to clarify everything. I spent so much time in that building where student affairs was, I would be quite happy to never step foot there again – and fortunately, I don’t think I ever will.Later that day on May 7, “shit got real.” They called me back to officially give me a no contact order to D, which is a campus version of restraining order, and said it was standard protocol. They were going to speak with him after I left the building and give him one. We were not to speak. The dean who interviewed me and another dean, who I disliked very much from past interactions (not disciplinary, but professionally), told me what would happen next. A private investigator would interview both me and D; we would supply any witnesses to what happened that night, and any character witnesses I wanted. It would be resolved likely within 60 days, which I later researched was a requirement (or recommendation, rather) of Title IX.

I had prepared myself for this moment.

I knew it would be hard, but I couldn’t have predicted what it was like reading that piece of paper with the “no contact” order. It was official – it was on paper – he would know now. He would know I had reported that he had raped me, and on some level, he would have to confront it. I was scared of what it would mean – of what it meant, as I knew now that other people would know and some would undoubtedly take his side and think I was a liar. I knew that was going to be hard.But, as scary as that piece of paper was, it was what I needed. It was a physical symbol of how there was no going back, and I think I also projected that it was a symbol of how people believed I could be telling the truth. I wasn’t a liar, and backing out would indicate I was. I wasn’t going to give D that satisfaction, and I wanted, more than anything, for him to have to confront what he did to me.That was what got me through that meeting. It’s what got me out of that building, and walking to my department’s end-of-the-year party where I sat, and socialized, and laughed for hours with people –  hours that D spent being told of the situation, and having no control over it (which felt so good). I don’t know who all he told, although I can guess. Thinking back on it, it’s nice to know that some parts of that surreal day comprised of at least a few moments where D had no control – and it was exactly because of something he had done. He violated me, and now I was holding him accountable.Another moment stands out, and it was one I knew was important but did not fully comprehend how for several months. The party was at my professor’s house, and I had emailed him that day what I was going to do; he had made eye contact with me, and I knew that he knew exactly how hard this day was. It helped me, that someone acknowledged what I was going through, even though they probably had never been specifically in my shoes.When I’d first told him, he’d said, “Fuck him…well, not really fuck him, but you know what I mean. Just fuck him.” At the party, once it’d died down and everyone was outside or in another room, we talked in the kitchen.

“What happened to you is much bigger than you – not saying you don’t matter – but what he did to you is part of a much bigger scale problem of the horrible things men do to women,” he’d said. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist.

I knew he was right, but it took me a while to realize why he was saying that. I think it’s because he knew, as the weeks and then months went by and the initial wind in my sails died down, I would go through a period where I saw so much evil. Every stranger was just trying to use me; every man in the news who raped a woman fueled my disgust; every nasty comment from men or women defending rapists or condemning rape victims in some fashion were like matches. I was burning myself inside out, and I understood myself enough to know it was poison, but it was words like my professor’s that helped me to actually seek help.Now, I realize my professor was trying to tell me that I wasn’t alone in my pain, that people understood me. I think he was also trying to prepare me for all the shit I would go through, all the horrible rape culture I would encounter every day. That’s the best comfort you can give someone when they start to see evil everywhere because of what is going on inside: to acknowledge their pain.After that, he made a joke about how none of it would happen if I wasn’t “such a slut” – and while I knew his play, I happily fell right into it. I hit him lightly and told him that I wasn’t a slut, and even if I was, it still wouldn’t matter, thanks.“There’s exactly the reaction I was looking for.”Then I smiled for real, because the instant indignation reminded me exactly who the fuck I was.It kept me strong, as it took many months for the sexual assault report and subsequent investigation to bring me what I wanted: for someone to tell D that they knew he was a rapist. Eventually, that is what happened – but it was even harder than I thought to get there.