trigger warning: rape
"Keep your head down, don't say anything, get through this. After all, you don't want a reputation." - Advice from my mother on how to work with a man that I stopped from raping a friend of mine.
When Timothy raped me, I had no problems letting anyone who asked what I happened. On the other hand, when Timothy raped me, I had a piece of paper saying he couldn't come within 500 feet of me. This time, there were no calls to the police, nothing formal and legal ever filed, no protection of the truth except by its witness. No, I didn't call the police, I was too busy physically preventing a man from attacking an incapacitated woman. Believe me when I say that during those moments, it was not an option. Thus the greyest of grey areas was entered, the realm of the 'almost rape'.
He didn't actually rape her, but I can see how haunted she is by it. How she avoids events he might be at, how she sits in the corner of the bar to keep an eye on the door to make sure he doesn't 'happen' upon the very same bar; and the subtle hauntings that I can't figure out how to describe, but they're there in the thin layers of vulnerability that sit just under her skin.
It was supposed to be a party, that night. It was supposed to be a party, but the mixers weren't very good, and they ran out of beer fast, so I wasn't really drinking. It was supposed to be a party and it took me a while to figure out what happened, why the bedroom door had latched closed with such finality. It was supposed to be a party, our overlapping circles, social and work both. It was supposed to be a party. Instead it was night of hard choices and even harder consequences.
One of the choices was the silences I chose to keep, the decision on my part not to call the police, and the consequence of him still falling in those overlapping circles. He showed up at the place I'm interning and I hadn't spoken to him in months, but it felt exactly like the day after that party, with the choices hanging in the air between us, and the slow, steady panic of not knowing what to do.
Keep my head down, keep that silence, hold those consequences. Right?
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