What the F: Issue 13

Page 16

This piece requires a content

warning

for explicit descriptions of sexual assault,

violence, and rape. The complete piece, which details the author’s experience more fully,

can be found online at whatthefmagazine. wordpress.com.

told, though we are conscious of the emotional

Scars

readers to take care of themselves.

By anonymous

WTF believes that these stories need to be

distress it may cause readers. We remind our

1. Just focus on the lines. Stay in the lines. 5. His laugh becomes a menacing echo in my ears. I try to focus on my breathing. It’s too quiet. Way too quiet. I crank up the radio, barely noticing that all I’m listening to is the empty static between stations. 6. If you make it home, you can forget all about this night. It will just be a regular old work day in the back of your mind and – SHIT. 7. I jerk the wheel to the left and narrowly avoid drifting onto the sidewalk. 9. 5:30 a.m. I’m home. Too bad I have to be up in three hours. What if he’s there tomorrow? I collapse into bed and clutch my pillow to my stomach where my insides are clenched and quivering as if preparing for a gut punch. 12. I should have screamed. 14. But he’s my boss – my forty-something, married boss. What the hell am I supposed to do? 21. I pretend everything is alright. And everyone around me believes it. I plaster on my best smile and keep moving. The few people who know the story check up on me occasionally, and I simply respond, “I’m fine; I mean this stuff just happens I guess.” It shouldn’t be so easy to put up this happy front. 23. I wish I could say that incident was the first and only time I’d ever felt this emptiness and confusion that lingered in the back of my head before. I wish I could, but I can’t. 28. Nothing happened; you’re fine; nothing happened. 33. I distractedly reach for the hand-blown glass bong coated with glimmering colors swirling in psychedelic

12

patterns that sits next to my bed and take a hit. Or five. The smoke clouds my room in the same way it clouds my head. Maybe I appeared easy; maybe it seemed as though I were asking for it – Each puff pushes me further into oblivion, further from that first time. From that second time. I slowly drift to sleep. 34. It’s your fault. 35. My hands are sweating so profusely I can barely hold onto my phone. I glance down at the notes I’ve quickly typed out on the glaring white screen. Fuck it. I put my phone down and step up to the microphone. I clear my throat and start to talk. My voice is shaking but I push through it. 36. I proceed to tell an audience of a hundred strangers about my rape. About the boy who took my innocence and smashed it into a million pieces. About the impossibility of forgetting as I am forced to walk by his house every. single. day. About how every time I see his dingy moped leaning up against the worn-stone porch, my heart beats a little faster and my hands get a little clammier. About how I never even found out his name, but his face is branded in my memory. About the questions that have swirled around and around in my head for the past five months. What did I do wrong? Why do I feel like I have to justify every action of that night when I tell the story to my closest and extremely supportive friends? Why did I just ignore it for so long? 37. Maybe the numbness was all I could handle. Feeling nothing was easier than exposing myself to the depth of my pain. 38. I gaze out into the crowd, suddenly struck by a feeling of awe. So many people showed up to my organization’s “Speak Out” event. So many people came just to listen to and support the ungodly number of sexual assault survivors on campus. The strength of


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