I went to New York City to spend New Year's with my best friends. We stood in Times Square for hours, screamed and danced and drank champagne with the crowds at midnight. We went to the Limelight, a club with a $50 cover. We were sure it would be awesome. The last thing I remember was dancing with my friends at 3AM. I woke up at 3PM. The sun was shining in the window. I thought, "Wow, it's late", and I looked next to me and there was this black guy I'd never seen before. I lay very still and tried to make sure I was really awake. Then for the first time in my life, I pinched myself to make sure. I moved to disentangle mysef from the sheets and realized that I was completely naked except for my top pushed up around my shoulders. I was terrified. I jumped up. The guy woke up. I screamed at him where are my clothes?! where am i?! what happened?! He said he found me on the street in the snow in my tank top after some guy had tried to molest me. He said he had thought I was an escort because you didn't see white girls like me around there.

I never found my underwear. My socks were somehow stuffed in my pants pockets, something I had never done in my life, and I wondered what must've been happening when someone removed my pants and put them there.

I was in another part of New York City miles from the club I had been at. I was so scared because I didn't know if he had raped me or the man I had ran away from had or both, or what else might've happened that I didn't remember. It was even stranger that the guy lived with his family, so I sat in the kitchen with his father, shaking and wierded out, until the police came. The police questioned them, then took me to the police station.

I was there for a long time, and then they took me to the hospital. I was there for 12 hours. They did every kind of test on me for roofies and rape. They took all of my clothes away to be tested. It hadn't sunk in. I joked in a twisted way talking to the social worker, "You're not going to send me something that says RAPE VICTIM across the front are you? Haha." They gave me a prescription for anti-HIV medicine to be taken twice a day for a month in case I had contracted the virus.

So I did, all during IAP, every noon and midnight. People would ask me how my New Year's was. "It was great, yeah, Times Square was awesome", I would smile... and try to suppress the nausea in my stomach. The side effects of the anti-HIV medication made this a common feeling. I was sick all the time. I had horrible abdominal pains, fevers, chills, nausea, diarrhea. I coughed, sweated and writhed the month away.

The thought of dating, guys, or sex repulsed me for quite a while. Whenever people referred to being raped by an 18.03 test, I felt sick. Whenever people talked about sexual assault on the news, I felt scared and sad. I did not feel safe or secure anymore. I felt very vulnerable and very jaded. I had a hard time laughing. Everything seemed dark. I did not trust people. I got HIV tested twice, and I thanked God it was negative.

I kept calling the police and the hospital, month after month. Finally over a year later, they told me for certain that I had been drugged and raped.

It is something I try not to think about. It is a part of me, it destroyed an innocent faith in the innate goodness of people. With time and love, I have moved on. I have never remembered anything. I hope I never will.

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There was a girl who I had a huge crush on in high school. After several months, she indicated that she was also interested in me, but once we said that we were "dating," she became paranoid and would only talk to me over the phone. When I asked her what was wrong, I was totally unprepared for her response: when she was in junior high school, her sort-of boyfriend threw a party near her house, slipped alcohol into her drink, and took her to a bedroom to rape her. She foiled him by throwing up on him before blacking out, but when she woke up she was so ashamed she went home and slit her wrists, fortunately not bad enough to kill herself. Our relationship failed utterly, but as with her wrists, her trust healed as well. Last I heard, she transferred colleges to be closer to her boyfriend of three years. The scars remain, but they do not prevent her from living life to the fullest.

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He was my friend, my good friend, or so I thought. He invited me to one of his fraternity's formals, and I was so excited to go. I felt so special, so privileged, that he asked me to be his date.

I wanted to be the best date possible. I wanted to show him a good time, to prove to him that he made a good decision in asking me ... but I had NO intention of sleeping with him.

The biggest problem with the night is that I don't even remember what happened. I know that I drank a lot, but in all my years of drinking I have never blacked out before. I can remember a couple of things about the end of the night: I remember falling up the stairs on our way to his room; I remember sitting on his window ledge and smoking a cigarette; I remember him tying a tie to his door so no one would walk in on us.

And then I woke up. I woke up next to him, in his bed, and all of my clothes were put on wrong. It was obvious that we had had sex, but I could not believe that all of that could have happened without me remembering it ... I don't even remember kissing him!

Since that morning we have talked maybe three times for more than a minute. He confirmed the fact that we had had sex, and (thank God!) he used a condom ... besides those facts, I know very little.

I have all of these questions I want answered, but I am too scared to ask. Was I all over him? Is what happened a normal event for him? Does he regret what happened? Why have all of our conversations been weird since then? Who in his fraternity knows? How drunk was he when it happened? How could he not tell that I was in NO condition to have sex? Did he take advantage of me? Should I be mad at him?

I feel so dirty for what I've done, and I am so ashamed .. so ashamed that I just want to pretend that it never happened. I have had sex with three people in my life; two guys were from before college, and they were very serious boyfriends, and the last guy was a guy who I thought was my good friend, but who I had sex with once, when I was so drunk that I don't even remember it.

Though I know I share responsibility for this sexual act because I drank alcohol on my own accord, I still nevertheless feel violated. Rape is not always a clear cut act. Perhaps in my drunken state I willing participated, but I never, never would have had sex with this guy if I was aware of what I was doing. And I know now that even if I've known a guy for years, ALMOST THREE YEARS, if I am not in control of the situation and of myself, bad things can happen.

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i submitted my story last year, although to be posted but not read, i think. [i'd like my story to be read this year.] writing out my experiences have helped me to come to terms with myself and who i am and what my relationships are, so here i am again, writing my story again hoping that it might trigger something familiar in you.

most people would not call what happened to me, "rape". but i do now, although i didn't then. even though - and this is important - even though i am now dating and very much in love with the man who did this to me. we have both grown and he has apologized and understood what he did was wrong.

we broke up about 2 years ago, after a very messy first phase of our relationship. we had just started having sex a few months before. and he told me, it would ease the pain of the breakup if i continued having sex with him. i didn't want to. but everytime we would hang up, it would happen. i would tell him to stop, but i'd let myself get carried away. i would say, ok let's hang out, but i don't want to have sex with you. and he would still try to get me to sleep with him.

after a few months of this, i was falling apart. i felt horrible for both not being able to tell him no (even though i was), and i still felt like i was leading him on! that summer i ended up sleeping with two guys i didn't care about. somehow in a twisted way, this was my way of getting back at my ex, as if proving to myself that i could detach emotions and sex, and that that unwanted sex couldn't hurt me.

one day my friend said to me, "you shouldn't have to tell him to stop. he shouldn't be putting you in that situation." suddenly it began to look different. suddenly i began to think, maybe there isn't something wrong with me after all. maybe it's not me.

and my recovery began there. i've never told my boyfriend that i think of what happened during those months as rape -- i'm not sure he would understand. but internally this is important -- internally it helps me understand that it wasn't all my fault. my boyfriend did, as i said, eventually tell me that he felt bad for always coercing me into sex. that he realized that i didn't want to do it, but he didn't care.

so i guess this is a more subtle kind of rape. but i'm sure it happens to a lot of women in relationships. i'm sure it destroys a lot of confidence and creates a lot of insecurity. you begin to look for security in sex, and you wonder why you can't find it. everyone has their own healing process; but for me, considering my experiences within this context was important.

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I was 18. The summer between high school and college. I was living in another state, taking care of my grandma for the summer, living with her. My cousin, who was 22, took me down to the nearby army base. We met a friend of hers and started drinking before going to the base. Then drove down. Went to the club; my cousin and I met 2 guys and I started kissing one. We hung out and danced with them, they bought us drinks. Someone suggested we go to the barricks. I was drunk and didn't think anything bad of it. My prior experience with men had been with high school boys who listened to "no."

We went to the barricks, my cousin and her guy on one bed, me and the guy I was with on the top bunk of the other bed. We were making out, and I was fine with it. Then he wanted to have sex. I didn't. I said no, he didn't listen. I said no, same thing. I gave up, scared and alone. My cousin was having sex with the other guy and I was afraid to interrupt them. I didn't want to make a scene. I was afraid of the man I was with; he didn't threaten me physically but I was intimidated. I asked him to please use a condom, and thank God he did. When he was done he hung the condom off of a coke can. I felt humiliated. But I'd been drinking so I figured it was my fault. Grow up and move on.

I didn't consider it rape then, but my first semester at college I started to realize it was. I said no, I tried to stop it, I told him I didn't want it. I have flashbacks, visuals of the room, of the flag hanging on the wall above my head. When I think about what went on physically I shudder or close up.

It was 7 years before I felt safe enough to be alone with a man and have sex with him. I'm now capable of loving, trusting, and having sex with men. It's been 8 years since I was raped, and I'm still healing. I am a survivor, not a victim anymore.

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My roommate in college was raped. She got out of her car one night after coming home from the library and a guy jumped out of the bushes, and put a gun to her head. He raped her on the front lawn, and nobody even heard. It was dark, so he was hard to identify, so the police will probably never catch him. For a long time she was afraid to go anywhere after dark, and to drive anywhere alone. But she managed to finish the semester, and graduate. The event was so horrible and so difficult to talk about, and I remember thinking that I wanted to help her so much, and there was nothing I could really do. I was so impressed by her strength and the fact that she didn't let it destroy her. This wasn't date rape, or rape by an acquaintance; this was an attack by a stranger in the darkness. After that, I have become much more cautious, and much more careful to pay attention to my surroundings. The first time she shared her story at a Take Back the Night March I was standing next to her. And afterwards I could not believe how many other friends and sorority sisters of mine came up to tell me that they, too, had been raped. This truly is the worst of crimes, because victims are not even allowed to be victims by our society. They are somehow blamed or "asked for it", and this attitude is wrong. My roommate did not ask to be raped; she did not ask to have her life threatened; she was just trying to study for her Chemistry test and go home. Although I have never been raped, because of her, my life has been forever changed by rape.

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I had thought it funny, indignant almost, when they asked for my boyfriend's signature when I agreed to donate eggs. Afterall, don't I own my body?

Was I naive.

When I told my then-boyfriend about wanting to donate eggs he wasn't at all enthusiastic or even supportive about it. I thought hey it's ok we don't have to agree on everything.

During the process of preparing for the donation, I received fertility drugs and had to refrain from sex. My ex was quite unhappy about it but understood the consequences so whenever I reminded him he would stop his attempts. The retrieval was a outpatient procedure done with inserting a needle through the vaginal wall. I was given pain reliever and some sedatives so I wouldn't be awake or feel the procedure. It took only a couple of hours and afterwards my ex accompanied me home. I was lying down on the couch, beginning to feel the pain caused by the needle, head still spinning from the sedative drug, when he started to show interest in having sex. I said, "I'm hurting down there. My head is spinning..." He didn't seem to care. I said no, please don't, I am still extremely fertile and might get pregnant. Then he pulled out a condom. Not really having the energy to put up a fight I just lay there, trying to disengage...

Later he had told me that he felt violated by my donating eggs, as if some of his properties had been taken away. And of course the no sex for a month part was certainly unpleasant. All this sent a cold chill down my spine. I suddenly remember the look on the nurse's face when I raised my brow and asked "why?" to the boyfriend's signature line. It dawned on me that she was refraining to be cruel by not commenting, but perhaps felt sorry for me for the unpleasant surprise down the road. It didn't matter who I thought owns my body. My boyfriend felt he was entitled to it, sexual and reproductive capacity and all.

It was a rude awakening. I ended up leaving him, telling him how horrible I felt about his insisting to have sex when I was in pain. He was actually surprised.

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From: good little Chinese girl

Sumbission: I was only 4 years old, too young to understand what was happening. We used to go visit relatives every now and then, like all Chinese families do. Every time we paid this one particular family a visit, my twin cousins would take me to the garage and ask me to do them a favor. They said they needed help going to the bathroom and asked me to lay down. Then they'd take my clothes off and take turns "going to the bathroom." I always wondered why it hurt when they did that, but they told me not to tell anyone, that it's our secret. I wanted to help them since they were nice to me, so I didn't complain.

In elementary school, I gradually realized that what they did was wrong, but I did not understand what rape meant until much later. As a teen, I would have flashbacks of the incident from time to time, followed by crying fits in my room where no one could hear. I didn't know who I could tell so to this day, I have kept it a secret.

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From:

Sumbission: Often, in life, people hide the truths of themselves behind their words and public actions. We as a culture tend to tone down our true emotions and very real experiences because there is an underlying faux pa in saying things that might upset other people or diverge from the "normal." I know people tend to do this because I have done it for most of my life. I constantly relay the facts of my life through careful choosing of my words. Another common approach of mine is to laugh about everything. I tell my stories from childhood and use lighthearted intonation and tell stories that are heavily laden with sarcasm. This produces laughter from my audience until a select few actually think about what I had said and quietly say to themselves, "Wait, that's not really funny, that's actually quite sad." Actually putting yourself out there to the general public is an extremely difficult task to undertake. Many words in the English language immediately produce cringing from whomever happens to hear them, thus, no one ever wants to be the one to have to use them.

I was raped when I was fifteen years old. It was right before my senior year in high school started. My parents and I were on our summer vacation in Disney World at the time, and I was raped by a 22-year-old who was one of the lifeguards at the resort we were staying at in Orlando. This I can easily say was the worst experience of my life. Beyond that though, I realized there was much more to my life than I had led myself to believe. I allowed myself to play hide-and-seek with my own mind during my entire life. I lived the world's longest game of hide-and-seek that I had been continuously losing, because I never let my self find all of my opponents. I only let myself see the what I wanted to see. Rather than confronting anything, I willingly left my opponent lurking in the shadows, its whereabouts and when it would jump out unbeknownst to me.

I had been sexually abused for most of my life. Despite the reality of the situation, I had not put much thought into any of it for basically the entire time it was occurring because it was easier to numb myself and not question anything than it was to ponder the stability of my life. Many people think of sexual abuse during childhood in highly stereotypical ways: dad coming into the bedroom drunk in the middle of the night, or some friend of the family who sneakily seduced the child over a period of time. For my own experiences however, I cannot say that I fit into those categories at all. My older brothers had played roles in the abuse over some of the years while they taught me their "games." In addition to that, I somehow found myself in many troubled situations, be it with complete strangers or with those who were supposed to be friends. Despite the situations I found myself in over the years, I never let myself think about any of them. I built thick walls around myself and my emotions, eventually making them so strong that even I could not break through them for myself. I had thrown myself into a unconscious pattern of continual self-denial. I managed to ignore the grabbing, the binding, the pressuring, the groping, and the threatening words. I swept them all into the landfill of my mind, hoping never to see them again.

In school, I have always been at least two years younger than the majority of my peers; I was a 15-year-old senior in high school. This age difference, in my opinion, contributed a great deal to my unwillingness to acknowledge any difficulties in my life. On the forefront, I was physically smaller than everyone else by a great deal, and that didn't lend to my being able to defend myself in any uncomfortable situations. I could not break free from the linebacker who pinned me on the couch at a party; I could not prevent the grabs from the hands of the post-grads who though I was "just so cute" at thirteen years of age. On the deeper level, I was much less sure of myself and what was "normal" for people in my grade levels. I had never known anyone else to speak of any of the things I was finding myself faced with, so I wrote them off by deciding that either it was ordinary or if it wasn't, then I must have something wrong with me and that was the last thing I wanted people to think. I did not know whether or not every girl had her head forcibly pushed into the lap of the boy who, rumor had it, had a crush on her. With an intense fear of conflict to add to that, I never said anything to anyone, ever, no matter how uncomfortable I was. I let all that had given me an underlying fear of everyone: friends, family, strangers; I let it all slide by. I managed to paint a lovely facade of happiness on my face and continue on with my life. This facade became the me I knew and preferred, and the only me my friends ever saw.

The only times any feelings of discomfort ever managed to find their way back to the surface of my mind was when I was attempting to start a new relationship with someone. I would be kissing someone, and I wouldn't be thinking about the boy I was sharing the kiss with, nor was I thinking about the kiss itself. Instead I was questioning myself over and over again. "What am I doing? How did I get here? Is this really what I want?" I berated myself within my mind the entire time, every time I kissed a boy. My past experiences which I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge or deal with had given me an ever-present ghost of a fear of relationships. I subconsciously told myself "everything is fine, just always smile pretty, and dammit, watch your back." Until a little while before I turned 16, I was unable to hold a relationship for longer than three weeks. This seemed to me to be unexplained, and I continued to disregard it, for I could not reason with it.Halfway through school-meeting during my freshman year in the middle of one of those dead-cold winters that are native to New England, I sat whispering to my roommate Sarah in the next row up, waiting for the speeches to wrap up so I could end the discomfort of staying seated on the cold wooden pews. My small twelve-year-old frame was easily hidden behind the ice hockey recruit who sat in front of me, so whispered conversations were easy to conduct. Mr. DeRigo stood at the front for a few seconds, dead silent. Finally his silence infected the crowd of students before him and the hum of whispering stopped. "I'm sorry to have to interrupt you all. Is it ok if I continue up here?" The student body shifted in their seats en masse, somewhat embarrassed after their inconsiderate actions had been made public. Not since elementary school had their continuous behavior of not listening to who was speaking been brought to their attention. Mr. DeRigo stood there again in silence and his solemn nature was making everyone uneasy. "I'm sorry to have to discuss this issue here, it is a true tragedy . . . " We all sat quietly and very attentively, sensing the importance of the matter at hand. He continued to talk for about half an hour, much longer than school-meeting alone would have ordinarily lasted, let alone the fact that school meeting had already been almost over when he started speaking. However, in this instance, no one much cared for the time. All of the second hands on all of the watches could have stopped dead; it would not have mattered to any of us, not then. The point of Mr. DeRigo's story, and the cause of our powerful silence was something that seemingly few of us had ever faced before. I was just one of those ignorant people in the crowd.

One of our fellow classmates was being expelled for attempted rape of another one of our classmates. Sadly, our shock and silence toward the situation were not out of pity for the girl or disbelief that something so terrible could happen in our school. No, I remember well how we felt about the situation. One sentence which I can still hear now sums up how we all felt: "That dumb bitch, how could she do that? That's so not fair that he's getting kicked out! He would never do something like that. She wanted his dick all year anyway, and everyone knew that!" No one thought about Andrea, or how she was dealing with the situation. No one even stopped to offer even sarcastic condolences, we were too angry even for ridicule. No one felt sorry for her. No, we felt sorry for Symchay; Andrea however, we hated. There was no thought in our mind that her accusations (I use the word accusation here, because to this day, I cannot say what the truth of the matter really was) could have actually been true. We were outraged by the course of action that had taken place, and we did not keep our thoughts reserved. Everyone made it very clear precisely how they felt about the situation that had transpired. Symchay became the victim, and Andrea became the evil perpetrator; the vilian who ruined our school. Andrea transferred to a different school one month later.

A dark bluish-purple stain stealthily wove its way through the grains of the carpet under the table. The deep color, which I had identified to myself as ink, contrasted sharply with the worn burnt orange color of the carpeting in my dorm. I had been studying the floor for a while now. Only, I wasn't really concerned with the floor, but it was there and it didn't offend me, so I examined it anyway. "So, we're seniors now, huh? Totally weird, and yet so cool, can you believe it?" A group of us was sitting around the common room of our dorm, enjoying the little time we had before classes actually started. "Hey girl! What did you do this summer? Did you go somewhere warm? You're really tanned, and with your hair pulled back like that, you actually look seventeen not, what are you now, thirteen?" I looked up, somewhat startled by the direct initiation of conversation. I had been preoccupied in my own thoughts and had sort of lost track of the conversation that was going on around me. "I'm fifteen Jen, thanks so much. And, yeah, I was in Florida. With my parents." I glanced back down toward the section of inked carpet I had been studying previously, vaguely wondering how long it had been there like that: scarred and going unnoticed. "Hey, Florida, that's pretty sweet! And I was just kidding with the age thing, you know no one cares about that anymore." I slowly looked back up at Jen and nodded my head unenthusiastically. The conversations then picked back up around me and I was left alone to listen to the parts I felt like listening to, or to lock myself back into my own despairing thoughts, shutting out the rest of the group.

Suddenly Matt jumped forward in his seat, "Oh man guys! I have the funniest story from my summer job, this is crazy!" Matt had successfully taken control of the dialogue and also had managed to retrieve me from my thoughts with his burst of excitement. He relayed a story from the water park he had worked at over the summer. His story was broken up here and there by interjected curious questioning or loud laughter from the rest of the group. The story was one of a girl with whom he had worked. "She was amazing! Damn, what a body . . . And a vicious flirt, Jesus!" Apparently, everyone who came into contact with this girl was immediately charmed. However, at the end of the summer she had filed for sexual harassment. Matt found that to be the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen happen. By the time he had gotten to that point in his story, he was laughing hysterically, and the rest of the group had followed en suite. "You're kidding me?" "That's such bullshit!" "Damn, what a crock!" His story then produced a mass joke-telling competition-- all jokes related in any way possible to the "ridiculous" topic, each person trying to outdo the last. Joke after joke of rape and assault were fired off with amazing speed. This rapidly permeating ridiculing of the situation was hacking away at my wall of protection, slowly pushing my emotions back to where I hadn't let them go in a long time: my consciousness. I hadn't said a word in a very long time, and was finding myself rather occupied by attempting to hold back tears of a dangerous mix of anger, frustration, and heartache. I tried to come up with a way to excuse myself without seeming too "weird" seeing as I had become overly consumed with still trying to appear "normal." However, my hypervigilance and discomfort drew more attention to me than I had realized. Suddenly, after about twenty minutes of this interaction, I caught Noah's gaze. His eyes immediately froze, and the laughter quickly melted from his face. "I think someone doesn't like this conversation," he quietly said, without releasing my gaze. His eyes help mine in a grave stare which was almost like a magnet to my emotional state, seemingly drawing the pain and tears directly from my soul. Silence enveloped the group as they slowly followed his gaze to land upon my face.

Feeling pressured by all of their eyes on me, I quietly explained that I didn't think we should necessarily joke about stuff like that, because it isn't always "bullshit." I didn't want to be in the spotlight; I didn't want their attention. I sat there in inconsolable silence, not looking a single one of them in the eye, but still feeling their disapproving looks. I had ruined their perfectly good conversation for that? I tried to stay there for a little while longer, still not wanting to leave abruptly, but their scathing looks and the deafening silence drove me to seek retreat into my room. The sound of my door closing behind me almost seemed to cue the mourning tears that fell for over two hours.

Emotions were tearing through me like a tornado ravaging an entire town; I could not predict which way my mind would send me. I felt weak and stupid. I felt tremendously ashamed. I was angry at them for being so callous. I wanted to yell at them to ruin their perfect little world, the way my world had been ruined. I felt desperately sorry for myself. I hated the world for existing this way. I felt badly for making my friends uncomfortable. Overall, I just felt terrible. I felt it all was unfair. And then I thought of Andrea. And then I cried even more. I cried because I knew that even though I felt my friends were being unfair, I knew I had been no better than them a few years back.

The mind can do strange things. Mine had totally blinded me to my own life. I had managed to form myself a little childhood that really had very little to do with the one that I actually lived; it allowed me to completely disregard whole sections of my life. Hours, days, even weeks of my life were just removed from my conscious recognition. I had built myself my own little world that hid everything from everyone. It took my being raped to open my mind to the years of abuse I had endured and hid from everyone, including myself. Not only did my life get turned upside down afterwards, my entire world I thought existed came crashing down. Everything I believed, everything I thought I knew, about the world, about myself; it was all wrong.

I was suddenly faced with all of the emotions I had never dealt with before. I never held a lasting relationship until after all of that. Now I can say that I have been in love, and I have been loved, both physically and emotionally, gently and tenderly. I have passed through my fear of the physical contact and now I can even be soothed by the touch of a hand or the brush of lips, warm against mine. That seems a strange phenomenon, but, until then, I could never understand my fear of relationships; I never understood all of my doubt. I was ignorant of those situations, despite having been in ones of the same circumstance for most of my life. I knew so little, and understood not at all. Not many people do. Their naivete allows them to live that way. It is said that ignorance is bliss, or so it seems. People will never be able to truly understand what it really means unless it somehow becomes personal to them. However, the only way for it to become personal would be for it to happen to themselves, their sister, their girlfriend, their daughter, their friend. And since I would never wish that upon anyone, I almost hope that the majority never really understands. Enough people are forced to know as it is. Then again, if not many people really understand, then that leaves a number of us at odds with an even greater number of people around us; the people we live with, the people we are supposed to turn to, the people we are supposed to trust.

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From:

Sumbission: It was the night before my fifteenth birthday. I went to a small party at a friend's older sisters apartment. I drank half of a diet coke. I woke up early the next morning. I was vomiting, dazed, and there was lots of blood. I didn't know what had happened. When my friends sister found me, she had to explain it to me. She tried to get me to go to the hospital, but I refused. If I couldn't remember it, it didn't happen. I started drinking, a lot. I turned to drugs, anything that could take me away if even just for awhile. Just when I thought I might be starting to put it behind me, he raped someone else. This time he didn't use as many drugs, and she fought back; so he fought back harder. I saw her on the news, I read her story in the newspapers, begging for other people to step forward; but i was too weak, too ashamed. He went to jail for a few months. He got out and did it again. Less drugs more violence. She committed suicide a few weeks later. I contemplated doing the same. I hate birthdays now. I can't trust men, and wonder if I ever will be able to. But worst of all is the guilt, knowing that due to my weakness two other people suffered and one of them is dead. Maybe someday I will get my life back, but she never will.

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Sumbission: my story doesn't compare to some of the tragedies i have read on this page. but it has changed me and made a big impact in my life.

in high school i was a natural flirt, i liked the attention and i had not experienced and negative repurcussions from it. freshman year at MIT, i was in a big freshman class that everyone had to take. i quickly developed a somewhat flirty relationship with my TA. i was still with my boyfriend from high school though. occassionally my TA and i would hang out. i thought it was innocent fun because he knew i had a boyfriend. one day he showed up unexpectedly in my room and started kissing me. i told him to stop and tried to push him off of me. he didn't listen to me. everything was happening so fast, i was in shock. finally i yelled "what are you doing?" it was hard for me to assert myself with him because he was my TA and i kept thinking i didn't want to make anything "weird." he finally got off of me and i played the situation off like it was no big deal. but it was.

i felt so bad, even thought i kept telling myself that it was no big deal. i thought it was my fault cause i had flirted with him. my boyfriend felt the same way when i told him what happened. i learned quickly how others react to these sorts of situations. i expected support, but instead i felt anger towards me. since then, i've completely stopped flirting with guys and i don't act friendly or openly with people i don't know. luckily i shared this story with a close friend and she helped me understand that it wasn't my fault. shit does happen at mit and people need to realize that.

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From: Not the perfect victim

Sumbission: What's rape? Do that many people really understand it? I know that I didn't. Sometimes it takes months, or years to realize that what happened was rape. Maybe it wasn't a stranger in the bushes, and maybe it wasn't alcohol and roofies. Maybe it was a guy that you liked, a guy that you thought loved you.

I don't know if I was raped, it doesn't fit the definition. I was dating a guy for 6 months before we broke up. But we were still friends and I still hung out at his house, and he was such a sweet talker. The summer after my junior year, he asked me to come over to sign his yearbook, and I did. We ended up making out, and then we ended up on his bed, and then my clothes were off. I kept moving him off of me, and he kept getting back on. I told him I was uncomfortable, and he said just to relax, he'd take care of everything. I told him I had to go, he said he'd be real quick, I told him I didn't want my first to be like this, he said he dreamed of me like this. Finally I just lay there, silent, and let everything happen. I'm sure it was painful, I was sore the next day, but in all honesty I can't really recall what happened. It's all kinda hazy. I know he didn't use a condom, and for weeks I lived in fear of getting pregnant. I'm still friends with him, and he still wants to get back together. I don't think he knows what he did, or that for a year I wouldn't talk any guy that wasn't already a friend, and even my friends I looked at with hesitation, I didn't party, I didn't date, I put on a fake smile and pretended that my life rocked and everything was perfect. Maybe you think that I'm weak, or shy, or scared to stand up for myself --the perfect victim, but everyone who knows me would tell you you're wrong. I'm a second degree blackbelt and I've trained for 10 years. I'd be the first to stand up for myself in any sort of fight, I'm loud, blunt, and I rarely sugar-coat and perhaps that's what makes me the most humiliated. My parents had enrolled me in self-defense classes since I was in second grade just to prevent this kind of thing, and the one time I needed it, I failed. It's like everything I stood for was a lie, I wasn't strong enough to say no, I wasn't strong enough to fight back, but mostly, I wasn't strong enough to stand up for myself against someone who was going to hurt me. I've had friends who know now, and are more than supportive. I had a friend who was nearly raped and it's perhaps because of her I feel like I need to start talking. I just hope that if there are people out there who have been raped, even if it doesn't fit the definition, that they have someone to talk to, cause there's nothing worse than holding it in, thinking you're a pariah cause someone raped you.

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Sumbission: Soaked in virgin blood before puberty hits--it changes one's perspective of "acceptable sexual conduct."

How did you lose your virginity? My incontinent uncle was not up to the deed, quite literally, so he shoved the handle of a wooden massage-roller inside my six-year-old body.

Did it hurt? Shove a large wooden stick up your cunt and tell me how it feels.

Actually, though, it doesn't hurt so much--not then or now. Pain is fleeting. The shame, the guilt, the violation, the dirtiness--that's what sticks. At nights sometimes I still feel my skin crawling with his touch.

Wanna fuck?

I try to assure myself that I am never going to be used again. How? By using everyone else first. Sex is a tool--hooking up relieves stress and it's a lot better for you than eating chocolate.

Am I promiscuous? Sure, hell, who cares? I mean what was the point of waiting for love--I had nothing to give. Everything I had was ripped to shreds before I was old enough to recognize what was happening.

So fine, fuck the shell...I'm buried too deep to touch.

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Sumbission: My first real boyfriend was Justin. He was so nice to me, wrote me notes and bought me presents and called all the time -- so everyone, especially my parents, thought he was a great boyfriend.

But they didn't know how when we were alone almost all he could talk about was sex. He made me promise that when we were together for three months, I would have sex with him. And while I wouldn't have sex with him I had to give him blow jobs. Sometimes he would grab my head while I was doing that and I'd feel really uncomfortable. When I verbally agreed to have sex with him and we tried to do it, I would pretend that it hurt too much so that he would stop. And finally when that started seeming like a bad excuse, we broke up.

I look back on it now and I can't believe I stood for that! The boyfriends that I've had since then have been a million times more sensitive and after my experiences with them, anyone who even tried to pressure me for anything would be immediately berated.

But Justin was my first boyfriend, and I didn't know that boyfriends weren't suppossed to do that.