THE ASSAULT

By this point, we had moved into a much bigger house with her and Mandy.  Monica had gone to college and visited now and then.  I loved that house!  I had a huge bedroom that I shared with my sister when she visited.  Mandy and Monica had their own rooms, but I had chosen to share with my sister so I could have the bigger room.  She didn’t visit often, and when she did, it was only for a weekend.  

It was 2001, and we had the internet and a computer in our home office!  It was dial-up internet and painful to use, but I loved the AOL chat rooms!  I didn’t get into much trouble at school my junior year, but I did get myself into some trouble in those chat rooms!  I met a boy in a chat room, and his name was Bryce.  We talked for weeks online before we talked on the phone, but when we started talking on the phone, it was long distance.  He lived in Georgia, and those once-in-a-while phone calls turned into all-night calls that landed my dad a $700 long-distance phone bill.  OOPS!  I don’t know if you remember 10-10-220, but it was marketed to be very inexpensive long-distance phone calling.  However, if someone didn’t answer the phone, it still costs $1!

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

I was very grounded, and the phone calls and chatrooms were over.  I had to stop being so introverted and step out of my comfort zone and meet boys in real life!  Once, I was allowed out again, of course!  

Bill was one of the first guys that I really liked at our school.  When I met Bill, he was dating Maria, but it was pretty obvious that he liked me back.  We hung out a lot, and I always had butterflies, but we never actually dated.  We were “talking” when it happened, so I told him before I told anyone else.  Sadly, he didn’t believe me.  No one did, and I think that may have hurt more than the actual assault.  The worst part, though, was that he no longer wanted anything to do with me. He stopped messaging and calling me. He stopped talking to me at school. He just wrote me out of his life.

My dad didn’t believe me either. He thought I had made the whole thing up. Why would I do that? Why did no one believe me?

Things were so bad at my house that I ran away from home. For two weeks, I chose not to respond to either of my parents’ attempts to find me. This was long before Life 360, and they had no clue where I was. As a mom now, I am horrified that I did this to them.

When I ran away, I was working as a hostess at a small family-owned restaurant. Honestly, I was terrible at my job! I hated standing at the front door just waiting for people to come eat, and we were never super busy. I found myself in the kitchen, talking to the other staff, mainly cooks and servers.

One of the cooks was Brian. Brian was kind of funny, but he was older than me, and I was never really interested in him. It was weird to me, but Bill hated Brian. I think something had happened with Brian and Maria, but I never really learned the entire story.

Brian and I were friendly when we were at work, but we didn’t hang out when we were off work. That was until I ran away from home. I ran away because he offered me a couch to sleep on, and it was a place where my parents would never find me. They didn’t know Brian or where he lived. I could hide out until I decided what to do next.

I had been there for a few days, drinking every night in this filthy apartment. His roommate was a drug dealer, and they had all kinds of stuff lying around the apartment. Bags of drugs to sell, needles, and pill bottles with names on them that didn’t live there.

I shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t have trusted that I was safe. If I could take it all back, I would do so in a heartbeat. I was 16 and stupid.

When I woke up the morning after the assault, I wasn’t even sure where I was. Everything was foggy, and I had no clothes on. I was alone and the only one in the apartment. I started finding my things and getting dressed. I was confused and couldn’t remember much about the night before. I took my things and left the apartment, never looking back.

I drove to a Taco Bell parking lot that was close by and cried. I cried for hours. Little by little, I put together what happened. I had been drugged and I had been raped. The last person that I remember speaking to was Brian. I remember him on top of me. I remember telling him to stop. I remember not being able to fight him off.

I was humiliated and felt like complete trash. The two people I told didn’t believe me, and I decided that it wasn’t worth talking about anymore. I quit that job and moved back home. I was grounded from running away, but I was happy to be back in my bed. Being grounded meant that I had a lot of time with my thoughts, and memories of that night just kept coming back. Eventually, I put the pieces of the puzzle together, and I hated myself.

Sex wasn’t something I ever had healthy feelings about anyway, but this ripped the idea of sex being about love in half. I no longer cared about saving myself or respecting my body because that control had been taken away from me. This led to years of me being irresponsible and unsafe. Since I lost control of my own sex life, I decided to use sex to control everyone around me.

I made so many mistakes over the next few years, and the first person who treated me like I wasn’t trash was my ex-husband. We met when I was 20 years old and dated for a year before he proposed to me. A year later, we were married and starting a family. I wasn’t sure how I escaped that former life without disease or getting pregnant, but I was grateful that I had.

Sadly, even though he didn’t treat me like trash, we never had a good marriage. Reality was, I was never in love with him. I loved him because I cared about him, but the love was surface, at best. The marriage lasted 10 years, and gave me two beautiful children who have brought me so much love and so many amazing memories.

The assault is a distant memory at this point, but I do wish that I had spoken up and pressed charges. Facebook suggested that I be friends with Brian a few years ago, and I almost threw my phone out of the window. I was stunned. There he was, smiling in his profile picture like nothing ever happened because it didn’t ruin him. It ruined me though, and I pray that no one else was a victim of Brian’s.

When I met my now husband in 2019, I couldn’t have dreamed how different our relationship would be. It is real love. Love like I have never known or even understood. He is the first person who made me forget about the assault. He doesn’t like for me to talk about it because he hates the man that hurt me, but he doesn’t look at me like I was at fault. He believed me when I told him the story, unlike the previous people I had told. He is my best friend and the love of my life. Our marriage is a gift from God, and I believe it was God telling me that I needed to forgive myself for my past because he had already forgiven me himself.