By Esther Taylor (she/her) 

 

CW: mentions of sexual assault  

 

It is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which has brought up the complex feelings of my own assault. The best way to describe them is to imagine a ball. In the centre of the ball is a girl, crumpled and crying, surrounded by tears, anger, hate, resentment, grief, and rage. I try and manage this ball by compacting all the layers of feelings so tight that the girl has no room to think, feel, or move. I hold the ball close to me. Both wishing I could forget about it, and fearing a life without it. My sexual assault was pretty average, nothing particularly extraordinary. The damage has left me structurally unstable, even broken in different parts. This Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I am no longer going to try and silence that girl with productivity or be weighed down by mental illness. Instead, I am going to voice all the things I wish I could say to my abuser.  

 

I hate you.  

There I said it.  

I hate not feeling like I can trust myself.  

I hate that you so easily shattered my sense of safety within my own body. 

That you felt entitled and deserving of my sexuality.  

That my tears and discomfort meant nothing to you. 

I hate your name, your cologne. 

I hate that your life went on, 

Unchanged. 

That you were able to love freely again. 

That you could continue enjoying sex. 

 

Do you think about me? Do you ever feel guilty? Or ashamed? 

Am I a secret for you as you have been for me? 

Am I a scar on your life as you are on mine? 

 

Do you live with triggers? Psychological reminders of the event.  

An event my body can’t forget.  

Did you cry yourself to sleep? Praying to wake up in a new reality.  

Did you ever really love me?  

Or was I truly nothing? A body removed from any identity.  

 

If I could, I’d show you all the parts you shattered that night.  

I would detail all the ways you are tattooed on my story. 

Seeping into the most beautiful of memories.  

If I could, I would make you watch you assault me.  

I would make you see my tears. 

Feel my safety ripping away from me. 

I would make you sit there, helpless, as you watch yourself cause damage that can never be taken back.  

 

I am not special. I am the consequence of a gender.  

I am a woman.  

I wear the brand of trauma that is bestowed upon my gender.  

You are not special. You are a monster.  

Free and roaming.  

Like all the other perpetrators who assaulted my friends, my family, my sisters.  

You are nothing more than a system,  

A system that makes you feel like everything,  

But you are nothing.  

 

Go fuck yourself.  

 

Love, 

 Just another woman