- Think about whether it was rape for a long time. When people tell you they are pretty sure you were raped, say, “But I took the drugs.” (See: “A Brief History of Assault”)
- Wonder if the lies he tells you about yourself that you know are not true are, in fact, true.
- Wonder if he knows how severely you have been gaslit most of your life from your abusive family. Did you tell him? You don’t remember. You remember he has been abused. Maybe he can make a reasonable assumption. (See: “The Color of the Cast”)
- Be angry at everyone who knows you both.
- Be angrier.
- When people finally back you up, when they finally make statements and take your side, listen as a friend tells you all that your rapist worked in the university’s law school as a graduate student and has lawyer friends. Watch as people take down their statements. Say you don’t blame them.
- When women come forward, several women, telling you that he assaulted them or a friend, decide you have to do something.
- Think about it some more: you are an anarchist. You don’t believe in solving problems in communities with the police. You do not want the police coming to the doors of your friends, who are mostly minorities. But, you think, this might be the only way to protect them and you, and to make sure it doesn’t keep happening.
- Take an Uber to the police station. Stand in the waiting room because of COVID-19. Say, in front of everyone else there, “I was raped, and I want to make a report.”
- Get referred to a detective at the justice center downtown.
- Get a little pamphlet that tells you what to expect. Read it. Throw it away. Retain nothing.
- Have nightmares. Wake up into panic attacks. (See: “Waking Up in the Night”)
- Ride your Vespa down to the justice center. Wander around the floors, asking the way. Get lost. Get lost again. Finally find the detective’s office. Speak to the victim advocate. Take the Capri Sun she offers you. “It helps,” she says. Then: “Just tell him the truth. Tell him what happened. And you don’t have to worry about the rest.”
- Worry about the rest as she shows you the steps of what will come next.
- Speak to the detective. Tell him you were bleeding and when he asks from where, use the word “rectum,” although you don’t remember ever using that word before in your life. Tell him you kept sleeping with him. Tell him about how your C-PTSD makes you hide the truth from yourself, sometimes. Tell him that is how you survived for so long. (See: “It Was Rape”)
- Cry back in the hallway.
- Go home and have nightmares that your rapist blows his brains out. You do not want this. Wake up from them and write poems. (See: “The Night My Rapist Dies in a Dream”)
- Wake up to panic attacks. (See: “Waking Up in the Night”)
- Get Valium from a friend for when you wake up from panic attacks but take all twenty-five of them at once when you are drinking whiskey because, really, you still want to die.
- Sign away your protections from talking to a therapist you spoke to after the rape.
- Wait to hear back from the detective.
- Wait more.
- Call your rapist’s mother and tell her that her son is a rapist one day when you are in a shitty hotel in Youngstown, Ohio. Hear her gasp. Keep talking, not realizing she has hung up on you. (See: “Waking Up in the Night”)
- Hear from a new victim advocate. The police have been doing training and the case is still being investigated.
- Hear from the victim advocate again. The detective has adamantly pushed the case through to prosecution. She says, “We love to hear news like this.”
- Get a call from a 216 number one day at work. Step outside. Hear the detective tell you that he spoke to everyone you told him was involved. That the rapist’s best friend verified your story. Then hear him say that, despite this, prosecution has declined to take the case and the criminal investigation is over.
- Have nightmares. Wake up into panic attacks.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
Excerpted from Breaking the Curse by Alex DiFrancesco, published by Seven Stories.
