How Was Your Date, Isabel?

I had been cringing about day for so long. I was completely terrified to go into that room. As the door opened I was exposed to a cold draft and I could feel the dense air. The day I was told this needed to be done was horrifying, and now it’s actually happening. They rolled me over to a new bed and I looked around seeing doctors everywhere. There was a table that they rolled next to me and on it was things that I can’t even explain. They put a green mask on me with tubes going through both sides of it. They told me I’d get drowsy and all of the sudden I closed my eyes and it was happening. I was getting knee surgery.

I still remember the night my sister was raped. My mom and I were driving up I-83 to Pennsylvania and my hair was still wet from swim practice. Interrupting a discussion of the long butterfly set my coach planned for tomorrow, her phone vibrated. Since my mother was driving, I read the text.

Actually, that’s not quite the right word. An epiphany is a moment of sudden clarity, but mine was anything but sudden. It rolled in slowly and started to unfold itself, like it was doing its morning stretch.

The subject of victimization and childhood trauma and neglect, especially sexual victimization is in desperate need of additional awareness despite the increase in the research literature over the past three decades. Youth who experience any form of victimization, whether it be sexual, emotional, and/or physical throughout their childhood are known to have difficulties in their childhood and adolescent development (McCuish, Cale & Corrado, 2015). The abuse they experience can be from their caregivers, sexual victimization by acquaintances and strangers, assaults by peers and can be exposed to violence in their neighborhoods (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner and Holt, 2009).

Outside of the ER, and outside of the city, there was a man awaiting trial for my childhood sexual assault. An act that I have never defended or rationalized. On the contrary, I felt a responsibility to go forward with his legal prosecution. But for nearly an hour I listened as she listed all the reasons to not report sexual assault if the assailant was a young man at the time of the incident. Her words were hurtful at a personal level. But yet, I respected her pain. In that moment, I realized that she was doing what would let her heal, what would let her sleep at

I went outside to find Courtney, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Hey, get in the car!” Misty had yelled from the driver’s side of her Dodge Neon. “Can you take me by Courtney’s? I want to talk to her.” I asked as I chunked my backpack into the backseat “No, just call her later. We need to get Guy and go home to start to pack.” When we got home my father was listening to the scanner. “Hey girls, do yawl know a Danielle Wilson, age 20 from Tushka?” “No!” both of us said as we went into our room “Well they had a wreck earlier before school got release. They were T-boned by a semi truck, but they are not releasing much more information” Stated my father. Immediately I thought about Courtney, but I thought to myself, no, it couldn’t have been her she is only fifteen years old. A few hours went by without hearing anything else. The phone began to ring; I rushed over as fast as I could. “Hello” I said. “Hey, it’s Kathy, did you hear over the scanner?” she asked. “No, it couldn’t have been her Dad said it was a Danielle and she was twenty” I said with tears in my eyes. “Oh okay, well let me know if you hear anything else.” Kathy stated. “Okay” I said as I hanged up the phone. Another hour had gone by without hearing anything. So I began to pack for our family vacation that we were getting ready to take the next day,

While sitting in the emergency room at the hospital, I started to feel nauseous and dizzy. I remember sitting in a cold room and crying because of the pain. Finally, I was called in to be examined, after the examination the doctor said he needed to run some tests.

For the past 2 years, I have gotten the opportunity to share about being a victim of sexual violence. Being able to talk on it should make it feel easier to overcome but, in my experience I’ve never felt more like; a liar, more silenced and vulnerable than the times I have spoken on my sexual assault and rape. Summer 2015, walking back from a friend’s place at 3 am, the entire night unfolded from getting stalked by a stranger, twice my size in an alley to him ripping my clothes and forcing himself on me. No screaming, no fighting, I watched the time go by so that if I was lucky I’ll make it home alive and wouldn’t remember it the next day. For months, I blamed myself; maybe I shouldn’t have been out so late, maybe I should have kicked or screamed.

In the book “Perks of Being A Wallflower” written by Stephen Chbosky, pursues the life of Charlie, an introverted teenager, through his freshman year of high school. The novel discusses Charlie’s unusual style of thinking as he navigates between the worlds of adolescence and adulthood, and attempts to deal with touching questions spurred by his interactions with both his friends and family. In an epilogue, Charlie realizes he’d repressed memories of his aunt Helen molesting him, and he starts to understand why his psychiatrist had kept asking him so many questions about his childhood. Charlie parents found him on the couch, naked and catatonic, and brought him to the mental hospital. This shows how whether it be male or female, both are psychologically affected by sexual assault.

After awhile they took my bad to get more x rays and felt really sick. I vomited all over everything. Right after that I fell right bad asleep. I woke up and got some apple juice from the nurse. I was still really shaky, so I had to get wheeled about in a wheelchair. I slept the whole way home and when I woke up it was like noon. I was still in disbelief that it

We begin with Greta, a blonde with an attitude. She wants all of her peers to admire her. She believes that she is one of the best people at their job. Her fantasy begins in a place where most rape assaults happen, in the victim?s home. Out of reality and back to fantasy she sees a man dressed as a burglar climb onto her balcony on the 18th floor, coming into her apartment and stealing her body. Like most rape cases she did use force of resistance so she allowed him to finish the act of trying to overpower someone. This gives me the assumption that rape to her takes place in a comfortable environment. Were you?re helpless and feel that there is no importance to resisting. The thing that sticks out about rape to her is how the person gets to you. In the story she gave more details about that than the rape its self.

She stood about 5’8, with flawless pale skin. She had a toddler stuck to her hip. He looked about two years old. His chocolate covered face would smile at me any time I looked at him. I found them sitting alone, and had falsely asked for directions to the nearest gas station. She gave me them, then asked where I was headed. I told her the truth, I was not entirely sure where I was headed, but I’d know when I got there. As I was talking, I took notice of her eyes scanning me from my head to my toes. She made a comment about my tattered shirt, which had been on my back for a few days now, torn by a limb on a tree that I had slept under. She asked where I was staying. I told her the truth. I had run away and made my final destination Orlando. No shelters had available space for me, so I was sleeping in a woods off of Interstate 4. “Why did you run away?” She had asked in a tone that spoke, ‘you’re too young for this.’ The question had stopped me in my tracks, I did not really know why. I believe that it was my teenage angst that caused me to run. Maybe I had an argument with my mother, maybe I did not get my way. Whatever the reason was, it was unimportant at that moment in time. I responded to her in silence. She gestured for me to sit down across from

Shugerman, Emily. “Me Too: Why are women sharing stories of sexual assault and how did it

During the final months of his eighth grade year, when most students were getting excited for the upcoming spring break, Sam was raped by his girlfriend at a park while they were on their second date. After keeping how he felt about the assault bottled up inside of him for eight months, he slowly began to open up. He got many supportive responses from his friends, but others were not as sympathetic. Classmates took to calling him a slut and one went of out the way to tell Sam that he deserved what happened, that it was his fault he was raped. At first, Sam blamed himself for the assault.

The world spun is every direction around me. There was a sharp, shooting pain in my calf and shoulder. I was soaking wet and coughing water, I could hear faded voices screaming. My whole body felt like it was on fire, it became unbearable and I blacked out.