Three Truths and No Lies
By the time that I was 18, I was a valedictorian, a state track champion, and a rape survivor. It’s like Two Truths and a Lie if the lie were a truth. Three Truths.
Rape in any era is dehumanizing and traumatic, but it was its own brand of hell in the 1980s. My rapist called and asked me out one week or so after he raped me. I remember my parents suggesting I was rude for not wanting to get on the phone with him. They didn’t know. I didn’t tell. Nothing would have come of it but retraumatization upon retraumatization. His word against mine. Who would have taken my side? I wonder that to this day. It seemed easier not to find out.
Fast forward to the #MeToo era. We’ve come forward in droves, releasing our truths and lightening our burdens, at long last. We were transfixed and triggered AF during the 2018 Kavanaugh hearings. Watching our brave warrior, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, speak her truth and be shat upon by members of the U.S. Senate.
Sexual assault survivors continue to be traumatized by having Kavanaugh sit on the Supreme Court. But we are our own kind of brave warriors, and we take heart in seeing rape culture begin to crack. We take heart in joining together to exploit those cracks to make a future where all can be free of sexual violence.
