February of 2022

Written by Laura Vance

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Written in December of 2022 as I began to come to terms with what happened to me during my senior year of high school. I posted this essay on my Instagram where it was viewed by hundreds of friends, family members, and people I don't even know. To this day, I am most proud of this piece and the bravery it took for me to write it and allow the world to read it. (See Cartoonish-Red Buick for the literary perspective on this event)

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In February of 2022, I was sexually assaulted. Many of you will stop reading now, or maybe roll your eyes, because this is a deeply uncomfortable and borderline embarrassing situation I’ve put you in. The good news is that you have the option to stop reading. Unfortunately, though, I think this may be my last option before my sanity cracks right in half, so we’ll both just have to deal with this in whatever way we can.

To begin, I was extremely hesitant to use this word. I felt like I didn’t deserve it. The phrase “sexual assault” insinuates something very severe, but I felt like it wasn’t severe because it happened to me. I also felt like I was blowing it out of proportion, and I didn’t want to be the villain who inflicted those seemingly malicious consequences upon someone else, especially if it wasn’t that big of a deal. Statistically speaking, I am not in the minority. I should just suck it up like everyone else and stop whining.

I also felt partially responsible. I felt like I had put myself in a position where my assault was the result of a natural progression of events, and maybe if I had said “no” one more time – perhaps made my boundaries even clearer – then I could have prevented it from happening.

Honestly, the lines of what happened to me would still be substantially blurred if he hadn’t admitted to the act himself. I have his confession. He told me that he knew what he did to me was not consensual, but he went through with it anyway because he thought it would be, in his words, “rewarding.” Because there was a chance I wouldn’t say no despite my multiple indications otherwise, and he was willing to cross that threshold of my dignity for a few moments of masochistic pleasure. In short, he knew I didn’t want him to do what he did, and he did it anyway.

He did it anyway.

This, by definition, is sexual assault.

I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable to hear it. I assure you I was decently uncomfortable enduring it. Therefore, I will define what happened to me by its truest meaning. I believe I have earned that right.

I want to note, though, that I am not writing this for empowerment or sympathy. I am not crusading social media for attention or rights or respect, nor am I here to make an accusation. He knows who he is and what he has done. In my mind, bearing this knowledge for the rest of his life is punishment enough.

I am not writing this to make him into a villain. If there is anything good in the world, he will receive his justice in some way or another, and I have made my peace with my inability to alter the past. I have completely washed my hands of him. He could not possibly matter to me less.

I am, however, writing this for the people I told – the people I trusted who did nothing. The spineless “friends” who offered faux, momentary sympathy and still keep my offender in their closest circles. To this day they still call him their friend, despite the undeniable proof that he severely wounded me in almost every way.

I am writing this for those I once considered to be close to me. Those same people who decided to spread callously false information that dressed me up like an attention–seeking liar. The betrayers who embellished those private moments of pure vulnerability and spread cruel rumors of me using words like “rape” when I never once uttered the word. The unfeeling traitors who made a mockery of my deepest and most personal confession.

I am writing this for the bystanders who made excuses and avoided the truth because it was uncomfortable that their friend would do something so evil – the kind of thing they would haughtily denounce of blacklisted household names during the lunches we all ate together. Because if they didn’t acknowledge the harsh truth, then it didn’t exist. How lucky is that?

Except I was expected to ignore it too – this mass of a thing, this burden that ate away at me every day as he was constantly slapped on the back as if nothing had happened at all.

I have. I’ve ignored it and joked about it because I felt like I had no other option, and because I selfishly wanted to pretend that it didn’t happen to me, too. But I can only ignore this wound for so long before I bleed to death. Now I want to talk about it, to scream about it, loud enough that these bystanders physically cannot ignore it anymore. So loud that it will steadily drive them to insanity, just as bearing this burden alone has driven me.

I am not writing this for justice, empowerment, or sympathy. I am writing this for every single person I trusted who carelessly shattered that trust without a thought or feeling, because I didn’t matter to them as much as my assaulter did. I find nothing but the purest form of disgust and heartbreak in that idea.

Above all, I am writing this for the terrified, lonely high school senior whose body was her prison, who never got enough sleep, who went through this eternal hell almost entirely alone. This fragment of a person who couldn’t help wondering if they – my “friends” – would have reacted differently if it had happened to anyone else, perhaps to someone of more significance. The girl who would become incapable of keeping a relationship for more than a few weeks without really understanding why. This kid who lost her voice after so many people tuned it out because it wasn’t worth hearing.

I want her to know that her words are important. I want to prove to her that there was a part of her, all along, that was brave enough to keep telling people. I want her to know that somewhere — through all the intense discomfort of a public confession — there might be someone who cares after all.

I am writing this for every single coward in my life.

You know exactly who you are.

The selfish, lesser part of me sincerely hopes that your spineless, pitiful weakness haunts you forever. I am still trying to get over that.

Now I write this for you: Do not be this bystander for someone else. Do not embrace apathy because it is easier than action. Do not stand by an inexcusable offense because you call someone a friend. Do not exile a victim to a void of all–consuming loneliness because it requires a scrap of empathy to do the morally correct thing. Listen, respond, stand up, do something – especially if it is difficult. Exert an ounce of effort and be brave. Do not make others suffer at the mercy of your cowardice.