Curling into myself, lying on my side, I stare at the white wall of my dorm room. How could I have been so stupid? So careless? I knew it happened. I’d heard of it happening to a few other girls too over the past two years.
I never imagined that it could happen to me.
Then it did.
I didn’t remember the details at first. Everything was a fuzzy haze. However, that didn’t stop me from feeling the evidence of what had happened to me the night before. I felt it. There was no denying it had happened. Not really. Not even if I wanted to, and boy, did I want to.
I shoved the feelings down, buried them deep in the recesses of my brain. I didn’t want to think about it, remember it, none of it. Because if I did, if I remembered the details then it would make it real.
Six weeks later and it’s real alright. It’s one hundred percent undeniably real.
Pinching my eyes closed, I wonder if I could go through with what some of the others had. Girls I’d been friendly with, girls I’d partied with, girls I’d sat beside in class. I knew a handful that had done it, could I do it too?
Tears fall from my pinched eyes. Sucking my lips in, I shake my head before I open my eyes to stare through my watery tears at the bunk bed across from me. My roommate used to sleep there. Until she decided to pack her things and move into her boyfriend’s room, three doors down.
Six weeks ago, I was nothing more than a college twenty-year-old going to frat parties and dancing with friends. All it took was one night of being stupid. I was drinking, but I wasn’t being careful.
He was cute.
I don’t even remember his name, I’m not sure that he even told me. I didn’t know him, had never seen him before. He said he was in town visiting his cousin. He said his cousin’s name, but I didn’t recognize it.
I should have known right then there was a problem. I knew everyone in that house, either personally or at least their name was familiar to me.
Except his cousin’s.
My friends and I ran around with the same crowd, party after party. Football games, school functions, always together, always the same group. They were all sophomores, just like me.
Except him, he wasn’t, and I didn’t recognize this cousin’s name at all. Not at all.
Red flag after red flag appeared right in front of my face, but I ignored them, because, he was cute. And cute twenty-four-year-olds would never do anything to hurt someone else, not at their cousin’s party, right?
Wrong.
He did just that. A slip of something into my drink. The night was in full swing. Nobody noticed as we both swayed on our way upstairs. He locked the door behind us.
I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t think we should be in a room alone. I didn’t know him, and I wasn’t promiscuous. I’d only ever been with my high school boyfriend and one other guy I dated briefly my freshman year.
The words didn’t come out. They were slurred. It was as if my mouth wasn’t my own. I thought the words, but they just didn’t come out the way I wanted them to. I tried a second time, as he approached me, as he stalked toward me.
I wasn’t promiscuous. I didn’t experiment like that. I shouldn’t have even gone with him upstairs. I knew better.
I. Knew. Better.
The last thing I remember was the smile that curved on his lips. It wasn’t the same one he greeted me with downstairs. It was different and it scared the absolute hell out of me.
Then everything just went dark.
When I woke up, I was naked and alone, still in the strange bedroom. I knew from the tenderness between my legs what had happened. Even if I had any doubts, the bruising on my inner thighs, my throat, and my breasts told the tale.
I had been drugged and raped.
I was so embarrassed. I knew what to do to prevent something like that from happening. I let myself be careless, I’d felt a false sense of security because I was surrounded by, friends. None of that excused the horrible man from his actions though. I needed to turn him in. I needed to go to campus police.
The problem? I didn’t know him.
How did I even go for help? Who would listen to me? Drunk college girl gets