The aftermath of rape isn’t always what you read about in sensationalized fiction. There isn’t always a girl who ends up finding her secret inner strength from that horrible experience. Sometimes pieces fall and break apart and they never come back, leaving an aching, empty, quiet space deep inside.
How do you convince a girl that once felt unwanted hands on her flesh that things will get better? The physical pain may have ended shortly after it happened, quicker than she even expected, but that doesn’t stop the days, weeks, months and years down the road when she closes her eyes and only sees the images of his back as he pressed the rest of his body against her. It doesn’t erase the feeling that she didn’t do enough to stop him in the moment. It doesn’t take away the many nights she replays her actions from that night, wondering if maybe she hadn’t done or said certain things, she wouldn’t have reached the moment when words weren’t enough to make him stop.
It doesn’t make her wish that she was now a different person.
Sometimes, I’m sure, she lays awake in the dark of the night wishing that she could go back to a time in her life when her biggest obstacle was healing a broken heart. I’m sure there’s no more bruises permanently marking her delicate skin but I’m also sure her insides still feel like they’ve been tied in too many knots to ever be set free.
I’m sure she meets new men and smiles and acts like her usual charming self but still has a hard time disconnecting their hands from his. I’m sure the small laugh she gives at their attempt at humor conceals a cry that she’s been desperately trying to let escape. I’m sure she panics when they get too close and leave a scent that brings her too close to the memory of that night. I’m also sure her kisses that she tries to give away sweetly are tainted with a bitterness that she’ll never quite be rid of.
I’m sure they don’t know these things that she keeps tucked away close, and I’m sure they never will. Her hidden pain is like a burn that slowly and tortuously increases the longer she ignores it. She finds the cool water to soothe it in the fleeting security of their arms, if only for the one night. Because that’s all she gets, one night at a time to erase the spring night that will never truly go away. A band-aid that she uses as she indefinitely struggles to scrub the scars from a surface that will never let her forget.
Second Star On The Write 
I would love to have the opportunity to talk to this woman. I would tell her to do some research. Does rape happen. Yes! But 99 percent of the time the person shouldn’t of been in the situation and usually blows it out of porportion. In the unlikely event that the person involved in this was doing all the right things yet this situation still were to happen, I am deeply sorry for her. Bad things happen to everyone. You shouldn’t try to forget,but always realize things could be worse, so my recommendations would be to pray about it and try your best to stay in safer situations around people who wouldn’t do those things. Good day and god bless!
I want to leave a reply to the person gecko 69. Maybe they are the one that should do some research and reading to educate themselves. Human beings especially women should be able to live in a world where they aren’t afraid of people attacking them. Are there steps that can be taken to help keep people safe, yes but I teach a self defense class and talk about risk awareness, reduction, avoidance and recognition but in the same class we also teach them that there are no guarantees! Unless you have lived 1 day in someone’s shoes sometimes it might be better for you to keep your opinions to themselves.
What a truly back-handed comment if I’ve ever read one, I had to read this several times. I cannot believe that someone, who guessing from the candor of the comment has never been in such a situation, could so easily brush off a terrible tragedy that someone else has experienced. It’s deplorable that you use ‘praying’ and ‘god bless’ to hide behind when it’s clear that you have no compassion, and certainly no empathy, for the emotions and thoughts expressed in this post. To read what someone has written, someone who has poured their soul out so vulnerably, and see this comment after? I would certainly be ashamed of the naivety and insensitivity of this comment, if I were on your shoes. And since commenting IS in itself an opportunity to tell someone something, I would recommend that you do research on rape and the aftermath of rape (perhaps, more than one source at that); hopefully in the future you won’t go spreading insensitivity so easily.
Shouldn’t have. First of all. Which leads me to believe… if you can’t write properly then you must not be doing your research properly. I feel bad that you are so ignorant.
I don’t even know where to start with this comment. Every bit of what you wrote disgusts me. It is NEVER the person who has been raped “fault”. It is ALWAYS men’s fault for raping. “Bad things happen to everyone” Have you been raped? You should be ashamed of yourself for being so insensitive to someone sharing their painful personal experience. Not everything is solved by just praying about it, your ignorance for example. I really hope you don’t call yourself Christian. How dare you say “god bless”.
@The gecko 69, HOW DARE YOU say that this poor woman did something to cause this or that she is “blowing this out of proportion”. This young woman is a victim of a horrible, horrible crime. Imagine the nights of sleep and feelings of security that her rapist has stolen from her, the lost piece of her that she mourns. She will never have that back. How can you lack so much compassion and exude such ignorance? How can you suggest that she is exaggerating something so painful and difficult to share? No one asks to be raped, No one. Do not use God as your weapon. God would never condemn this girl. There is no way to avoid rape. If someone is determined to rape you, they will find a way. I can see that you have obviously not had the experience of being violated, you have not gone through the pain that she has gone through, you have not spent hours wondering what you could have done to change the outcome, but this girl will live with these things forever because of what one sick and twisted person chose to do to her – because of THEIR sin, not hers. The real truth is that she did nothing to ask for this, she did nothing to deserve this, she did nothing to put herself into this situation, and there is nothing she could have done to change the outcome. The blood is on the hands of her perpetrator and on the hands of those who condone his actions by blaming her.