I can't stop thinking abt the white boy frm the other soccer team at the after game party who was so cute and I was enamored and none of the popular white boys at my school liked me that way and this boy asked me if I wanted to talk and led me to a dark room #WhyIDidntReport
Once in the room he shoved a bureau up against the door so no one could get in and never turned on the lights and shoved me on the bed and took his pants off and shoved my head down and held it there and I panicked and began to feel tears and wanted to scream #WhyIDidntReport
It makes me sick remembering his hand gripped down hard on my head and suddenly someone pushed through the door and the bureau fell over and all the things on top of it tumbled off and the girl who opened the door was so angry at me and demanded I clean it up. #WhyIDidntReport
It was clearly my fault and I was so shaken and feeling this mix of shame and rage and fear and that he was so cute and he wanted to be in a dark room with me and maybe other boys at school would want me now but more likely they would think I was a slut. #WhyIDidntReport
Finally, this is one of three incidents of sexual trauma (the other two were w adult men) that I experienced before I turned 18 years old. And the reason #WhyIDidntReport any of them is bc this behavior was part of our culture then, and it is part of our culture now.
Even as I write this I can hear men (and v likely some women) thinking to themselves "THREE times? Yeah, you have to take some responsibility for that" — responsibility for what tho? And I'm sure I'm not the only woman who has suffered multiple assaults. #WhyIDidntReport
These assaults were of course caught up in race, too — being exoticized and sexualized too young and taking what I could get as validation and attention when my white girl peers were fawned over and protected and admired. #WhyIDidntReport
Anyway. Writing a memoir, so let me get back to that. #WhyIDidntReport
Finally 2: I am not a victim. I am grown and grateful and wildly fortunate and loved and sane and my life is big and whole and I stay fighting for all of it and all of us.
