Sexual Assault Awareness

April is Sexual Assault Awareness month.  I have been painfully aware of sexual assault recently, and frankly it makes me tired.  I have been taking a dance class since the beginning of the year, and at first it was really fun.  I am out of shape but I still remember how to move, and if I’m careful I can still dance and not break anything.  Then one day I came to class to find that a rape had happened.  Between class mates.  The teacher told us about it, said the campus police wanted anyone with information to come forward.  She said he was in jail, and it was clear she did not agree with that.  It was a case of he said she said, she said, and they had to put him in jail because he was accused.  There was speculation, she is tall they said.  How could he over power her?

It was obvious who he was.  There were only three men in the class and two of them were there with us hearing the story.  The man missing had been creepy.  He wore underwear instead of shorts.  His friends were high school girls.  He was obviously a trained dancer, but he wasn’t brilliant or anything.  I just got a creepy vibe from him.  I never spoke with him, I kept to myself.  He seemed friendly enough, I was friendly to him in return.  I have no idea what happened but I can tell you that man seemed odd to me.  

Went there, Did that

A Child' s Machiavelli, 1995-1998, by Claudia Hart

Well I finally went.  I stood there in the same room with the man who assaulted me.  It was horrible, but I’m glad I did it.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

I realized afterwards I had been terrified of how I would feel when I saw him again.  Specifically that I would care.  To have feelings of compassion, to feel bad for his situation or even to be angry, to want to hit him with a chair or yell in his face would seem like a further betrayal.  In the end I was calm, and I did not have any of those kinds of conflicting feelings.  He is nothing to me now, this person who was once my friend.  I felt detached, not from what happened but from him.

It took a long time before I could look in his face.  He never looked me in the eye.  We did not speak.  I did cry.  I wish that I had not, but it is to be expected.  It is not a weakness.  I have let it go.  It is no longer important, in the grand scheme of things, this wound that is now healed into a scar.  He looked like a greasy scumbag, I think he always looked that way only I never saw it before.  It doesn’t matter why now, the thing is I’ve learned not to trust certain people, I know better now.  I can tell the difference, and for that I am thankful.