A friend gave me a metaphor recently. She said: “You’ve planted a seed and you’re standing over it, yelling at it ‘Grow! Grow!’…You are going to exhaust yourself. Just wait. It will happen.”
Rape and sexual assault are not only a physical and mental violation; they are a spiritual violation. One does not need to be spiritual or religious to understand how the soul becomes shattered after this experience.
One summer night, my husband was being his normal and playful self and initiating sex. He was play wrestling me on the bed, holding down my hands while he straddled me from above.
To have great strength but no privilege and still choose to act? Heroic. To have privilege but not the strength to act? Regrettable. But to have privilege and strength and not act? Inexcusable.
My faith has always been strong, but it has wavered at times. Throughout the aftermath of my assault and the years that followed, it has only become stronger.
I was young enough at the time of my assault that even if I had wanted to tell my parents what had happened, I was so far from being a remotely sexual being that I’m not even sure I would have had the vocabulary to describe it.
Few good things come after the statement, “There’s something I need to tell you,” and absolutely nothing good comes after the follow up, “But you need to know that I’m ok. I’m really ok.”
