TRIGGER ALERT
On May 18, 1970, I was raped in the middle of the day in downtown Cleveland. I was a 15 year old virgin. There are things I don’t recall from that day, and there are some things that are seared into my memory.
I remember that when I struggled, he hit me. He then put his hands around my neck until I promised to stop fighting.
I remember how terrified I was when I saw his penis. The only penis I had ever seen was on the little boy next door who liked to take off his clothes and run around the neighborhood. I had never seen a grow man’s penis, let alone an erect one. Forty-eight years later, I still remember what that looked like.
I remember how humiliated I felt when it was all over and he laughed and said I was really “tight” and asked if I was a virgin. I said no, but he just laughed again.
I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom, in the dark, trying to convince myself it was no big deal. It was over, I wasn’t hurt, and there’d be no lasting effects. Then I thought of pregnancy. That is why I remember the date. So I could figure out the timing in regards to my periods. And I decided that if I ended up pregnant, I would kill myself. I didn’t get pregnant, but that experience affected my relationship with men and my attitude towards sex for many, many years.
I remembered all of this while watching the sham hearings for Kavanaugh. I got more and more angry when I saw that orange pustule mocking Dr. Ford, when Mitch McConnell laughed on the floor of the Senate, when Orin Hatch told protesters to “grow up”.
Now my anger has turned to rage. I’m having trouble sleeping and eating because I am so consumed with a white hot rage that I don’t know what to do with myself. I want to punch something, I want to break something, I want to howl and gnash my teeth and rip something apart. I have never before felt this way. Anger I can handle, in fact I welcome anger as a motivation. But this? this is something else and I feel lost.
