It could change your life.
Freshman year had its ups and downs. I met my best friends that year and had the time of my life. It was also the year the biggest secret of my life came to the surface.
As I am writing this, I understand there are those out there who do not know much about my life. But here's the thing, there are so many people out there with stories to tell.
Things that, if people knew about them, would maybe make more sense about why they act the way they act, why they choose to not be around in certain situations or why they get angry when topics are brought up. So, let's just jump right into it.
When I was 16, I was raped.
I never had sex with anyone before that, and knew little to nothing about what rape was or even meant. I knew it was a bad thing, but I had only heard horror stories of women and men reporting their assaults and having nothing done for them or their case. I had heard about cops mocking rape survivors when they would explain their stories.
And, as I was led to believe from school talks on sexual assault, that what you wear and if you were drinking could very much lead to you being assaulted, thus it being your fault for why you were raped.
Therefore, when I was raped, I felt very much that is was my fault. That I had somehow led this stranger to rape me because maybe I had been flirting with him and gave him the wrong impression, maybe I should have tried to fight him off - why the hell did I not do that?
When you are 16 and you are led to believe sexual assault is your fault, keeping it a secret is far easier than dealing with it head on.
So that's what I did.
I chose to not tell a single soul about what had happened to me. Big mistake. It ate away at me every day and ruined relationships with friends, guys and even my family.
It took three years after my assault before I told anyone. Turns out, getting drunk brings out a lot more stuff than you would hope.
It took me three years, a long night and my best friend sitting me down after a panic attack until I finally shared for the first time what had happened to me.
I cried for hours, and to this day the person will never understand how much her listening and being with me that night has helped me through my whole process. It was at that moment that my healing process began.
I went home and told my parents about what had happened, and still to this day it is one of the hardest conversations I will ever have with someone. I will never be able to erase the memory of looking my father in the eyes after telling him what had happened to me.
As hard as it was, it was well worth it. It brought my family and me to a new understanding. After telling them, they began to understand why I acted the way I did in high school, and began to understand me much more as a person.
The point of this article is absolutely not to make people feel bad for me.
And it is definitely not to give me pity. That is the absolute last thing I would ever want.
The point is to encourage people to start sharing their stories. We all have something that has happened to us in our lives that we wish those close to us knew about. We know that if they knew, they would understand us so much more.
So why are we so afraid about opening up to people? Is it because we are scared of being judged? Are we scared about not being believed? Whatever the reason is, we have created a society that falls silent when bad things happen to us due to those exact fear, and I am 100 percent guilty of falling into that category.
Far too often I hear about similar situations like mine. Women and men who are too scared to open up about what has happened to them due to fears of not being believed, or being scared of being judged. Let's stop that! We all have a story to tell.
We all have skeletons in our closet that are eating away at us every day. So open that damn closet and talk about it! You never know, an experience you have had may help someone more than you will ever know.
We all have a story, don't ever be afraid to share it.