content warning: sexual assault. please take care of yourself before, during and after if you decide to read.

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If things have happened to you. If Bad Things have happened to you. If fingers went somewhere without first asking, if fingers stayed even if you asked them not to, if it was something that wasn’t a finger, which doesn’t make it better or worse- just different. If you were young, if you were 32, if you were in a relationship, if you were on a date, if you were the baby or child someone was supposed to be protecting. If you can’t remember but your body does. If you remember all of these details that keep coming back to you, hauntingly: your noodly body on the hood of the car by the side of the road on the mountain and he’s saying: there’s a car coming, look like you’re alive.

If there’s two cars coming. If you were moaning. If you were split in two pieces, one ghost of you beside yourself (is this where the expression comes from- beside yourself?) and you in your body enough to get through it. If part of you (seemed? was? acted?) into it and part of you felt trespassed. If you didn’t have time to feel anything because you were calculating How To Keep Yourself Safe. If Keeping Yourself Safe should never have been your job.

If when it’s over (except it’s never really over, it lingers like campfire smoke still on you) you are blaming yourself, wondering why you put yourself in that position. If you know you didn’t put yourself in that position, a Bad Thing happened To You, but the thoughts still keep coming. If you think, I’m too old for this, as if there’s an age at which it’s acceptable, because there is not. If you were still seeing the person who was sweet and not right for you but never would have raped you. If you were raped, or just violated. If “just” doesn’t exist in this scenario.

If you drank so much because he kept handing you the klean kanteen. If you being drunker than him was part of the plan. If you had said something stronger like “what the fuck are you doing? why are you doing this?” (those words never left the inside of you and you imagine them there- a scream in a room with no one to listen, a piece of tropical fruit, sickly-sweet-rotting) what would he have done. If he asks, did I do something wrong. If he says, should we call it a night. If you pushed him off the side of the mountain.

If you drive him home. If you count the miles on your maps app. If you make the appropriate amount of small talk. If you are shivering but not from the cold. If, for better or worse (worse, worse, worse), your body knows how to survive this. If he across-the-car hugs you goodbye and hopes you had a good time, did you have a good time. If he keeps asking unanswerable questions. If the dissonance just sits there like sweat coming off his skin.

If you sob into your sheets. If a shower washes nothing clean. If while you lather soap you remember his hands and your body freezes, wilts. If you got through it, and you’re tired of getting through things. If you tell your friend you felt relatively safe. If he assaulted you, so how safe were you really. If you let yourself cry for the places he touched, the deeper places this touches. If your friend asks, how did you survive the drive home. If it’s the same way you’ve survived everything else.