Letting go of a past done wrong to me, holding tight hope for the future
October 29, 2021
By the age of 19, I was raped twice.
The first time, I didn’t want to tell anyone, not even my sister who I told everything to.
I told my mom I wanted to file an order of protection, so we did. Then the predator, my ex boyfriend, appealed the order so he could go to my school’s prom with another girl.
I talked for hours with my lawyer and had to go to court as a 16-year-old. My lawyer did not ever want me to go inside the courtroom because I would see my ex boyfriend and probably be cross examined by his barracuda of a lawyer. I sat in the car with my anxiety for seven hours.
The order of protection ended up staying in place for one year. That was a win for me. But the rape was appealed. It took me so long to forgive myself for forgetting the date of the rape, a detail that out of everything that happened that day, I was expected to remember in order for my case to be valid.
The second time, I was raped on a first date by a predator who shared the same name as the first.
As soon as I could leave, I called my sister, sobbing in the car on the way to buy Plan B since I was not on birth control at the time. I felt so ashamed. I’ve never bought it before and of course, a male cashier checked me out. That was eerie.
I never wanted to talk about my experience because I knew it was the second time. I questioned it a lot. You hear about people getting raped once, but twice? Internally, I thought it was a “me” problem. I blamed myself for going to see someone with the same name as the first predator. I even asked my sister if he did rape me. She had to tell me, “Grace, you said no. You told him no.” I think this is something a lot of victims experience.
I do want kids when I’m older so it is unfortunate that right now I don’t believe my relationship with sex will ever be repaired. Sex scared me and hurt me.
If I could not have an abortion, not only would I live uncomfortably in my own body, but also struggle to live with the product of my traumatic experience being penetrated against my will. If I gave up my child for adoption, I would feel guilty and always wonder about them. It would be even more difficult to heal from my rape if there was a child out there with my DNA.
The current law in Texas banning abortion before a woman typically learns that she is pregnant disgusts me. White men should not be allowing themselves to regulate women’s rights to their bodies. Coming from a young woman who has been raped twice now, and thinking about how 1 in every 6 American women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape in their lifetime, it is hard to believe that there are people who believe women should not own the right to abort an unwanted fetus. Not only does a victim already have to relive their suffering when filing a lawsuit, but now they have to travel across states to receive an abortion, or worse, not have that option at all. What’s devastating is that victims of lower income families may not even have the financial means to raise and support a child or afford to fly to another place where they can have an abortion. That is what is really disturbing to me.
It scares me that Texas and Arizona, my hometown, are so close. Living there during the election was scary. I worry a law could be passed like Texas’ Senate 8 Bill in Arizona. If it does, I fear for me, all the women in my family, and my future kids because it is a place I want to live in when I am older.
These politicians are the very ones who, if their daughter were raped and needed an abortion, would take them to another state for the procedure. It’s ironic because they would allow thousands of other American daughters to become severely depressed and traumatized.
I hope that my story can create more awareness. Rape has become something so recurrent in society and there are more people it has happened to than we may think. The healing process is different for everyone, and some even choose to keep it a secret. Regardless, we all need to stand with victims like myself to reclaim rights over our bodies.
There are going to be days that feel like hell where you can’t even function and days where you feel like you’re on top of the world. Rape is not something anyone can forgive or forget. My experiences have become part of building my character. I carry myself with the belief that with time, comes healing.