Feathers.

_{Content warning for sexual assault.}

I had a friend. Well more than friend, he was like an older brother to me. A friend who I could send questionable memes to. A friend I could joke about anything with. No holds barred, from the crude to the macabre I would share with this friend. He was the only friend I felt could see the humour in Stephanie Sarley’s creative dismemberment of phallic fruits.

When Lockdown (part one) hit, I found myself spending a lot of time at home. And like many people I began to quickly run out of things to watch. Luckily my friend came to my rescue. We would go for walks in the park, 2 meters apart, for an hour and we would talk about how Lockdown was going for both of us. One day he asked if I wanted to get food and go for a drive. I said yes, I’d missed non familial company.

He picked me up in his car and we drove around looking for open food places to order something. We talked about the quietness of the city. The sanguine energy that now hovered around the streets. We talked about music and films. Eventually we found a Domino’s that was open and close enough to his house for us to order. So, we went to his place, two friends excited by the prospect of pizza, even Domino’s pizza.

We watched some TV and talked some more, he poured himself a rum, and I sipped a glass of coke. I rarely watch much of daytime TV, but for some reason I remember that we were watching an episode of dinner date. One where I was rooting for a handsome Italian musician who was trying way too hard to impress. I leaned forward to grab a third or fourth slice of pizza and a hand touched my lower back, pulling at the barely exposed waistband of my underwear.

I laughed. It was weird. But I ignored it. I moved away, curling myself in the corner of his corner sofa, and wrapping myself up in his blankets. It wasn’t an invitation; I was just cold. But he joined me, he pulled at the neckline of my shirt, I slapped his hand away, laughing, and confused to what was happening.

In that second, every interaction I’d ever had with him played out in my mind. Every questionable moment I’d overlooked suddenly playing in the slowest of motions in my head. The time he pulled my hand towards his dick when I was 16. The time he told me I’d be in trouble when I was old enough. All of it collated into one large glittering red flag. But it was already too late for me.

He pulled down my shirt, and panic set in. I pushed him away and he just laughed. I turned my head away from his rum scented attempts to kiss me but he just pulled my face back to his.

I tried to fight. But he whispered ‘stop fighting me, you’ll enjoy it too’

I knew then that I wouldn’t be leaving that room without giving some part of myself, no matter how small, to him. So, I gave the smallest part of me that I could. I knew that if that was enough, I would be able to leave with most of myself. Give this small part and maybe he wouldn’t take everything. I felt broken. Powerless and sick to the point where I had to hold my breath because if I wasn’t breathing, then I wasn’t trapped here. Trapped in his living room, trapped in the corner of his sofa. Each minute his lips lingered on my skin I felt another small part of me crack. But that was okay. Cracks could be repaired. All I had to do was endure this, so he wouldn’t do so much worse.

He kissed me again when he was done. Hard kisses that tasted like rum and felt like rubber.

A million things ran through my head at once. Horror of what had just happened. Terror of what else he could do. And anger. Anger at myself for not speaking up. For no saying no louder, for laughing, for freezing, for wearing this stupid top.

But what was my fighting if not my vehement no?

If I had consented to everything that had happened why did I feel like I needed to scrub the layers off my skin until nothing but bone remained. Maybe then I could regrow a whole new skin, one that didn’t feel so dirty, so wounded by its inability to protect itself. If I had consented then why did my stomach feel like regurgitating everything id ever eaten until just emptiness remained?

When I got home my brother asked me where I’d been.

I answered back “with a friend”

And I had been with a friend. Someone I considered a brother but now the thought of his name froze me. His name and this new terrible memory begging to be hidden in the place where I buried all my unpleasant memories. Somewhere deep and dark and so forgotten that I didn’t dare let my mind wander to it. My own Pandora’s box of slights and assaults against my body since I was old enough to know that I had a body. I tried to bury this new memory there too. I tried desperately but yet at night I would be back in that same corner sofa, fighting a friend to remove his hand from my body. Fighting. Always fighting. Eventually my mind grew tired and my will to keep fighting died.

I cried at first. I normally like to cry. I’ve longed believed in the healing power of tears, But I didn’t like these tears. It felt again like I was losing a part of me that I did not want to give but had to. Then when the tears stopped the emptiness came. It was a hollow type of emptiness. The type of emptiness that only existed because something wonderful that once occupied a space had been ripped away. It was numbing too, I was alive, but only physically. By all accounts my mind, my soul, the parts of me that only I knew were gone.  

He messaged me a day after it happened. I was expecting an apology, a realisation that I had not wanted any part of what he did to me. But no, his message was to tell me that I had stained his sofa with my make up. I tried to make peace. I tried to bring up how I was fighting him, foolishly hoping that it would make him see just what he had done to me. But no, he just laughed and joked about how soft my body had been. I ran to the bathroom to vomit and ignored him for months.

It’s been over 7 months since that afternoon. It took me 7 months to repair the cracks that he caused. I joke about it now to my friends who know and understand that joking is the only way to appease the constant rage that festers within me, now replacing the empty space left by what he took from me.

Recently, I learnt that he talks about me and what happened as if it was something, we had both wanted. He talks about me as if I am the villain for not returning his calls or messages. I haven’t yet found the words to tell him that the very mention of his name fills me with such utter terror and anger that I don’t want to in the same building as him anymore. Or tell him that what he did has changed me forever, that he is now a scab that will never truly scar over.

I have always been in awe of people who seemingly go through the worst life has to offer and emerge victorious. I’ve always wondered how you move past the trauma so you can laugh, dance, sing or just be again. But now I think you don’t really move past it. That is a part of you now, you carry it around wherever you go, some days it’s heavier than a car made of lead, some days it’s lighter than a feather, you don’t get to decide how heavy it feels. You just wake up and feel the weight in your chest, in your heart, and in the pits of your stomach. Then you live out the day, thankful to have survived.

I’ve thought for so long about writing this. I still don’t even know if I will post it. I know there’s many others with stories so much worse than mine. So many others whose weights are always lead cars and mountains. But writing this has been a saving grace for me. A way to tell myself what happened in that room was real. That I wasn’t less because of somebody else’s actions. That my body is still mine. That I was okay. I would be okay. Writing this has been a way for me to share with so many others that what happened to us doesn’t make us any less of ourselves. And for that I am grateful.

_{A few resources}.

• Support Line
• NHS
• Womens Aid
• Survivors UK
• Mankind
• OneInFour