My Story: Anonymous Member 2

 I have always been someone that gets really attached to people. I have jumped from person to person, but truly also had great friendships and whatnot in the process. Clearly, I love attention so having had new people to constantly surround myself with is fun. On the other hand, though I have also learned very well how it feels to be constantly let down, over and over again. More recently over quarantine, I have also felt what it is like to have a delayed realization of a need to “heal” I guess.

College has been fun but also very difficult. The one thing that really shook me at my core, however, was losing the trust of someone who was one of my best friends. At the beginning of one of my college years, I was raped by this person who, at the time, was a great friend of mine and who seemed to really care about me. I was devastated that someone I trusted could do that to another human, especially me (because you never think it will happen to you!). I really suffered later, but right after I was just in pure shock that someone who “cared” about me could really hurt me like that and cause me to feel so many things…I can’t even really put it into words. The weeks after it happened, I had no idea what to do because I didn’t really want to tell people. I myself was so shaken by what happened and I really did feel afraid. For months I walked around campus with my head down and only told a few of my closest friends, making them promise not to ever tell anyone. If I ever saw this individual walking I would immediately look at the ground and change my route, heading as fast as I could away from wherever he was.

Right after this happened, I thought the best thing for me would be to hook up with many and eventually date one or two of these people to repress this terribly painful memory for as long as possible. It would come up sometimes, but I would just remind myself that I was one of many people this happens to so it wasn’t important because it happens so often to girls. Until very recently, I truly didn’t care about myself enough to realize that I had actually been really hurt by what happened to me. It really seems like another life ago because I have tried so hard to push it out of my brain and to forget everything about that night. I wish I had realized earlier how much this had affected me (and continues to affect me). I think today was the first time I realized that (since that event) I have not been the same. Before this event, I was super confident in my appearance. I was also a huge attention hog and always made an effort to ensure that I was the funniest person in the room. I really never thought twice about what other people thought of me. After a lot of reflection over the past months/years, I realized since then I have become very nervous around other people, constantly overthinking what they think of me and how they are judging me in some way. I don’t really know how exactly what happened made me feel like this now, but it really was a switch that I truly believe started immediately after that. I don’t know what my message here is because this doesn’t really have a happy ending, but it made me feel better to write about today so here we are. Thank you.