Today is one of those days where social media is so unbelievably unbearable even in the slightest sense beyond the echo chamber of this entry (that no one will read), but I need somewhere to collect my thoughts and put them to rest so I can get on with the rest of my day.
I reported.
I reported over the phone the night of to my best friend. Who encouraged me to report to the police. Which I did the next day.
I sat in a room at the police station with two male investigators as I made a call, shaking with nerves on the verge of vomiting, as I called him on the phone and attempted to get him to admit what he'd done and explain why he'd done it on a recorded telephone call. He didn't.
I reported to an attorney, who helped me navigate the bureaucracy of complaints that I needed to make.
I stood in front of a federal mediator, my accuser, his associate, and his purposefully female attorney, as I was slut-shamed tirelessly throughout her opening arguments.
I made the agonizing decision to confront my accuser after the lawyers were done.
I reported.
In a quaky voice and through hot, angry tears to the entire room, I reported exactly what happened, exactly how it made me feel, and exactly why I will never shake what happened to me. The shame it brought me. The violation of trust from what I believed to be a friend.
Then it all went away with a stroke of a pen hours later.
I still have the NDA. It's sitting in the farthest reaches of my filing cabinet, along with my journal notes about what happened. I can't even think about that paperwork without my stomach turning. Every time I have to open that drawer, I live it over again.
I live over and over again that it happened. That's what happens to victims. We get to relive trauma over and over again, triggered by endless pieces of information, details, sounds, smells. Our attackers get the solace of public credibility and our silence.
I reported.
No one apologized. My accuser wasn't held accountable.
I am not guilty of anything but being a Woman in the United States of America, and yet I live daily with the shame of being a victim of sexual assault.
This is why I believe Dr. Ford, and literally every other sexual assault victim with a story. I made the choice to report and confront my accuser, knowing full well how it would play out, and what it would do to me. What would be said about me.
Opportunist.
Liar.
Slut.
Not everyone is that strong ... or stupid. You watch the proceedings and let me know how it's going for her. You tell me if what I did, and what she is doing now, is strength or outright stupidity. It's bashing your head on a brick wall and expecting to come away smarter and uninjured from the ordeal. Somehow expecting either apology or public epiphany that our culture is unilaterally skewed to support violence in favor of a victim. How you feel watching her testify is exactly how I felt that day and nearly every other day or so after I reported my accuser.
Incredulous.
Sick.
Helpless.
I had the strength to report, but I don't have the strength to relive it. Not today.
Not again.
#ThisisAmerica #metoo
I reported.
I reported over the phone the night of to my best friend. Who encouraged me to report to the police. Which I did the next day.
I sat in a room at the police station with two male investigators as I made a call, shaking with nerves on the verge of vomiting, as I called him on the phone and attempted to get him to admit what he'd done and explain why he'd done it on a recorded telephone call. He didn't.
I reported to an attorney, who helped me navigate the bureaucracy of complaints that I needed to make.
I stood in front of a federal mediator, my accuser, his associate, and his purposefully female attorney, as I was slut-shamed tirelessly throughout her opening arguments.
I made the agonizing decision to confront my accuser after the lawyers were done.
I reported.
In a quaky voice and through hot, angry tears to the entire room, I reported exactly what happened, exactly how it made me feel, and exactly why I will never shake what happened to me. The shame it brought me. The violation of trust from what I believed to be a friend.
Then it all went away with a stroke of a pen hours later.
I still have the NDA. It's sitting in the farthest reaches of my filing cabinet, along with my journal notes about what happened. I can't even think about that paperwork without my stomach turning. Every time I have to open that drawer, I live it over again.
I live over and over again that it happened. That's what happens to victims. We get to relive trauma over and over again, triggered by endless pieces of information, details, sounds, smells. Our attackers get the solace of public credibility and our silence.
I reported.
No one apologized. My accuser wasn't held accountable.
I am not guilty of anything but being a Woman in the United States of America, and yet I live daily with the shame of being a victim of sexual assault.
This is why I believe Dr. Ford, and literally every other sexual assault victim with a story. I made the choice to report and confront my accuser, knowing full well how it would play out, and what it would do to me. What would be said about me.
Opportunist.
Liar.
Slut.
Not everyone is that strong ... or stupid. You watch the proceedings and let me know how it's going for her. You tell me if what I did, and what she is doing now, is strength or outright stupidity. It's bashing your head on a brick wall and expecting to come away smarter and uninjured from the ordeal. Somehow expecting either apology or public epiphany that our culture is unilaterally skewed to support violence in favor of a victim. How you feel watching her testify is exactly how I felt that day and nearly every other day or so after I reported my accuser.
Incredulous.
Sick.
Helpless.
I had the strength to report, but I don't have the strength to relive it. Not today.
Not again.
#ThisisAmerica #metoo
