Getting it out of the way early: I was groped, not raped. I’ve still had these thoughts.

After I published my first blog on being groped, one of the first replies I received was someone arguing about RAINN statistics.

I was looking at different statistics that day, but one stands out lately: Thirteen percent of women who have been raped attempt suicide. Compared to roughly 1% of women in general.

33% contemplate it. I suspect the actual numbers are higher, given the shame associated with mental health challenges.

I can’t speak for what rape feels like, or the scars it leaves. A man grabbed my chest, and 3 years later I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I think that most rape victims probably don’t talk about it. I think they have good reasons. The balance of what I’m trying to figure out involves what happened after I talked about things.

I can speak for how the world changes. A good day resembles a mundane day before it happened. A day where you don’t feel threatened or put into survival mode by something ‘normal’.

Men are threatening by default. You’re oversensitive, people will say. Which is kind of like calling our reflex of drawing our hand away from a source of pain being oversensitive.

The world is threatening by default. It took me a solid year and a half to not jump when someone was unexpectedly in the stairwell in my apartment building.

Then, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you either think about killing yourself or you try.

How do things get that bad, you might ask, when you’ve survived the event and probably have access to support? For me, it’s mostly remembering the things you didn’t have to do before it happened.

You didn’t have to have a repertoire of grounding exercises to make it through some days. You didn’t have to say no to going to things you really wanted to because you weren’t sure if you’re ready for crowds yet.

I think the really lucky ones find a way to pretend it didn’t happen. Maybe not for a long time, but they still find some facsimile of the way things used to be.

I’m not one of the thirteen yet, but I think if you’ve been there you understand them. Some days nothing you do works. You feel like an invalid, you feel like it’s your fault, and sometimes people will tell you that it’s your fault.

You just want your waking nightmare to be over. You wonder if today’s the day you get over your fear of dying.

People and AI’s will tell you that it’s an act of bravery to keep going. I think bravery is another way to describe someone who’s been too hurt for too long, and we have to have some nice sounding way to describe their reality.

I won’t ever know what it’s like for a rape victim. The pain must be worse. If I feel unfixable, those women must also feel that way.