this weekend in particular, in august

content warning: this essay will speak of sexual violence and survival. please protect your mind and heart and don’t read any further if you cannot.

dear readers,

speaking openly about sexual violence is not easy and it isn’t my goal to write an essay that wraps up my experiences or my life in a pretty bow, or some easily consumable content. as an intuitively creative person, i am drawn to working with my pain through art, poetry, and writing. paired with the fact that memories are not only stored in the brain, i’m inclined to move through this weekend anniversary with urgency i don’t always feel in control of. a quick moving heart, a biting lip, kicked-up migraines, and nightmares that have me googling carl jung quotes.

fifteen years ago this weekend, the summer before my senior year of high school, i was raped. and the thing is, it wasn’t my first experience with sexual violence. revictimization is the “phenomenon where individuals, particularly women, who have experienced sexual victimization endure repeated instances of such assaults, often leading to increased psychological distress and complicating responses to risk reduction interventions.” almost half of sexual assault survivors experience revictimization.

a way that i understood it was basically like - okay. you’re at this fork in the road. you’re either going to become normal and somehow heal on your own and the scars from this prior childhood abuse are going to be fine or you’re going to cope by putting yourself in all of these crazy risky scenarios where you open yourself up to repeat trauma because that part of your brain that recognizes fear and safety and protection is completely fried. and also you’re 17.

guess which path i took?

on this weekend, fifteen years ago, the earth cracked open. the foundation shifted, and i fell into the hot, molten lava of hell beneath.

on this weekend, fifteen years ago, i took a two hour shower, burning my skin with welts as big as quarters on my thighs. i bagged up my dress and shoes and walked to the free health clinic and waited for them to open. i threw the bag away at a gas station on the way.

i was absolutely humiliated. they gave me what they could and a pamphlet on victim’s advocacy but my face was hot with tears. i remember this response in myself feeling bizarre to me. these women at the clinic were very kind. all i could think about was how i got my baby booster shots in the same room.

betrayal and agony settled like nausea but in my womb. a profound disassociation washed over me and would stay present for years to come. my body was not my own. later, my blue, plastic, razr-knock off phone vibrated in my pocket. a text from him.

“dnt txt me. got enuf baby mom drama as it is lol”

“wdym? cant we just talk about what happened??? pls????”

“guess we all have our demons n now u have urs.”

i swore myself to silence as a form of self-inflicted punishment and didn’t speak of what happened for six months. i don’t remember the first half of my senior year, but i stayed in the same circles as him and our friends, somehow holding out hope that it was all some weird, perverse nightmare, that i could go into the main menu and reload the last save file before it happened.

but then i started talking about it. on accident at first, with my mom. it just came out. she never once questioned me. that was by far my biggest fear - if i started speaking up about this event, would people believe me?

she encouraged me to file charges and i resisted at first. i remembered that pamphlet from the health clinic, now stuffed at the bottom of my backpack. i grabbed it and dialed the number. they were in a town north of me, but a woman was willing to meet me that next day.

we sat in the back room of a coffee shop in my hometown where i told her everything. i didn’t spare her any details for her comfort or my safety. she was tall and had short red hair, and took notes in a tiny turquoise spiral notebook. months later, on my own time, we went to the police.

after a few weeks of working together, the police officer who was helping me with my case called me with an update.

“miss hannah, we’re dropping charges - we just don’t have a case here.”

“wait, can i talk to my advocate first? she can-”

“no, listen - we wish you the best. take care.”

last year, that officer was sentenced to prison for sexual assault of a minor.

in the years that followed this pin in my life’s timeline, the path at the fork in the road grew darker and more dense, like walking through a forest of thorns and poisonous snakes. i felt disconnected from myself and completely detached from my body, from the concept of a body, and certainly, my actions reflected that. i was deeply hurt, viscerally, like if you stripped me naked you’d surely see a black hole through the center of my torso.

this went on in waves, peaks and valleys, for nearly a decade before i was able to hatchet through thickest of it.

it’s a difficult watch, but this quote from the show baby reindeer guts me because it perfectly encapsulates what it was like for me during those times:

“in reckless pursuit of the truth i would put myself in fucked-up situations where i’d almost risk being raped again in an attempt to understand this time. like if i’m passed around like a whore, then i might at least shed this idea that my body is a part of me somehow. like who cares if it happened before? it’s happened a ton of times now, so what does it matter? but it mattered.”

an impossibly huge mountain i was certain i’d never acclimate to. and yet.

i like going swimming in lake michigan on these weekend anniversaries. this year, the waves were fierce but fun. the sun was hot and the sky was a perfect blue. the lake bodied me and held me afloat and carried my tears and my laughter. as she does.

i find myself in the waves, and she is 17, and she is wearing that dress. i pull her up before she sinks too far into the dark wet sand. we lock arms and jump and laugh hard as each wave pummels us backwards. we made it. we make it. we make it. we make it.

hannah