Trigger Warning: This article includes discussions of sexual assault and self-harm. If you or anybody you know has experienced sexual assault, reach out to a trusted adult. The national sexual assault hotline number is 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

You are spending time with your long-term boyfriend, lying on his bed, watching TikTok on his phone. You can feel his warm breath on your skin. You had just returned from an outing with his family, where he attempted to make out with you in the car in front of his two little brothers, his parents in the front seats. You pushed him away and explained that doing that would be weird and awkward in front of his younger siblings. He goes silent. Completely silent. The entire hour-long car ride back to his house was irritatingly silent, all you wanted to do was open the car door and jump out. 

You arrive at his house, go inside, and head to his room. For some odd reason, you feel compelled to apologize to him. He looks over at you as he lays back on his bed.

“Baby, I love you so much,” he says. 

“I love you, too,” you reply, a smile creeping back to your face.

After a few moments of a more comfortable silence, he asks you a question. Can he touch your body? You go silent. He asks again. You’re still silent, scared, uncomfortable. He asks yet again, and you quietly respond “No… I’m sorry.” Why did you apologize again? He stares at you. 

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.” 

He abruptly gets up and walks to his computer desk across the room from where you are on the bed. He sits in his computer chair, silence. He just sits, not saying a word to you. You’re confused, sad, hurt. You close your eyes and just lay there, the time ticking by slowly. It was maybe 30 minutes of pure, excruciating silence but it felt like hours. You say his name, he doesn’t respond. 

“Please come back over here,” you say. “I’m sorry.” 

He finally gets back up and comes to the bed. “Can I?” he asks again. You don’t know what to do. You stare at him in silence, you don’t want him to give you the silent treatment again. You say yes. 

Ten minutes. Ten whole minutes of him touching you and you holding back tears. You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to be touched in this manner. He’s gripping at your skin like a starved wolf. He’s hungry for you, but you didn’t want this. You begin thinking, “Maybe he wasn’t interested in me but in my body” You hate this. He kisses you, you reluctantly kiss back to avoid upsetting him again. You aren’t acting like you enjoy it, your body language is stiff and uncomfortable. 

“I just love you,” he says. You aren’t sure what to say so you just say it back. “I love you, too…” 

You get a text “Come on, I’m here.” It’s your dad. He’s here to get you. Suddenly you’re back in your dad’s car, but you don’t remember how you got there. Every moment leading up to now is a complete blur. After the long drive home, you get to your room, lock your door behind you, and sink to the floor. You’re immediately engrossed in tears, you’re silently sobbing on your bedroom floor but you can’t do anything about it. You feel so helpless.

Crawling to your nightstand, you’re hyperventilating and your face is drenched. Once you reach your nightstand, you dig through the drawer, pulling out a blade that you had desperately clawed at your razor to break out. You pull your pants down, still sobbing, and press the blade to your thigh. One long draw with the blade. Blood is gushing from your leg. This is the first time in two hours that you have let out a breath and genuinely felt lighter. You crave more and bring the blade back to your skin for another long draw. You repeat this 10 times, then pull a gauze out of the nightstand and press it to your leg. You pull your pants up and go shower. The water stings, but it feels kind of nice so you just let the water hit your leg. 

“How did it get to this point? How did I let him do that?” you ask yourself. You don’t know what to do from here. 

Time passes and you find yourself at the rec center at the old high school hanging with your friend group—3 girls, 5 guys. Everyone is on the football field playing soccer, football, tag, or anything you can think of. Your best friend, a boy you trusted with everything, asks if you want to walk with him, and you say yes. Recently, he has been flirting with you. But this is merely an attempt to boost your confidence after your boyfriend of nearly two years cheated on you.  He tells you he would never treat you like that, and you begin falling for it in your heartbroken blur. You walk with him, and he leads the way to an abandoned part of the old high school where he starts to kiss you. You try to pull away, but he won’t let go, so you just end up kissing back to get it over with. The rest of the interaction is a blur beside him trying to get his hand down your pants. This happens several more times over a few months, but you can’t stop being friends with him. He means too much to you.

It doesn’t take much for memories of these moments to return in force to the young women like myself who have experienced sexual assault. A survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that one in four women and about one in 26 men reported being victims of rape or attempted rape. Additionally, almost half of women and almost a quarter of men have received unwanted sexual contact — touching without penetration. 

These statistics are unnerving. Sexual assault is a traumatizing experience that can completely change a person’s life. It can change how they regulate and respond to complex emotions. In an article discussing the subject further, Mayo Clinic psychiatrist Shweta Kapoor, M.D., Ph.D states that victims of sexual assault, particularly those who experienced this “early life adversity” have much lower distress tolerance. Due to the lower stress tolerance, Kapoor claims that victims of sexual assault can often respond to such emotional stimuli with abnormally strong reactions: “If anything stressful comes up … they can go from zero to 100 in a second.”

Unfortunately, a person doesn’t need to walk far to see or hear something that will trigger this trauma. I have listened to far too many boys in our school making sexual and demeaning jokes about women, I have heard too many boys joke about raping and assaulting women. I have heard too many stories of boys genuinely following through on these jokes. I walk through these halls every day, knowing that I am not completely safe. There is always a chance, a danger. These boys prove that more and more with each joke. I see my assaulter nearly every day. He’s here in this school with me, and I have heard him make jokes about me. 

My ex-boyfriend texted me the other day out of the blue. He said something that sounded like a response, but I didn’t say anything for him to respond to. I was physically shaking. He had left me with so much trauma and fear. I am terrified. I cannot be a “good” girlfriend because I’m afraid. I can’t tell my boyfriend no to anything from a simple “can you do this for me?” to a kiss on the head, because I’m so scared of him getting mad. I am forever a changed person due to the treatment from boys in my life. I can never return to the girl I used to be, and I’m forced to hear boys in my own community making disturbing jokes about my experiences. I have begged and pleaded to leave school or stay home, I have sobbed in my room, I have bawled my eyes out in school bathrooms. 

I am tired. 

I cannot experience a single moment of peace within school walls. I am afraid of setting foot into that cesspool of young boys who should be ashamed of their behavior. The humor of teen boys in a place that is meant to be safe and secure, but that humor is ruining young girls. Jokes or not, they cause fear and pain.