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"  After the rape, I kept what had happened close to my heart like a special secret for a long time, and doing so kept it a part of me. It was only when I started speaking the truth of what had happened to me that I was able to see it as something separate from myself \u2014 as something that happened to me, rather than something that I was. For those survivors who feel as though you are defined by the violence, none of us, including you, are defined by what has been done to us. We define ourselves. Let that secret go: hold it out apart from you so that it can be seen for what it really is. Because I chose to drive my rapist home and had kissed him earlier that night, I wondered if I deserved what had happened. I thought I should have been smarter. But now I know that my intellect is not the problem: the choice someone made to rape me is the problem. By accepting that I would do the same thing today \u2014 that I would drive home an apparently intoxicated acquaintance to keep him off the road and keep him safe \u2014 I reclaimed my sense of who I am. If you are wondering how you should change, you don&amp;#039;t need to change. Fight to hold onto who you are. As I felt the breath leaving my body, I stopped fighting him. And when he lifted the pillow off my face, I didn&amp;#039;t scream or cry again. More than anything, I wanted to be able to get off that bed and walk away when he was done, so, when he insisted that I &amp;quot;liked it,&amp;quot; I agreed. And I did walk away, right after I convinced him that I had liked it so much that I would come back the next night so that he could do it to me again. Because I did those things, I thought I wasn&amp;#039;t a real victim, let alone a real survivor. I believed that I was complicit in what had happened to me. Now I know that how I survived has nothing to do with the truth of what was done to me. If you are questioning what you did and how you survived, please stop. Whatever you did to survive is the right thing. Because the man who raped me told me how beautiful I was and how much he loved me while he was raping me, it took me a long time before I could hear someone tell me I was beautiful or tell me how much they loved me without cringing. But today I can. If you are cringing when people who care about you tell you they love you and remind you how beautiful you are, call upon your righteous anger and don&amp;#039;t let the ones who hurt us take love and beauty from us, too. After the rape, most people I knew seemed eager to believe his story of consensual rough sex, rather than my story of rape. The woman police detective to whom I first shared my story commented that the bite marks and bruises on my neck looked like evidence of &amp;quot;passionate love-making&amp;quot; to her. The mutual acquaintances I shared with the man who raped me began referring to me as &amp;quot;that crazy freaky bitch&amp;quot;\u2014 much like he had done when he told the police that I was lying about the rape to cover up the truth that I liked &amp;quot;rough sex.&amp;quot; After the police initially dismissed the rape as a &amp;quot;he said, she said&amp;quot; case, my friends and family told me I should just forget about it and move on with my life. It seemed to be easier for everyone if I just stopped talking about it. In that silence, my reality\u2014 the truth of what had happened to me \u2014 was lost. When everywhere you turn, people are discounting your words, doubting your truths, and denying your reality, you begin to feel crazy. For me, sanity came though refusing to be silent. I am one of the few: the man who raped me would eventually plead guilty to his crime and be sentenced to prison. However, for me, justice came before the cell door finally closed \u2014 when the man who raped me admitted that what he had done to me was rape. You must decide what is justice for you. Just know that you are not crazy. You are believed. And you deserve justice. After the rape, a woman at my church who was friends with the mother of the man who raped me told me what a &amp;quot;good boy&amp;quot; the man who raped me had always been and then instructed me to pray for him. It took me a while to understand that the soul of my rapist is not my responsibility and to instead take responsibility for my own spiritual well-being and self-forgiveness. I had always thought of myself as the kind of woman who would not &amp;quot;let&amp;quot; herself be raped and would instead fight back, so I had to forgive myself for becoming a victim. However, I also had to forgive myself for believing that I could ever be defined by what someone else did to me. At the end of self-forgiveness was the realization that I didn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;let&amp;quot; myself be raped. I am still that woman who would fight back: I fought back by making it out of there alive. If you are wondering about your obligation to the well-being of the person who raped you, you have none: you owe your rapist nothing. But you owe yourself forgiveness and peace. After the rape, I struggled for a time to see myself as someone with the power and autonomy to say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; or to say &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; \u2014 to see myself as someone with the freedom to choose. Only a month after the rape, a man I had been dating pressured me to have sex and I gave in, even though neither my body nor my spirit was ready. I hid my tears from him in the dark and threw up afterward. It was over a year after the rape before I said &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to sex. I was afraid of what would happen if I said &amp;quot;no,&amp;quot; and I believed that I had lost my right to say &amp;quot;no.&amp;quot; Because my no had been so profoundly ignored, I didn&amp;#039;t think I had one anymore, and when there is no no, there cannot really be a freely chosen yes. I felt as though a woman whose body had been used as mine had been used was not a woman who had the right to say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to anyone. Then, one day, when I could only see emptiness in my eyes in the mirror, I decided to search for myself \u2014 to find that person I had been before the rape. I found her at the bottom of the emptiness, buried underneath the rape. She was holding hands with my power to decide what I would do and who I would be. She was so very glad to see me. If you have lost your sense of power, know that it is not gone, but only buried, waiting for you to reclaim it. Choose to possess yourself again. One cannot choose to be raped. But one can choose to survive. After the rape, we are waiting, many strong, at the edge of the cave, in that space between light and dark, to meet you, to hear your stories, to acknowledge your truths, to stand beside you as you seek justice, to raise our arms in protest with you, and to remind you \u2014 as you will remind us \u2014 that love and beauty, like hope, cannot be stolen. We&amp;#039;re shining the light. Can you see it? Excerpted from Dear Sister: Letters From Survivors of Sexual Violence "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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