Raped

Laura was 30, six feet tall and fast as hell. Her senior year in high school she was the number one rated mile runner in the country. Full scholarship offers from every Division I school in the country poured in. She said, “I could go wherever I wanted.”

She grew up in a small affluent town and had a good loving family. Her parents were demanding but she had a normal, happy childhood. She was a good student and had lots of friends. At 14 she started running track and became a star. After high school, she picked one of the most prestigious universities in the nation and off she went.

Freshman year at a fraternity party she was locked in a room by two fraternity members. One stood guard by the door while the other one raped her. She was 19 years old.

She didn’t want to tell anyone. She was ashamed. She had been drunk. She was flirting. She kissed the guy who later raped her.

She was consumed by it. She couldn’t sleep. She started having panic attacks. After a few months she wondered if she should tell someone. She picked her best friend on the track team. She gathered up an insane amount of courage and one day after practice told her. The friend said she didn’t believe her. “At least not like you’re saying it”, the girl said. Laura never told another soul about the attack.

She started doing badly at school. She couldn’t concentrate. She kept to herself and lost friends. And worst of all, she couldn’t run anymore. “The harder I ran, the slower my times got.”

She started drinking heavily.

The following year she would transfer to a much smaller, Division II school across the country. New school. New start. But same old secret. Again she ran poorly and had difficulty studying. She continued to drink heavily and it was at this new school she first started to cut herself. Small incisions on the inside of her upper thighs where no one would ever see. “Ya know that relief you get after you cry?” That’s what cutting gave her, she said.

She would transfer one more time to an even smaller division 3 school. This time she didn’t even run. She mostly just drank and cut herself…. and eventually flunked out.

After school she took a job as an assistant track coach and married a much older and much shorter man. She said he was her first boyfriend since the attack and the reason she married him was because he was “nice to me”. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

But pretty soon her husband found out about the cutting and the crying spells, the drinking and panic attacks. She lost her job. She tried all types of psych meds but nothing helped. Her husband would scream at her and she would lock herself in the bathroom. He “stopped being nice”, she said. She never told him about the rape.

Finally her husband said she’d have to get help or he was gonna kick her out of the house. She had no money. She said being around her parents and their disappointment was too painful so, with no other options, she reached out for help, called an 800 number, got on a plane and signed up for 90 days of treatment.

She was goofy and smart and kind to both staff and clients. She had a good sense of humor. She never broke a rule or caused a fuss. She was a klutz. She’d break things accidentally. Lean on a chair and fall over. She got caught in a fly trap on the patio and they had to cut a big chunk outta of her hair to get her free. I liked her.

After a couple of weeks she said she felt “cooped up” and wanted to run. I told her she’d have to settle for walks. That’s about all this smoker could handle.

We didn’t talk about recovery. We mostly talked about what we hated. Things people did. Things people said. The way people acted. Hate can be quite a bonding tool and it was about the only thing we had in common.

But as the days went on, the walks got longer and the conversations got deeper. We got to know each other. She wanted to know about my life and she told me all about hers. One day she told me she lives with a secret that haunts her and asked if she could tell me. She told me about the rape. I didn’t have any fixes or wisdom on how to handle it. I just told her the importance of talking with someone professional and commended her on the courage it took to tell me.

The following days she said she felt better. “Like I can breathe again” She stopped cutting. When she was approaching her final week of the program she said she was “scared I won’t see you anymore, you’re the only person I feel safe around”.

I told her she felt that way because she confided in me. And that she would find the same thing with many other people in her future that she trusted and opened up to. But she needed to talk with a professional. She said, “I know.”

I reached out to a female therapist I trusted and respected. I called Laura’s parents and got them to pay for weekly sessions. I told Laura and she was excited.

When she graduated our program she moved into a sober living. A couple weeks later she called me. I asked her how the sessions were going with her therapist and she said good. I asked if she told her about the assault. “Not yet”, she said.

I never spoke to her again.

Last I heard she stopped seeing the therapist. She started drinking again, got kicked out of sober living, and moved back home. That was over a year ago.

I often think about how those two fraternity brothers didn’t just rape a girl all those years ago. They raped a future. They raped relationships. Careers. A marriage. They raped a whole life.

And I just can’t shake the feeling that I let her down. But, you see, the truth is, when it comes to stuff like trauma and secrets and sexual assault and emotional safety and boundaries… I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m just a guy who used to use drugs and hasn’t in fifteen years. And I haven’t because some people are so interesting and so lovely that they make the world bearable.

People like Laura.

I hope she’s okay.