Me Too

 

It’s 1993, and I’ve graduated from college with my Bachelor’s degree a scant eight months before.  I’m employed by one of the largest accounting firms in the world with a job that is comprised of about 60% travel, so I’m away from home quite often.

On these out of town assignments, which usually last a few weeks, I stay in moderately-priced hotels meeting the firm’s expense standard.  The places we stay aren’t fabulous, but they aren’t bad, and I’m with the rest of my team so I feel pretty safe.

Well, I felt pretty safe.

The memory, when I choose to recall it, isn’t clear at all.  It’s blurry and difficult and surreal.  It feels like it happened to someone else, but, if I close my eyes, I can hear the sounds, smell the smells, and – repulsively – feel the sensations.

Why that is repulsive will be revealed to you shortly, but first I must tell the story.

My story.

Mine. I have to own this.

I should start by saying I was on a job with people I trusted and enjoyed working with very much.  Our Senior, or lead, was a woman I respected and felt I could learn a great deal from and I valued her opinion greatly.  We had been on this particular job about two weeks, going home on the weekends and staying over in the small Central Valley town during the week.

The town had little to offer in the way of lodging so we stayed at a motel just off the freeway, less than a mile from our client, with a nice-ish restaurant in the parking lot.  Our rooms were on the second floor toward the back of the place, although that’s really not relevant I suppose.

Because we worked twelve hour days, we ate most of our dinners in the aforementioned restaurant.  After two weeks, we had come to know the staff fairly well.  My Senior had been on this job before, stayed in the same place, and eaten at this restaurant many times in the past; as a result, she had struck up a friendship with a waiter whom I found to be a pleasant guy.  He was a little older than I and possessed of a self-assurance that drew people to him.

Excellent for a person in customer service, and excellent for someone whose purpose in life is to earn the trust of others, which he did.

But I digress

At any rate, one evening – it was a Thursday – we were looking toward wrapping up the audit for the week and heading home early on Friday. Through some twists and turns of the conversation at dinner, we all agreed to go into town for a drink to celebrate the upcoming end of what was our busy season.  The waiter offered to show us a place he said we’d enjoy and we gladly took him up on it.

The details of where we went and how long we were there aren’t important.  What is important is that this story – as boring as it has been – takes a tragic twist at this point.  For twenty-five years, that twist has remained silently hidden in my mind and not divulged to anyone.

By anyone, I mean anyone.  Not to my friends, husband, or my parents.  No one.

You’re hearing it here for the first time.

You see, at some point early in that evening, the rest of my team decided they were going to head back to the hotel without me.  I can’t remember exactly what the driving arrangements were, or why they left me in the care of the waiter, but they did and I was, and at no point up to then did I feel anything other than safe.  He was going to take me back to the hotel and all would be well.

Spoiler alert:  it wasn’t.

Before agreeing to take me home, the nice waiter bought me a drink, my first and only of the evening.  At some point, finding no reason why I shouldn’t, I let my attention drift from that drink.  My eyes were likely not off the glass for more than a few minutes but that truly is all it takes, my friends. I’m quite certain it didn’t taste any different, and I’m quite certain it was the only one I had.

If you’re a woman, you know (or have heard) the warnings against leaving a drink unattended.

The rest comes in flashes, like the evening was lit only by a strobe light.  I remember looking at the drink – it was an intense purple and to my mind, it seemed to glow in the glass. Something was off about it, and about him.

I remember heading to the bathroom after telling him I wasn’t feeling well, and sitting on the ground in the stall for what felt like hours.

I remember two well-meaning women coming in to get me, telling me my friend was worried.  I protested but they delivered me to him, staggering and barely able to hold onto my purse.

I remember collapsing on the grass in front of the restaurant and feeling him scoop me up to carry me to the car.  I heard him tell someone I’d had too much to drink and I tried to protest that I’d only had one drink, but the words wouldn’t come.

I don’t remember the drive back to my hotel room, and I don’t remember going upstairs.

I don’t remember opening the door with my card key.

I do remember his insistence that I kiss him, and my attempts to shake my head no.

I do remember being pushed backward onto the bed and trying to sit up time after time without success.

I do remember my panic at not being able to fight back and I remember saying “Please don’t” over and over and over.

I blacked out, or passed out, or whatever you care to call it, and woke the next morning stripped naked in my hotel bed, unclear on what had happened to me. For reasons that are clear to all women, I shortly became clear.  Disgusted, I made it to the bathroom where I vomited multiple times and sat in the shower for as long as I could bear it.

At some point I realized I was late to work and wondered why no one had come by my room to check in on me.  Somewhere deep down, I panicked at the thought that someone had, and that they knew.

That someone had checked in, realized what had happened, and left me there.

I begged the universe for that not to be the truth.  I wanted them to have forgotten me because that was better.

I dressed, threw my things in my car, and headed to the client’s offices.  I could barely make the drive and had to pull over twice in two miles to vomit again and again.  Arriving at the site, I composed myself and walked in the back door to be greeted by my Senior who chastised me for being late and for – in her words – obviously drinking too much the night before.

I froze.  I wanted to tell her what had happened, to ask for her help, to seek guidance as to what one does after something like this happens, but I couldn’t.

I didn’t, and I let her berate me then and for the rest of my time with that firm.  She carried a poor opinion of me from that day forward and I’m certain she shared it with others. I worked my ass off to prove anyone wrong who believed her, and I know I worked twice as hard as my colleagues as a result.

It really wasn’t her fault, because she had no way of knowing that something like that had happened to me; I didn’t tell her.

Wait, back up.

Something like that.

No, not something like that.

That.

Why can’t I say it, even now when I’ve determined to put it out there for the world to know?

Something like being raped.

Raped

I was drugged and raped in a hotel room in Merced, CA in 1993. 

It took me a quarter-century to say that, and it’s not that I don’t know what happened, or even that I’ve forgotten the details.

I know his name.  I could pick him out of a line-up even today.

So why?  Why hold onto that?

Well, boys and girls, let me tell you exactly why, and make a supposition about why many women make the same decision.

It’s not only that we fear no one will believe us.

It’s precisely that we fear they will, and with that belief will come judgment.

I was married and the mother of a young child.

I was an only child of parents who had little and worked hard.  They faced adversity nearly every day and had hopes that I would turn out to be something great.

I’d graduated college and had a fantastic career.

I was (allegedly) smart.

But if I weren’t smart enough to avoid this situation, was I really as smart as they hoped?

How much disappointment could I bring to my parents if they knew that I’d placed myself in the position to let something like this happen?

So I held it in, and I pretended it never mattered, and I blamed myself for not being smart enough to keep it from ever happening.

I’ve spent most of my life believing that what happened to me would never matter (if no one knew), and truly I probably wouldn’t have uttered it even still if either of my parents were alive and apt to feel shame over the situation.

But they aren’t and recent news stories have eaten at me as I watch the mainstream media tear into women who have chosen not to disclose what happened to them.

I’ve heard men in leadership positions imply (and outright claim) that women are lying about sexual assault because they tell their stories decades after the events, and it makes me sick.

I simply can’t understand why anyone would think a woman would make up a story like this and go public with it given the immediate shift her life will take after uttering the words. Trust me, the simple shame I feel in writing this piece is enough to make me want to hide from everyone I know who may read it.

I’ll never be able to look at any potential reader and think you’re not silently judging me, but it’s important that I not sit on this any longer.

Judge away, I can’t stop you.

But I can try to educate you.

I don’t care what your political leanings are, and I don’t care who you follow.  I don’t care what you eat for breakfast or who you share your life with.

I care that you read this and understand a little more about why a woman – any woman – wouldn’t tell her story.

In this particular instance, why an ambitious, career-minded female would choose to go to work instead of disclosing that she’d been raped the night before.

Why she’d endure the judgment of co-workers determining she was unreliable instead of a victim, and why in the remaining three years she spent in that job, she chose to commute daily – up to two hours each way – to avoid staying out of town again.

Why a wife would fear the disdain (or rage) of her husband if he found she’d been violated, and why she became distant and withdrawn from intimacy until tests came back reasonably certain she’d not been exposed to anything deadly.

Why the child of proud parents would not want to let them down by finding out she’d made a stupid decision that resulted in such a crime, and why she held that secret close until they were gone.

No one was punished for what happened to me – well, except me, because I’ve punished myself day in and day out for years.

No one ever will be punished, and I’m not sure punishing him would even make a difference now.

That’s ok.

Because even though I’ve questioned every stroke of the keyboard that went into typing this, and even though I’m still not sure I want everyone to know, I feel as though I can’t sit quietly and let character assassination happen from ignorant viewpoints who don’t understand the whys behind the actions of victims of sexual assault.

I have a voice, and I have my own answers to those accusations.  Shouting them at the radio during my morning commute is no longer enough.  If I’ve educated even one of my readers on why a story about sexual assault that happened thirty years ago is as valid as a story about one that happened last night, I’ve done something right with a very bad situation.

Now you know.

#metoo

A Second Trip to the Sea Shore

Once again, the drive is familiar.  We’ve done this before, a few months ago, only this time all of my boys are with me.  We wind through the country roads, over hills baked golden in the summer sun.  As always, we top a small hill and the Pacific comes into view, its expanse taking my breath away.

Four months ago, we were here to give my mother to the sea.  On that May day, we held my father steady as he crossed the loose sand carrying a package that was priceless to him.  We leaned against the rocks, removed our shoes, rolled up our pants, and walked with him into the surf where he bent to open that package and release her ashes into the receding waves.  She was joined by irises he’d grown for her, flowers that chose to bloom immediately after her death as though to remind him that she was still around.

On that day, my father looked so small and frail, but he made us promise that we’d do this very same thing for him when his time came.

We promised, thinking to ourselves that we’d have a long time before that trip had to be made.

Oh, how wrong we were.

Today, my sons helped me make that same trek across that same sandy beach, toward those same rocks we used to prop ourselves up a few months ago, and into the surf where this time it was my turn to carry such a valuable parcel and bend toward the turquoise waves.  We were joined again by friends who are really family and family who came thousands of miles to see my dad off as he took his final voyage. I wish I could say I handled the task with grace, but really I didn’t, and instead I fumbled my way through what should have been the job of a better woman.

But I was who he had and I did my best, making certain that he was honored in the way he would have wanted.

If I keep telling myself that, someday it will be true.

I watched as the waves carried his ashes, a long, thin stripe of brown standing in stark contrast to the blue water.  I stood motionless as first they brought his ashes toward me and then quickly drew them away, and in that moment I think I realized the full gravity of what it meant to let him go.

It’s hard to explain how complete and utter loneliness feels, but today I came as close to that feeling as I think I ever have. I watched the ashes of my father move away from me with the irrational desire to call them back.

I didn’t want him to go, even though he was already gone and had been for a month.

I wanted him back in that urn, back on the table next to the picture of my mother.  I wanted to know where he was, even if the he wasn’t really him.

What had I done? 

My father, the man who had lamented his loneliness after the death of his life partner, was now no more than particles surrendered to the sea.

He was gone, and I was alone.

Utterly, completely alone.

I had a moment where I understood this to be irrational and I looked around at the love my boys were sharing with one another, the love my mother’s best friend and her husband had for our family, and the love that had brought my uncle and his family from so far away.  I knew this meant I wasn’t alone, and yet…I was.

And I am.

I rationalized today by telling myself that it wasn’t about me, it was about his wishes and the dedication he and my mother had to one another. I’ve spent the afternoon telling myself this was absolutely how it had to be, how it was meant to be.

How happy they’d be that I followed through on this.

But it doesn’t help.

In many ways I feel like a small ship on that vast ocean I stood before today, tossed around and completely out of control.  I have no rudder and am drifting, trying to make sense of who I am and where I’m going now that the role of daughter is not one I continue to fill.  I’ve always felt like an outsider, but today I’m outside even the three-person family that was all I had growing up.

As my father’s ashes receded from me, so too did his presence.  Neither of my parents wanted a memorial, and there will be no place save this small slip of sand to visit when I feel distant from them.

When I go, so will they, and there will be no mark on this earth as to their existence.

Maybe I did the wrong thing.  Maybe I’m hyper-focused on it because I don’t know what the right thing would have been, if not this.

All I know is that I’ve held it together through the loss of both of my parents by putting up a dam to hold back what I couldn’t face because I didn’t have a name for it, and today the ocean waves wore cracks in that dam.

The dam finally broke this evening as I sat watching the sun set, and what came pouring out is ugly and unpleasant and completely crippling.

Today was supposed to be closure. Instead, it was a complete failure on my part to deny the truths I don’t want to face.

I don’t know what lies before me nor do I know how I will put on my stoic façade and face the world.  I don’t want to grieve anymore, and yet it seems I’m not being given a choice.  It is there, and I can do nothing to stop it.

This process is unfair and it hits below the belt when you’re not looking, and my first instinct is to run to my mom or my dad.

Dammit.

It’s despair, this feeling I didn’t want to name.

Despair.

And I don’t want it.

I want to give it to the ocean like I gave my mom and then my dad, but the ocean won’t take it.

And honestly, I’m not sure I can take it, either.