A Viral #MeToo Message

It started off as something I wanted to get off my chest; a seven year secret that had gradually become too much to bear alone, and an opportunity to share it with the world. It seemed like I had finally found a way out, but unearthing years of lies, betrayal, and wrong-doing doesn't come without consequences.

To set the scene, I was freshly fourteen years old; new to high school; new to being gay; and new to understanding relationships. Before this, the only interaction I had had with boys was looking up "naked men" on Google, and desperately hoping I had deleted the search history back far enough that my parents wouldn't see it when they logged on later.

I had become really fond of an older guy, a senior in high school. He was very warm and charming. Almost brother-like. Which was a nice change from my family dynamic of an overbearing mother, emotionally unavailable father, and hardly-there older sister. I greatly enjoyed the change of pace to a doting male figure. Which is all I tried to see him as, considering at the time he was with his on-again-off-again girlfriend of however many years. But young and naive me saw platonic affection and basic human decency as someone being into me 210 percent.

Fast forward a few months, and things began to pick up. His girlfriend leaves him for some grungy looking skater, his grandmother dies, and his family kicks him out. He's soft. He's weak. And scheming little me decides this is the time to attack and devote all my time to him. And in between a crying fit of his, he grabs my face and kisses me. I think I scored. I think I changed him. I think I won. But I didn't see that he had groomed and prepared me for this. The trapper had become the trapee. And it was this same emotional manipulation that he would continue to use for the length of our grueling six months together.

He was condescending, rude, and vile. But he said he loved me. And being the idiotic 14 year-old I was, I believed that this is what love was. Up until he raped me on campus. Not knowing what sex was for gay individuals, I didn't know what he was doing to me. All I knew is that it made me uncomfortable, I wanted it to stop, but if I loved him I needed to do this for him. It lasted what felt like a lifetime, and I wish I couldn't remember every detail of that day. Luckily enough, a baseball player saw it and reported it.

End of story right? Wrong. School administration declared that I had done it for drugs or for money, and that I was going to be suspended. Boys didn't get raped, I had made this choice for myself. And there was no going around it. No one believed me in the office. The police officer didn't even question me. At 14, I was to be held accountable for what an 18-year-old boy did to me. That I had allowed him to do. Not more than an hour later my parents were called in and made aware of the situation that I had "created" for myself. My mother was livid. My dad, despondent. And I knew the second we got home they would have my head for being such a shame to the family.

They didn't talk to me, save the times they told me I was going to therapy for sexual deviancy. For months I had therapists try to diagnose and treat an issue that didn't exist. And not a single one of them ever questioned if I was okay. If I had consented. Everyone spoke for me, and it sent me into a downward spiral. I was becoming anorexic, failing my freshman year, and expected to act like everything was normal to the rest of my family, because we couldn't let anyone else know how shameful and disgusting I was. It felt like I was constantly drowning in lies and deceit, but only because no one ever gave me the chance to breathe. No one allowed me to speak for myself. Because at 14 I was too young to defend myself, but old enough to stand for the actions of someone who was well aware of what they were doing.

I held that secret for seven years. I had told only two people who I thought would believe me. I was freshly 21 when my best friend told me to send my story in for a docu-series with Iskra Lawrence about overcoming the past and learning to love one's self. And at 3 AM that morning, in a hushed voice, I recorded a brief telling of my issue, so that no one could hear that I was about to undo seven years of my own grief. Within hours the next day, I was called by producers that Iskra had listened to my video and was positive she wanted me on with her to talk about it. And then the gravitas of what I had just done began to hit. Panic sets. There would be a full production crew at my house to record me saying I had lied about the reality of the situation for simplicity's sake. So what did I do to ease the situation between my parents and I? Continue to lie.

I had told them it was about body positivity (which wasn't too far off since I went from anorexic to overweight). And after we wrapped filming, I prayed they wouldn't see it. And for a few months, they didn't. Until the entirety of my extended family decided to call saying I was so strong and they wondered how my parents could just let me struggle like that. "Like what?" is how I imagined them responding before watching for themselves. Cue the longest screaming match between my mother and I over what a terrible son I was, and how I could have told her at any point that I had been raped, and that I made her feel like a shitty parent for keeping her in the dark. And that I should have know things would be okay if I spoke out. And that I could still be lying in the first place just to get people to feel sorry about how badly I did in the earlier parts of my life. Because, unfortunately, even though my story only involved me and how I was dealing with things, I wasn't the only one at that point in time of life who dealt with it. I wasn't the only one re-hashing and trying to deal with those wounds. I unearthed feelings in people that I didn't anticipate, and had no idea what was still to come of it.

The video itself reached nearly half a million views in one day. I had strangers sending me messages of how proud they were that I shared my story. I had strangers leaving hate comments that I deserved it. I had people who had no idea this went on wondering why they were left in the dark because they could have helped. No one tells you when you go viral that there is no going back. Everyone was made aware of a sensitive part of my life. People who only knew me as the person in the video. People who only knew me as a child; a student; a sexual delinquent; and the people who actually knew me. No one tells you that healing can hurt others. No one tells you that coming forward changes your life. No one tells you that you can impact people you don't even know with a few spoken words and tears.

Just like nothing was the same when it first happened, nothing was the same after. And I can only hope that the world has been a little bit better since that. I told myself that if I could just give one person the courage to speak up and seek help, all of the suffering would have been worth it. And hope that it has been worth it.