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#MeToo

How It Changes Your Life

By Jasmine YinglingPublished 6 years ago 11 min read
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This is the definition given to the word 'rape' in the dictionary: unlawful sexual activity carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female (paraphrased, because the full definition is MUCH longer). Unfortunately, society today defines it only as the act of forcing sexual intercourse. They say that what happened to me is called sexual abuse, not rape. I disagree.

I was sixteen, just learning how to drive, and admittedly very bad at it. My biggest weakness was parking, because I was terrified I would hit something or someone. My mother couldn't teach me due to her stress-related shoulder pain. Every time I made even the slightest mistake, she would tense up and not be able to move easily for days. My father stepped in after the first month or so.

My father was never a patient man. He had a temper on the best days, and he was almost impossible to please. He yelled at me for my mistakes, but it seemed to be helping. I was improving. June 6, 2011, the very first day of summer vacation, he spent the whole day with me. I drove us to the store, where he bought me candy that I didn't usually get. I drove us home, where we watched my favorite show and ate dinner. And then he announced that I would be driving after dark for the first time ever.

Now, I'm not afraid of the dark. At the time, I wasn't even afraid of driving. At the age of sixteen, you tend to think you're invincible until something happens to prove otherwise. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. I was thrilled that I was going to be trusted enough to drive at night. I was even more excited when he told me I could go wherever I wanted. I loved exploring new places, and he knew it. I took roads I'd never been on, and I got myself lost very quickly. That's when the trouble started.

"I know you and your mother clash a lot," he told me randomly. "What are some things you've always wanted to do that she won't let you?"

I didn't understand the question, of course. With no context, it didn't really make sense. So I told him things that I thought he'd want to hear. I was already a ballerina, but I wanted to be a 'toe ballerina,' to take classes 'en pointe.' I wanted to try soccer, like my sister used to do. I wanted to take our paddle boat around the lake by myself, since I was old enough to drive now. I wanted contacts instead of glasses. None of that was enough for him. We stopped to get gas, and before he got out of the car he explained what he wanted.

"Think about some other things you want to do. Illegal things," he told me before he closed the door. Illegal things? But there was absolutely nothing I'd ever wanted to do that was illegal. I had no interest in drugs, no interest in smoking, and the only alcohol I'd ever tried wasn't really good enough to want to drink all the time. So when he got back into the car, I made up more things that I thought would make him happy enough to drop the subject. It didn't work.

"I think I can do most of those things, but you wouldn't like the cost," he told me. Of course, with a statement like that, I was bound to ask what exactly the cost would be. I didn't want any of that stuff, but I was confused about why he was even offering.

"What's the cost?" I asked, trying really hard not to imagine what he was going to say. I knew by his tone that he didn't mean money. I was right.

"I want to give you your first orgasm," he told me.

There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to begin. Here's the list that went through my head, in order:

  1. I'm your DAUGHTER. What the HELL?!
  2. How would you even know that I haven't had one yet? How could you possibly know what I have and have not done?
  3. Where am I, and how do I get home?
  4. Oh my god, focus on the road. Just stay quiet and maybe he'll shut up.

I was still lost from all of the back roads I'd taken that I'd never been on before, but I was starting to recognize some of the things we were passing. It was pretty dark by then, and I didn't know any street names anyways. He wasn't done talking. He proceeded to tell me that it didn't have to involve penetration. He could do it just by rubbing. I wouldn't even have to take off my underwear.

"Can I think about it?" I asked, finally seeing a road I knew how to get home from. I was so close to being safe.

"Of course," he replied instantly. It was quiet when I turned down the road, and he must have realized I knew where I was. "Want to pull over somewhere and make out?"

Knowing this road, I knew where he wanted to go. If I said yes, he'd make me pull onto a side road that truck drivers use to sleep on at night. Our van would blend right in, and nobody would even think to look. He'd be able to do whatever he wanted to me. I said no, I was tired and just wanted to go home.

"I was mostly just checking to make sure you were serious about this," he told me. I can still hear his voice in my head, saying all of these things. It's been six years, and I can remember it like it's yesterday.

We were almost home when he spoke again. "Would it be easier if I drop it until you make a decision?" he asked me. I immediately agreed, and he promised he wouldn't bring it up again. I was so sure I could just never bring it up and it would go away, like it had never even happened. I was wrong so many times that night. Before we got out of the car, I made him promise me two more things: that he wouldn't cheat on my mother, and that he wouldn't ask my thirteen-year-old sister to do the same thing. He agreed to both.

I didn't sleep more than a few hours that night, and it was full of nightmares when I did. I got up extra early the next morning, with my four-year-old brother. My father was up not quite an hour later, and demanding that I drive him to Home Depot. I don't even remember what he wanted there. There were so many rooms under construction in our house that it could have been a number of things. He woke my sister up to watch my brother, and we left.

As soon as we got in the van, before we were even out of the driveway, he asked me if I'd thought of anything else I wanted. I told him no, and I know he could hear in my voice that I was upset. He clearly didn't care. He told me we were going to work on parking that day, but the cemetery he'd wanted to take me to had a burial in progress. So instead, he took me a different way and had me pull into the parking lot of an abandoned playground to "practice parking."

I will openly admit that I cheated the very first time I parked. I pulled through two rows of spaces to get the van straight before parking it. He made me shut it off and get out, and I naively thought that he was going to show me how to do it correctly. Instead, he handed me a cigarette, lit it, and showed me how to smoke it. It was one of the things I'd made up wanting to try.

While we 'smoked' (he smoked, I pretended; I didn't like the very first drag, and he didn't seem to notice that I didn't take any more), he gave me compliment after compliment and told me things I never wanted to know.

"You're so pretty. Your mother can't even make out with me anymore because of her asthma. We don't have sex anymore. You're so thin, it's attractive." The compliments he gave me are ones that I can't hear anymore without my skin crawling. It was all horrible things to hear from your father.

In the middle of all of that, he told me that he'd talked to my mother the night before and convinced her to let me get contacts, just like I wanted. He finished his cigarette, watched me stamp mine out, then said the scariest thing yet.

"Is that enough to let me see your boobies?" he asked. This is a direct quote, word for word, from my biological father. I can't accurately describe the look in his eyes, other than to say that he looked absolutely insane. He was not going to take no for an answer, and it was going to be incredibly painful for me if I tried to fight him. I didn't answer, and he didn't really wait for an answer anyways. He forced me into the back of the van, and practically tore my shirt and bra because I wasn't moving fast enough for him.

And looking wasn't enough. "Can I touch?" he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer. He was already holding them before he'd even finished the first word. It DID NOT feel good. I didn't want any part of this. I hadn't agreed to any part of this. "Can I pinch them to make the nipples hard?" he asked, but again, he hadn't waited for any kind of answer. His eyes were glazed over, and I was trying my hardest to look anywhere but at him. It wasn't until he asked if he could lick them that I realized if I didn't stop this somehow, it wasn't going to end with just this.

I managed to force my bra back down into place, knocking his hands away when he tried to 'help.' He worked third shift, and I reminded him that he'd need to be sleeping soon so he could be awake at work. He agreed reluctantly, and let me drive us the rest of the way to Home Depot. We didn't even go into the store. He'd supposedly forgotten his wallet, but he had no problem buying cigarettes from the closest gas station before we started the drive home.

He didn't even tell me not to tell anyone. He was so sure that I would keep it to myself, that my relationship with my mother was so bad that I wouldn't want to tell her anything. Or maybe he'd deluded himself into thinking that I'd liked it and would just want to stay quiet all on my own. I curled up on the couch that entire day, and everyone just assumed I was sick. In a way, I was.

That night, I told my best friend what had happened over Facebook Messenger. She spent the whole night and part of the morning trying to convince me to tell someone. I had convinced myself that if I kept quiet, it would just go away. It wasn't until she told me that when I moved out he'd move right on to my sister that I realized I had to tell my mother.

She immediately got us out of the house. She believed me instantly, because I was crying so hard and so beyond upset, and then he admitted to doing it while we were packing overnight bags. We stayed with my grandparents, and my mother took me to the police station less than an hour after we got there. There was a jury trial, and he was found guilty. He was sentenced to 40 days in jail (alternating weekends, so that he could keep his job), a year and a half of probation, and ten years on the sex offenders list. That was it. That was the end of it for him.

It still hasn't ended for me. Six years later, I still feel anxiety every time I think about it. I spent two years having such severe panic attacks that I could barely function. I was heavily medicated for a long time. I went through three years of therapy, not that it really helped. I still have a hard time accepting any compliments, and I don't like to be touched by anyone I don't explicitly trust. That's a very short list, even now.

There were so many warning signs over the years, but I'd never noticed. You don't think about things like this until after it's already happened. They don't give it the proper attention in school; they brush over the topic and you just sit there the whole time thinking, 'this could never happen to me. I'm too smart'. I can say with absolute certainty that it doesn't matter how smart you are. What matters is that you're prepared for anything that could happen. Don't ever think 'this could never happen to me'. It can happen to anyone, at any time, anywhere.

You shouldn't have to live your life in fear, but you should be aware that bad things do happen. And always know that you are stronger than you could ever imagine. Strength comes in all shapes and sizes. You are loved. And if something like this has happened to you, don't ever believe that it was your fault. Nobody deserves this. Nobody.

gender roles
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