#metoo

I didn’t have a story to tell until I heard her story. The #metoo movement had just begun to take shape and no matter how many times I saw or heard it I couldn’t sympathize. Growing up my parents were extra careful with me about everything. They had me late in life and after several miscarriages, so they were very strict. I hate it how strice they were until now because I didn’t have a story; so her story became a story.

The phone rang the same way it rang every day, but this call would change my life. I started the conversation boldly expressing how agitated I was that all of a sudden everyone had a #metoo story. These #metoo stores were taken over and I knew some of them had to be lies. After a few minutes of ranting the voice says “me too”. So I said ”right”, thinking the #metoo was in agreement with me, but then a confirming sniffle broke my heart. That #metoo wasn’t joining my rant, it was someone I love joining a movement that I didn’t even think was valid.

She began her story. “ I only wanted to get a couple extra dollars while I was in college. I saw this flyer at the library for a personal assistant only three days a week and $200. I called quick because that was good money and with nursing school being so busy I could only work about three days and that was pushing it. I got the job and was elated when I realized it was for a female professor on campus, because she would understand the struggles of a student. Everything was fine for about a month, then she called me one evening and asked if I could drive her home. She had been out drinking with friends and had too much. I was her assistant so I didn’t see any issues and went to pick her up. We got to her house, she told me to come in and get some papers that needed typing and that’s when things went left. I walk in to retrieve the papers from her home office and she began to touch all over me. I had no idea she was even gay, she had a husband and two kids. At first I tried to play it off because I needed the job but then she became more aggressive. Eventually I pushed her away and ran out the door. I never told anyone because I knew no one would believe me. I was a struggling nursing student and she was an established college professor with a husband and two children. That evenin changed my life. I was so distracted after that I flunked out of nursing school and moved here to escape it all.“

It only took a couple words before my emotions took over and I couldn’t stop my tears. I was getting this #metoo story from someone I knew wouldn’t lie to me. All of a sudden the words she was saying resembled some of the words I had been hearing and reading in other’s stories, and my heart broke again. I was a part of the reason some of the #metoo victims had waited so long to tell their stories. For the first time I realize, not only have they been victimized once but every time we treated their pain as a ploy or a plot for attention we victimized them again. As a society, we force #metoo victims to live in a silent shame or a public rape. Even though the public rape seems disgraceful; the silent shame is probably more painful. That’s when I decided, even though I didn’t have a story,for the rest of my life her story would be my story and I became a part of the #metoo movement.