Dear Rapist
Jodie Haley
I was twelve when you pulled me behind that building. I was twelve when you covered my mouth with your huge coarse hand. When you pushed me to the snow covered ground, when you grabbed my undeveloped breast tightly while ripping off my pants, I was twelve.
I thought you would kill me when I looked in your face, your black skin, your deep eyes and your silly grin. Then I thought that maybe this was just a game for you, to play with me only until you had your fill. I thought wrong. You should have killed me.
I remember your weight on me; it was so hard to breathe. I remember your presence between my legs, the sheer pain of my young body ripping under you. You laughed so quietly in my ear, you smelled my skin and licked my face, I remember.
I can still hear you whispering in my ear “It’s okay baby, it’s ok. Do you like that, does it feel good baby?”
You grabbed my face so hard you left a handprint bruise. You pulled my hair so hard I was left with bald spots.
Did you know that after you got up from me and spread your seed on the fence before leaving, that I was dead inside? Did you know that I would feel you in me for the rest of my life?
They found me there, with my clothes torn and my boots missing, behind that building in the snow. My body was trembling and blood was running down my legs. I could not move. I could not hear. I could not see. I was in shock, which is what they called it.
I did not speak of you for fear that you would find out. I could not risk you coming back for me. I was carried to the car and brought to the hospital were my hell would continue.
Large metal tools were used to look inside my body at the damage you had done. Sixty stitches were placed there to close the rips you had left for me. It took them hours inside of me to try to reverse the mutilation. They drew my blood to test for any other gifts you may have left behind. I had begun having a period three months before so they also made sure I was not pregnant. They made me see counselors. They made me spends hours talking to police.
Did you just go home to bed? Did you go to a party or to see some friends? Because I didn’t, I spent the next months of my life dealing with what you did to my body. Then I spent the next years of my life dealing with what you did to my head.
I know while I write this that you will never get it. I know you never had to pay for what you did to me. You are free. I am torn and will carry this forever, and you are free.
Sometimes when I go on the bus, or when I shop at the mall, I see you. You always have on a silly grin. You are always looking at me. You are always gone in the blink of an eye, but you are always carried with me.
When I was sixteen I learned about sperm. Only then did I understand that it had not been urine that you left on the fence. I spent the rest of my teenage years wondering why you had not cum inside of me. I thought that I had not been good enough for you. That maybe it was your way of telling me that I was nothing. Isn’t that ridiculous, that I felt so much hurt just because of that? I have always felt guilty for letting you make me feel so horrible about myself. But my feelings of self hate always win. Did I mean less to you than a prostitute would have? Did I mean anything at all?
Was I your first? I often wonder how many others you have done this to. How many others suffer as I do on your behalf? Did you get caught after someone else? Or did you walk away as if it had never happened just like with me?
I think about you so often. I can still smell the leather of your coat, your after-shave, and your breath. You enter my dreams, you ruin the sex that I now have with my husband. Sometimes when he touches me I see and feel you.
You have stolen any freedom that my children could ever hope for. I am paranoid and spend weeks sometimes without ever leaving the safety of my home.
Does it make you feel good to hear this; do you laugh at me? Or maybe you do care about the hurt you have created. I tell myself that you suffer each day that you will never live down what you have done. It is the only way that I can continue getting better. Every night I put more and more of you to sleep for good. I will spend the rest of my life getting over what you did, because I am hurting now, and you are winning, but will beat you. I have too.
I was twelve when you took my life and left me breathing.
Do you remember me rapist? Because I will always remember you.
