tw: sexual assault

hello, letterboxd. let me introduce myself - i’m andrea, i’m seventeen, and i was raped at eight years old.

i’ve always called it a confession, admitting i was raped. as if it was me who did the wrong thing, as if I was confessing to a crime I did. and for years I did believe it was my own fault. I was eight and had no idea what sex was, he was older and a part of the family so i, and everyone in my house, trusted him. i didn’t explicitly say no, i didn’t express any sign of distress or disagreement to what we were doing, so i grew up thinking it was my fault, thinking, hey, is it even considered rape if i didn’t actually say no?

no one knows. i never had the guts to write it down, let alone say it out loud; it took me a full week to find the courage to start typing this up. and for years that’s what i wanted - i wanted to stay silent, to pretend it never happened, to move forward. i didn’t want to be ‘the girl that was raped’, because where i live, rape is almost a myth - people believe it only happens when you walk alone at night, done at dark skimpy alleyways by dark brooding strangers. it doesn’t happen within the walls of your own home, on the couch you still sit on nine years later, by someone you continue to see years after it happened. so i continue thinking, hey, was that even really rape?

the first and only person i told was a priest. it was in tenth grade, we were on a spiritual retreat and was asked to confess what we wanted to ask forgiveness for. i was the last to go, mostly because i was scared - maybe the priest would tell my teachers, and they would call my parents, who just a week prior yelled at me for getting home late, rehashing different versions of ‘don’t you watch the news? what if there were bad men? what if you get raped?’

i cried before i even got to say it. i never cried about it before. i didn’t even call it ‘rape’ then - i said something along the lines of, ‘he made sexual advances when i was little and i just went along with it’, because i was trying so hard not to be that girl who was raped; i wanted to be the girl who had something bad happen to her when she was a child but she’s moved on and well past it now.

i felt no relief saying it out loud. the priest, who in every confession offers his advice and tells you to pray ten hail mary’s or something, told me to stay away from temptation. i stopped crying then - you’re absofuckinglutely right, father angelo! i was tempted to have sex at eight years old, that’s why i went along with it! you’re a genius, i’m gonna go pray two our father’s as you wish now!

the little sliver of courage i had to speak out inevitably diminished after that. even with the #metoo movement this year and so many brave people calling out their rapists and abusers - which i am i am beyond happy to see happening - i chose to stay silent. i couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen if i decided to speak up. i couldn’t bear it.

a week ago i watched MFA because i wanted a breather from studying for finals, and a breather was the last thing it gave me. it caught me by surprise - i knew it was about sexual assault, but the way it treated its subject matter was so truthful and raw and downright terrifying and unlike anything i have ever seen before. it saddened me, it angered me, it relieved me, but most importantly, it encouraged me to finally speak out. the scene where the protagonist goes to her rapist’s home, stands in front of him, looks him in the eye, and says, ‘you raped me.’ with so much conviction, so much firmness and strength and fearlessness and certainty and anger broke me down. because that’s what he did to her, and what he did to me. he raped me. he didn’t ‘make sexual advances’ that i happened to ‘go along with’. i was eight and clueless and he took advantage of me. he raped me he raped me he raped me.

i guess it’s somewhat pointless to say this here, on a website where no one i knows who i am in person, but it’s a start - being silent should be the last thing on someone’s mind if they are sexually assaulted, not the first, and i am done being silent.

so hello again, letterboxd. i’m andrea, i’m seventeen, and i am that girl that was raped. his name is arnold. he's my cousin.