By Sky
Young People's Press

Date rape is no laughing matter. It is a violent act, an exercise of power and force which leaves behind it a legacy of pain.

While the physical scars may disappear, the emotional and spiritual scars shadow victims forever.

Mutilation, bruising, fractured pelvic bones, and broken noses are all possible grotesque outcomes of these 'one night' violations. However, there are those, like myself, who are 'lucky' enough to have avoided physical injuries.

Photo by Richelle Forsey Click on Image to Enlarge

We are often dismissed as over-exaggerators because the only evidence of the attack is within our minds and souls, while our bodies we now loathe remain unscathed.

I was fifteen when I was attacked. I have lived with the aftermath of this violation for the last six years.

The actual event is shelved in a pocket of my mind. A blank void is all that remains of that night. I have never even been able to remember his face. The only detail I can remember from my one night in hell is the insistent blinking of a red digital clock.

My attacker left an invisible trail of devastation. For months, I showered constantly, trying to scrub away his intrusion, trying to rid myself of the shame I was engulfed in. I suffered a nervous breakdown that left me emotionally paralyzed for two years. I've tried to fight to regain my control but I falter in terrible bouts of depression and guilt.

Often, when I look in the mirror, I see a whore looking back - a weak, pathetic girl, not the empowered young woman I have striven to become. Losing my sense of power and realizing how incredibly vulnerable I am made the first years after I was raped intolerable.

I have asked myself what I had done to deserve being raped. Perhaps I was a dirty, filthy whore. Something inside of me changed that night and I have never been able to look at myself the same way.

I had always felt powerful and free. When all that was so easily taken from me, I blamed myself and my inadequacies. I will always be angry about this and the effects it has had on my self esteem. I wondered why he didn't just kill me, because I feel dead now.

Throughout these years, I have never felt courageous or heroic. I did not charge my rapist because I couldn't face him. I was as fragile as I will ever allow myself to be again. The hatred I feel for him was matched by the fear that came along with it.

I dropped out of high school and I never returned. I was afraid of letting my peers know what had become of me. Letting them see me torn open like a ravaged lamb was too much for me to handle at the time. Every night I would relive the attack in my dreams and wake up a little more shattered the next morning.

Before I was raped, I truly believed that my fate lay in my hands and not in a heaven I didn't believe in. After the attack I began looking to God for answers. I needed a sanctuary and tried desperately to find it in God.

Was is it my strength HE was testing? Does God find the weak pathetic? Was I weak? I came to realized that God had failed me. HE had allowed the Antichrist to take my innocence and then instructed me to forgive him.

I could not rise to this idea though. I had already witnessed more evil at the hands of a man than anyone deserves. Instead, I found my desired sanctuary in Satan: Rage. I became trapped in my desire for revenge.

I began planning my rapist's murder.

It became an obsession. I can kill this man. Kill him like he killed me. Over and over in my mind, I could see him squirm beneath me and hear his pleas for me to stop - but I wouldn't. I relished in the terror his eyes would betray, the Hunter becoming the Hunted.

This sweet justice would never be acted out, but the dark place inside me gave me hope when God could not stop my internal wounds from bleeding. I felt sure I would never regain control of myself until my reign of terror was carried out. God would then quietly appear and remind me that revenge would make me no better than my rapist. My rape will always be with me and I have come to terms with this. But I cannot repair the emotional or spiritual damage but I have suffered. I am still struggling to regain my sense of innocence and heal slowly. I know I have won, that I am no longer a victim - but my battle is far from over.

Today I am stronger and I feel relatively safe in my environment, except when I dream.

I am 21 years old and in my third year of college. When I was 15, I could have benefited from reading a publication such as "No Hurt". I hope someone else will read this and not feel as alone.

Sky is a pseudonym. She is 21 years old.