Shouldn't have happened...

I’m not against rape because it happened to me. That’s not my point. I’m against rape because it happens, and it’s wrong. I don’t think I’m radical. I think I have the right to be safe and want this right to extend to all women. I shouldn’t matter whether she was already drunk, already naked, already dating him, even already fucking him.

It shouldn’t matter if she reports it; I have a right to safety, even if I’m far from brave enough to regurgitate traumatic details of my life to a uniformed stranger and submit to a medical exam to let them extract evidence from my already violated body. It shouldn’t matter if the evidence has been washed away, or if I am in too much pain to talk or let them see my body. I still have the right to safety.

It shouldn’t matter if I flirted, tried to become friends, pretended to be straight. It shouldn’t matter that I used crutches – that makes me no stronger or weaker than any other woman. It shouldn’t matter that the age of consent is fourteen – and I was fifteen. I didn’t consent, but was too hurt to show the bruises that would prove it, still hurting inside from the stitches they used to put me back together.

It shouldn’t hurt anymore; I shouldn’t remember it, be plagued with flashbacks four years later. I shouldn’t be afraid of whipped cream, change rooms, gym benches and tensor bandages. I shouldn’t have a deformed hymen, asymmetry and scarring that I was afraid my girlfriend would see. I shouldn’t be afraid of sex; shouldn’t be afraid of letting someone see my body’s differences where it has been ripped with pain or be afraid of touch which might accidentally sting of a buried memory.

I shouldn’t be afraid or hurt, violated and emptied. Who I am, what I did, and what he did shouldn’t matter.

These shouldn’ts are because it shouldn’t have happened.