I AM A SURVIVOR

Journal Entree: I am A Survivor

I’m so lost... as I sit there holding onto the hospital blanket I remember everything that had happened to me that night. You only hear about these things in movies, but you never realize that one day the movie could be you. Those voices, those voices saying “she deserved it”, “she’s a slut anyways”, “no one's going to care” kept racing through my mind. What did I do to deserve this? How was it my fault? A night of fun turning into my worst nightmare. It all started at Madison Pear’s party she was the most popular girl in school. It was my first high school party I was so excited, I was finally going to be one of those popular kids.

“Sarah, Sarah are you okay?” My mother begins to furiously shake me trying to wake me up from this horrible dream. But I’m broken. It’s as if I was awake but I wasn’t there. “Honey, are you okay? Do you remember what he looked like?” she said frantically. But all I remember is my blanket, the blanket covering the dirty truth underneath. All the blood coming from my legs all the hickeys on my breast his cologne on my chest all under this blanket that I didn’t want anyone else to see. I was screaming on the inside but no words would come out I was screaming but why couldn’t they hear me? There my body laid, limp without life I was living but I was dead on the inside. Tears coming down my face but not a word coming out of my mouth. As the doctors escort my mother away I begin to panic here I am left alone again without anyone to hear for my cry. The next day a group of detectives come into my room asking about what happened. But again I am broken. “Sweetie, we would like you to remember what happened that night”. As if I didn’t need another reminder of the most traumatic experience of my life. But I wouldn’t speak. “Okay dear, we’ll come back another time whenever you’re ready”...But will I ever be? As people come and go I know that everyone knows what happened to me. I feel dirty, everyone knows this secret about me. I guess it isn’t much of a secret after all, my friends from school come and visit me in the hospital and tell me he’s been bragging. I’m the laughing stalk of school. He’s been saying I begged him for it, I was a girl who dressed like a slut who was begging for it. I deserved it because of the way that I showed myself to the world.

Today I leave the hospital but I will never be the same. I am broken. I didn’t think about it, I thought ignoring it was the best way to cope for it. As I came home and all my family came to see me to make sure I was okay I pretended I knew nothing I erased the memories from my head. Me raped? No, never because those things didn’t happen to simple town girls like me. I hit my first stage, denial. Now denial is a phase in life which many of us go through but I knew it was all just a dream because those types of things just didn’t happen to girls from here. I was just drunk and had a little bit of rough sex was all, wasn’t it? Yeah, just rough sex and I just so happen to not be able to remember it...

He was the typical guy a true lover's delight. I mean I had “sex” with the hottest boy in school… but why did it feel so wrong? He was tall, handsome and athletic. He’d have his whole life ahead of him he was a senior, boy was I lucky...right? His name was Jason, Jason Cooper the school’s hottest jock and smartest athlete, the kid who made nothing out of something. He had it all from the looks, to the clothes to the personality a.k.a your average fuck boy. But what is it about fuck boys? Why is it that they drive girls around the world so crazy? It’s crazy how we know they’re so bad for us but it feels so right. They come into our lives make us fall in love and leave like we meant nothing.

But now it’s time for school. Time to show my brave face, I was just a girl who went to a party and got to drunk to remember it...right? As I walk to my locker I feel all these faces on me, a whole bunch of loud whispers saying “there she is, that's the one who hooked up with Jason Cooper”. I felt like a celebrity with all eyes on me, I had “sex” with the most popular boy around. I went from being a nobody to being the coolest someone, girls were envious of me they wanted to be me. “Hey Mrs. Cooper, missed you for the past couple of days” said Madison. I laughed and said “Yeah I was busy with things for my mom and school sucks anyways”. But I lied, I had been in the hospital because I got carried away with my “rough” sex with Jason and it hurt really bad for being my first time. As the days go on I gained more and more friends, I was now one with the popular crowd. Everyone knew who I was in every grade, every freshmen wanted to be me. They wanted to be that girl that hooked up with the hottest jock in school.

Now with my new found popularity I began being invited to parties, but I turned many of them down considering I didn’t know how to hold my liquor I didn’t need anymore nights in the hospital because I had rough sex. But this time it’s the last party before summer and I need to start my summer off with a bang, I’ll just watch my intake this time. As I get ready on this saturday afternoon it feels like time is going by so slow. It feels like the clock is frozen and time has stopped. That should’ve warned me… as I get ready and put on my moisturizer I begin to think of the makeup I wanted. Should I go for something sexy and sultry? Or should I go for something soft and neutral? What about a red lip? After all, red is the color of love and I needed some love tonight.

So this is my first party ever since my small incident and I told myself, no more heavy drinking. So I was just going to enjoy myself and the company of my new friends. Truth or Dare, the classic naughty high schooler game.  I remember being on my knees surrounded by the group of my guy friends. They were cheering each other on, asking me to perform oral sex on them. I said, “No,” and tried to push them away. My efforts were useless. One of the guys suggested going upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Before I knew it, I was on the bed and Jason Cooper had pulled my pants and underwear off.

 I remember screaming and crying out for help but no one heard me. He raped me. I can say it now that what I thought was rough sex the first time wasn’t. He raped me, he broke me to pieces and he tore my heart out. I froze, although I didn’t say no I didn’t speak. I just stood there and took it. I took it like the “dirty slut” I was. I took it like the “popular freshmen” I was. The first time was bad enough...but at least I didn’t remember. Now I am scarred with the truth. I am scarred not with blood but rather the fluid that came from him and those hickeys I once had on my breast and his cologne on my chest and now my red lipstick smudged on my face. I hated myself. It’s my own fault, you would’ve thought I learned my lesson the first time. Why couldn’t he kill me instead? He took the one thing from me that no one else has. I had never ending scars on my face of blood saying slut on my forehead.

Second stage: feeling sorry for myself. Now this is a stage many of us go through in life for many different reasons but why me? Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Because obviously it was my fault because it’d happen more than once...I’d heard around school that it was the way I dressed. And that it was the way I carried myself, I was so stupid. I’m such a slut obviously it was my fault why’d I ever think that Jason Cooper would ever fall for a girl like me? I am just a wanna be cool little girl who’d gotten her heart broken by the hottest guy in school. I am a nobody. I am tore in pretending to be someone I wasn’t and who I wanted to be. I am nothing and will never be. No one in their right mind would look in my direction...I’m ugly and will always be. I’ll be that girl in school that no one remembers, why would they? And if they do I’ll be known as the slut of my grade. I keep having these dreams, all these flashbacks of the second night, I couldn’t remember what’d happen the first and I didn’t want them. I had deeply wanted to hurt myself and caught myself trying to give myself a reason. I began skipping school and staying in my room, not wanting to deal with the outside public. I found it harder and harder to keep my good grades in school and I no longer had my so called friends. But who was there to help me? Yeah I had my mom and from time to time she’d remind me how much she loved me, but why’d she let this happen to me...I selfishly blamed everyone else for what happened to me. My so called friends for not hearing my screams, I felt like this was something that was plotted against me. They were all older, they’d played me like a drum all along. I hate them, every inch of their souls I’d hope the worst for Jason, Madison and each and every single person that had attended the party that night. This was their fault.“Sarah, I know you’ve been through such a traumatic situation but you’ve got to keep going” said my mother. How? How “mom”? How can I forgive all of these people who are supposedly my friends? My peers, why were they bystanders? How could I or anyone let this happen a second time mom? Those words were all in my head, I wanted them to roll off my tongue but they didn’t. I just said okay and went back to school the next day I would become a sophomore but no matter what it wasn’t going to change anything.  But I didn’t I’d begin skipping school and found new friends and I’d drink till I couldn’t drink anymore. No days sober! “Sarah, we out” those famous words my new friends would constantly say but I was more than likely drunk by then. I’d taken alcohol before, but I’d become so immune that I no longer had taste buds for it. It was water, nothing different but eventually it got boring. I began taking drugs but only the good stuff you know cocaine and marijuana. I remember my first hit, I’d inhale too much the smoke penetrated my lungs making me so much more in tune with my body it was that good shit cocaine and marijuana both in one blunt giving me a feeling that I never felt before. “Aye, look at Sarah she’s on cloud nine bruh”. We’d all fall into this endless circle of laughter even when things weren’t funny. But my mother was so worried, she’d given me those pep talks about better myself but I wasn’t me...I was a different person now. “Sarah please…please baby” was the only sentence that came out her mouth. I didn’t understand how helping myself was hurting other people I mean I was happy and I was fine doing my own thing so why is it of anyone's concern? Why can’t they just mind their own business? “Leave me alone” that sentence went for anyone who was in my way. It didn’t matter what anyone said as long as I was pleasing myself because that's what was important. 

Third stage: healing. Now this is a stage many of us go through in life for many different reasons. I’d ask myself why but I’d been asking myself why...and I now know that it isn’t my fault or anyone but rather his and only his. There is nothing wrong with me, I am no mistake I am great in any and everything I aspire to be. He is at fault, especially for hurting me twice. And twice, crazy right? But I bet you didn’t know that victims of rape are thirty-five times more likely to experience it than the average individual. I now know, although it happened twice by the same man because I learned the routine of silence. I can’t express my first memories of rape because they aren’t there but I can for my second and last. I did not speak up against it. I froze when I should’ve yelled, I fell into the pattern of not standing up for myself. At first I fell into disbelief because I didn’t think it could happen to me. But it did and I couldn’t prevent it and that's okay. It was not my fault, although what happened to me wasn’t okay and I’m not making an excuse for Jason because he was wrong and God will repay him karma’s a bitch. We are all born “equal” but we are not treated equally and it is my job to be the voice and advocate for us rape victims. I lived my life with so much self-blame and shame that I was unable to live after even though I was here I wasn’t. But I’d thank God for giving me a second chance at life and I wasn’t going to take it for granted.Since all these events happened through school and right before summer I had enough time to make up. I’d constantly worked on it, I got over the idea that it was something that I couldn’t control. I began focusing in school again and did what I had to in order to make a name for myself and take myself to a place where I should’ve from the beginning. I didn’t miss a day of school I even took on extra classes, I didn’t want this to disable me for the rest of my life. I could breathe, I had all my limbs I was okay. I pursued in school getting myself into honors and making my momma proud because if I had to do it for anyone it was for her. For sticking through it all for me, even if I blamed myself for her she never turned her back. I owed her that much, it was all I could give one little thing compared to however much she did for me. Granted it was an experience that's unforgettable, but it is forgivable. So Jason I want you to know that I am okay...I no longer have my red lipstick smudged on my face, I no longer have your fluid or my blood on me, I no longer had those hickeys on my breast and no more of your disgusting cologne on my chest. Although I will never forget I do forgive you, you are now the one who is miserable. You’re the one who is rotting in a jail cell and has to live with what you did for the rest of your life. I know I do to but I am not the one who has the unpleasant title of “rapist”. I found myself having the darkest days those days where I felt like my life didn’t matter, and I’m even mad at myself for giving you the power to take my soul from me, for killing me from the inside out. For taking the one special temple in my body that was meant for the man I love...but because of you I found myself. It gave me a new purpose in life. I don’t need anyone but myself because no matter my obstacles I can keep going but I admit it took me a long time to come to this stage, and that too is okay...I learned my value, I had lost it all before I understood myself worth. I am a survivor.
- Jailene Collado