Cover Photo: photo courtesy of the author
photo courtesy of the author

How I Felt Watching the Election as a Survivor of Sexual Assault

On Election Night, I thought again of the boy who assaulted me. When had I finally stopped blaming myself?

Maury

hung

I’m realizing that what C did to me freshman year of high school was sexual assault, but I am still blaming myself.

tobecause

I’ve never gotten over this fear, the inability to talk openly about the hard things. When I was diagnosed with clinical depression last year, I sent my mom an essay I was writing about it instead of telling her directly.

He was still my friend on Facebook. I knew he had two sons with the girl he gave his first kiss to. I wrote about him knowing he probably wouldn’t read it. That even if he did, he might not realize I was writing about him. That he probably doesn’t think of what he did to me as wrong.

Baby, we’ll be fine / All we gotta do is / Be brave and be kind.If I could see the words every day, I thought, if they were on my skin, maybe I could convince myself they were true.

I'm a freelance editor and nonfiction writer constantly trying to remove cat hair from my home in Portland, Oregon. I've written for Bitch Media and Tin House's blog, The Open Bar.

I'm working on a book-length essay about bisexuality, voyeurism, and how queerness presents on the page.