#MeToo [Originally Written May 7th, 2020]

Please do not ask me why I decided to write out my #MeToo story three years after the movement’s resurgence. (Apparently it started in 2006, who knew?  But to be fair I was in 8th grade in 2006).  I’ve been wanting to write, and this story has been drifting in and out of my brain for over a month so I think maybe it’s time to write it down, in all its details, so maybe I can stop reliving what happened in my brain.  Or maybe I just like to hear myself talk and since I am an inner monologue person it means I hear myself telling this story, but this is more concrete.  Savable.  Although I don’t know if many people would consider this type of story or memory something they wanted to save.  But I’ve remembered it, and held onto it, and tried to bury it for 8 years and I haven’t managed to yet so…here goes.

It was 2012, I was 19, recently moved out of my childhood home, in a tumultuous eighteen-month relationship that involved a child (not mine but nonetheless), and in a pretty terrible fight with my best friend of twelve years.  Life was hard, my anxiety was through the roof, and I was experiencing freedom for the first time in my life.  Being surrounded by people who were over 21 I was drinking socially at parties.  At that time, we were mostly having parties at each other’s houses so we were always safe and slept over if it was too late to sober up.  I was invited to a somewhat impromptu get together to help a friend move out, there were only six of us, one couple, two single people, and myself.  All of us had been friends for many years.  My boyfriend didn’t come, either because he was home with his daughter or because he was with his own friends, I don’t remember I just knew he didn’t want to be at the party and I didn’t want him there.

Being asked to help people clean, organize, pack, or unpack was not uncommon for me and when I came to the party I had fully intended to focus on that.  One of the other guests, however, came to party and provided the booze to do it with - tequila.  I still wasn’t interested; tequila and I didn’t agree, I didn’t like the taste, it made me vomit every time and I told the rest of my friends to have fun.  That worked for a short while, but after a few shots and a few cocktails I was being pressured more and more to let loose and have fun.  Again, I wasn’t against drinking or letting loose by any means I just really don’t like tequila.  But the packing was done, we were all sitting around gabbing, and it wasn’t like I had any real good reason to go home.  So I said fine, but shots because it made the torture of drinking tequila more tolerable.  I probably took three or four shots over the course of an hour.  I eventually took a cocktail as well after the shots had numbed my taste buds a little.  I still felt pressured but, these were my friends, the same friends I partied with all the time anyways, the same friends I slept over with to drink responsibly, the same friends I’d known since high school.  I was safe.

After the alcohol officially hit me, my lips felt tingly and I was getting exceedingly warm (tequila makes her clothes fall off?)  I knew the host of the party well, I had almost moved into the house we were moving the friend out of and so I knew I was welcome to treat this house as my own.  I could raid the fridge, I could cook without asking permission, and I could shower.  A cool shower felt so nice as I sat feeling my internal temperature rise and my face get hot and red.  I told the group I was feeling warm and excused myself to the bathroom.  For all they knew I could have simply been going to pee or vomit, I just left the group.  

I found a clean bath towel, took my clothes off and set them on the vanity, and started the shower.  I found the perfect temperature and stepped in, sliding the door closed behind me.  I closed my eyes and let the cooler than lukewarm water fall over me.  I even opened my mouth to drink some of the cascading water, it was that refreshing.  I turned around, keeping my eyes closed and let the water run through my hair which is when I heard chuckling.  I opened my eyes slowly and looked out the glass door of the shower - which wasn’t steamed up because the water wasn’t hot - and saw three sets of eyes staring at me.  Again, these were friends I was used to being around, used to changing my clothes around, we had been in drama together, choir together, I was extremely comfortable with these people but … I wasn’t expecting to be putting on a private show when I excused myself from the party.

“Uhm…what’s up, guys?”  I asked, trying to still play it cool while feeling acutely uncomfortable.

“Well, we came to check on you and thought it was a bit weird you were taking a shower.”  I don’t remember who said it, but it was so nonchalant, as if watching your friends shower was a normal occurrence even though it wasn’t.

“Sorry…I was just so warm and I needed a cool shower.”  They laughed again, I think some joke was made about ‘Needing a cool shower’ and I finally said, “Well, I’m ready to get out now if you all wanna just…exit so I can get out.”  

The bathroom was narrow, so with them standing outside of the shower door I couldn’t get past them to get to my clothes, and opening the shower door would only expose me more because at least there was some frosting and soap scum on the glass doors blurring their vision.

They left the bathroom to go into the adjoining bedroom but it was enough so that I could close the bathroom doors behind them and get dressed.  I threw on my jeans and my t-shirt and asked for a bag to throw my bra and underwear into because I didn’t want to put them on while my skin was wet.

Despite this awkwardness, I was still drunk and unable to leave even though I considered it in that moment.  I figured they were all drunk, it was just a weird party foul and we could all move on.  I think I took another shot or two, partially trying to ease my weird feeling and partly to appease these friends who wanted the party to go all night.  But, as I’ve said, tequila and I don’t get along and so I was still feeling warm and getting pretty tired.  I asked the host if it was going to be okay if I slept over and she said,

“Of course.  There’s a bed in the spare room you’re welcome to use.”  I said thank you and grabbed my things and set them all beside the trundle bed that was set up.  A metal frame on wheels with a twin mattress on top of it.  The frame moved around easily on the tile floor so it was awkward to get onto but I managed to and only banged the frame of the bed into the wall twice.  The host and one of my single friends stood in the doorway and begged me to stay up and drink and have fun.  "I didn’t think you meant you wanted to go to bed now.“  The host whined.

"I know, guys, I’m just so tired and I’m afraid if I don’t sleep I’m going to get sick so I just wanna sleep it off.”

They hemmed and hawed but eventually went back to the other two people at the party and continued on.  I remember listening to them laugh and chat and make more cocktails while I fell asleep.  Things felt normal and comfortable again.

I woke up to the frame of the bed banging into the wall again.  Initially, I thought I must have shifted in my sleep and I felt bad in case anyone else was trying to sleep.  But I realized the same two people who had whined about me going to bed were getting into the bed with me.  I’d slept in the same bed as these two before under other circumstances, but it wasn’t part of my plan that night.  I was surprised the host would be getting into bed with me instead of into her own bed with her fiancé, but I was honestly still very drunk, and groggy with sleep and so I just settled in between the two of them clutching the single pillow as a comfort as I fell back asleep.

I woke up again to a hand going up my shirt and grabbing my breast.  I kept my eyes closed, hoping they would assume I was still asleep, but I could tell by the breath on my face that the person touching my chest was the host, and my good friend.  Then I felt another arm reach around me from behind and grab my hand, moving it to his crotch where I could feel his erect penis.  He moved my hand around as he got harder, and my friend’s hand continued to make circular motions with my breast and touching my nipples.  I was still, at this point keeping my eyes closed hoping they would lose interest if I were dead asleep.  But eventually I opened them, and they both smiled satisfactorily like they had accomplished something.

“He’s got a nice dick, doesn’t he?”

“Mmhmm.”  I said.  Because what do you say?  I guess, in retrospect 'Get the fuck off of me’ or 'What the fuck are you doing’.  But between my shock, my drunken state, and my sheer exhaustion I felt like I couldn’t move or fight it.

He got out of the bed and took his pants off and wrapped my hand around his exposed penis.  At that point I became unconscious again.  It was weird, I’d never been seriously blackout drunk, and truly believed that I hadn’t consumed enough alcohol to warrant a blackout, but I passed out again.

I woke up again when he was putting his dick inside of me.  The host was kissing me and saying things like “Do you like that?  Do you like his dick?  Do you like him fucking you?”  I didn’t want to say yes, because I didn’t want to fuck him.  This was the same boy I had backed into a corner in middle school and told that nothing would ever happen between us.  I didn’t want to say no because I didn’t want to piss them off.  I still felt incapable of leaving.  I couldn’t push either of them off, I couldn’t get out of that bed, I couldn’t drive home.  And these were my friends.  A part of me thought maybe I did want it.  Maybe I had said or done something that made them think I wanted this and so I would be the bad guy if I changed my mind now.

“At least get a condom.”  I said.  But I was mumbling so badly that neither of them heard or understood me.

“What was that, hun?”  She asked.

“A condom.” I said more sternly.  He sighed and got off of me.

“Are they still where you’ve always kept them?”

“You know it!”

So he left.  I rolled over to put my back to the host, hoping she would read my body language and see that I wasn’t interested.  I was hoping in the time it took him to go through a dark house, rummage through a dark room, find, and put in a condom he’d lose interest.  But that wasn’t the case.  He came back, put the condom on in front of me and rolled me back over.  The host laying beside me stopped touching me and just watched.  He got back on top of me and entered inside of me and continued what I had managed to stop momentarily.  I rolled my head away from them, towards the door of the room that looked 1,000 miles away.  

I saw someone standing in the doorway.  I was confused, because I figured the host’s fiancé and the friend that was moving out would be asleep.  I thought that maybe the condom search woke up the host’s fiancé and that’s why he was standing in the door.  I kind of tried to reach my hand towards him.  But I couldn’t formulate the words 'Help’ or 'Stop this’.  I tried to say 'It’s not what you think’ but the words came out mumbled and by then he had shaken his head and turned away.

I would learn later that he and the roommate that was moving out decided that night to be together.  It would destroy a fairly long-term relationship, it would cancel a wedding on pretty short notice, and they would later say it was this night that was the catalyst for that decision.  When he looked into that room that night he saw his fiancé, her friend, and their mutual friend having what he assumed was a pre-planned threesome.  He felt betrayed and he lost respect for the me, for being a part of it.  But he knew where my loyalties lay, and they laid with her, the girl grabbing my breast while this boy thrust his dick inside of me when I just wanted to sleep off too many tequila shots.

I passed out again after her turned away from the door.  I woke up when I felt a foreign pain inside of me.

“Fuck.”  He said as he removed his penis from me.  "Well, a lot of good that did.“  He said as he removed the broken condom.  I’ll never know if the condom broke because it was old, a bad brand, the wrong size, or if because he fucked me long enough for it to wear down.  My drunk brain would choose option D but it’s something I never bothered to ask.  Regardless, he was done.  He left the room to throw the condom away.  

I managed to roll out of bed, the frame staying put because the host had passed out cold and was weighing it down.  I grabbed my belongings - my jeans, my bag of underclothes, my purse, my phone, my keys.  I wanted to go home.  But I knew it wasn’t safe to drive.  Instead, I made my way to the master suite again.  I figured since my friend was passed out in the spare room, and her fiancé would be dead asleep by now I could weasel my way into a safe bed and sleep it off til morning.  

When I got into the bed I realized it was empty.  Part of me was relieved, another part concerned the two friends would follow me in here next, and a third part of me was confused.  Again, later I’d learn he spent the night in the packed-up room of the roommate that was moving out, they consummated a long term flirtationship that night that would lead to the master plan of him leaving.  But I didn’t have the brain capacity to think about that.  I crawled into bed, I could smell her hair on the pillow so I rolled over to his side.  It was odd knowing I was laying on the side of the bed typically utilized by the host’s fiancé but…he wasn’t there, he wasn’t in the bathroom, and it was the middle of the night.  Worst case I’d explain if he came in trying to get into bed.  

But he didn’t.  I managed to sleep a few more hours before getting up to drive home.  I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, I didn’t tell anyone what had happened.  I went home and my boyfriend was upset I’d been gone so long, that I hadn’t told him what was going on.  We got into a fight because not having a game plan was always my issue with how he ran things and now he was throwing it in my face.  The fight fizzled out, I laid in bed hungover and not wanting to think about it.

At dinnertime he asked if I wanted to go get food.  I said sure because food sounded good by then.  As we got into line, deciding what to order, the guy who had gotten on top of me the night before and broken a condom inside of me texted me,

"Are we good?"  I read that text and closed my phone.

"Who is it?”  My boyfriend asked.  I told him it was my friend.  "What’s he want?“  

“He wants to go to the bar tonight.”

"You were just with them.”

 “I know, I’m going to tell him no.  I wanna be home.”  We ordered our food and while we waited I texted him back saying, “Let’s not talk about it.”

“But, are we good?”  I ignored the second text.  

My boyfriend looked at me like he knew I was lying.  Maybe he did.  We never talked about it.  I didn’t know how to tell him what had happened.  It wasn’t cheating…exactly.  But I also hadn’t said 'No’ or “Stop’.  Me being drunk didn’t seem like an excuse.  And besides, I didn’t want him mad at the only friends I had at the time.  The fight with my best friend had ostracized me from a lot of people and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing more, knowing my boyfriend was going to continue to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted and leave me home alone almost every night.  He didn’t ask, so I didn’t say.

Sometime in the next five weeks I asked my friend, the one who had laid beside me that night, to come over and have a car chat with me like we did in high school.  She agreed.  I told her my period was late.  I asked if I was being paranoid, if it was too early to know if I was pregnant.  She said I could be pregnant but that it probably wouldn’t show on a test but that she’d buy me one if I wanted.  I told her I could get my own but thank you.

She asked, “What are you going to do if you are?  Are you going to tell the father?”

I said, “No.  There’s no reason I can’t just go on as normal and pretend it’s my boyfriend’s because it’s not like the father and I are going to have a relationship after this.” 

She said, “I understand that, but it’s not fair to your boyfriend.”

“You’re right.  But I’ll cross that bridge if I get to it.”

She said she’d support me no matter what I chose.  I told her thank you.  She told me to take the pregnancy test early in the morning for best results.  

“Great, the only time of day I can guarantee my boyfriend will be home.  I really wanna keep this a secret until I know what’s going on.”  

She said just to get up earlier than normal on a workday and he’d never know.

I bought a test, and I took it early in the morning, and to be honest I never was sure what the reading was.  It looked like two lines, but the second line was so faint I thought I could have imagined it.  And 4 weeks is pretty early for a stick test anyways.  I figured I’d wait a little longer and take another one.  

Five weeks and two days after the incident, my boyfriend and I were driving back from Easter with his family.  I had driven us to his parents’ house but by the time we were getting ready to leave I asked him to drive.  I never asked him to drive but I was so sick to my stomach, I was breaking out in sweats, and I thought I might pass out if I had to drive.  He was worried and kept asking me what was going on throughout the 40 minute drive.  

I never really had period cramps, but I was learning what they felt like that day.  My insides felt like they were twisting and tying themselves in knots.  I couldn’t tell if I wanted to vomit or defecate, I just felt like something needed to exit my body.  I was sweating then chilled then sweating again.  My head was pounding, my heart rate was heightened.  

When we got home, I ran to the bathroom.  I pulled down my pants and saw blood in my underwear.  ‘Good news’, I thought.  ‘At least I’m starting my period’.  I put a pad in my underwear and cleaned myself up.  I grabbed a washcloth and soaked it in cool water before laying on the couch with it on my forehead.

I wasn’t actively bleeding which was unusual for my period, but I was having cramps and back pain and other period symptoms that were not typical for my period.  I eventually gave in to sleep early that night and hoped the next day would be better.

When I pulled my pants down the next morning, there was definitely discharge collected on my pad, as well as a mass of something.  I had passed blood clots in the past but they were usually accompanied by heavy flow which I still wasn’t having.  And blood clots are usually clearly liquid while this looked … more solid.  But I didn’t want to touch it so I rolled the pad up, wrapped it in toilet paper and threw it away.  I replaced the pad in my underwear and cleaned up and left the bathroom.

"How are you feeling?”  My boyfriend asked me.

“Crappy.”  I said.  He got on his computer to play a game.  I sat on the couch with my laptop scrolling through social media and watching something on TV.  But that mass was still bothering me.  I didn’t want to admit that I might have been pregnant to anyone except the friend who already knew so I asked her what a miscarriage felt like.  

She said what hers had felt like and the symptoms seemed to match.  I asked if you’d notice if you miscarried as early as I may have and she said probably not.  I searched online for miscarriages at 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 1 month, 2 months.  I looked up images of miscarriages for an hour.  A lot of images seemed fake, tiny tadpoles with beady eyes at 3 weeks seemed unreasonable.  But then I read a blog post that explained that in early miscarriages you likely won’t see the fetus pass, but your uterus will have thickened its walls to protect a baby and so you may see some of the flesh shedding from your uterine wall that wouldn’t be typical.  That sounded right.  I certainly didn’t see the “pro-life fetus” images I’d been scrolling past on my pad.

But if uterine wall had been what I passed and seen deposited onto my pad then…I had been pregnant.  I had lost a pregnancy.  My drunk irresponsible behavior had resulted in the death of a child.  But if that wasn’t what I had passed, then I didn’t have to feel guilty.  I was just having a weird period.  

I went back into the bathroom and reopened my old pad.  Enough time had passed that all of the liquid had been soaked into the cotton pad and was dried.  What remained on my pad was a fleshy, wrinkly mass.  I looked at it for a long time.  Trying to decide if it was a fetus with a beady eye or just uterine wall.  If it was a fetus, throwing it in the trash seemed improper.  If it was uterine wall then it didn’t matter.  But I still wasn’t sure.  

My boyfriend had always been very open with medical things, would even pop pimples and lacerate cysts for me so I walked out of the bathroom and said, “Hey…I…saw something weird on my pad this morning.  I know it’s gross but I don’t know what to think and I just need another opinion.”

He said, “I hope it’s not gross but … yeah show me.”

So I went and got the pad from the bathroom trashcan, unrolled it and showed him.  His eyes immediately welled with tears.

“Why are you crying?”

“Don’t you know what that is?”

“No…that’s why I wanted to show you.”

“My ex wife had a miscarriage and, yeah, that’s what it looks like.  That’s probably why you were sick yesterday, too.”

“Oh.”  I rolled the pad back up and put it back in the bathroom and we didn’t talk.  

He cried a lot that day.  He asked me why I wasn’t more upset and I told him it was because it’s not like we were trying to knew I was pregnant.  “Still.  You and me, we almost created a life, but didn’t.”

I froze, and the blood fell from my face and I held him.  I felt terrible but I didn’t think telling him it wouldn’t have been a life made by him and I would make him feel better.   I still didn’t feel grief like he did.   I never went to a doctor to have it medically proven, he said it wasn’t necessary because he knew what it was, and I didn’t have medical insurance anyhow.

I never told the boy who would have been the father either.  I didn’t think it would make him feel better to know what might have been but would never be.  I still didn’t want to discuss the incident with him anyhow.  I told myself we were both too drunk to know what was going on.  We were both too drunk to realize we were ruining our lives.  We were both drunk, so we were both guilty and innocent at the same time.  I was guilty and innocent of cheating, he was guilty and innocent of sexual assault.  If I called him out for his crime, I was calling myself out on mine as well.  Schrodinger’s Sin if you will.

For what it’s worth the relationship with that boyfriend ended about a year later for many other reasons.  We never tried to or accidentally got pregnant during the remainder of the relationship because I got an implant birth control but in my arm.  

I continue to be friends with the two people who were in that bed with me uninvited.  I even have pictures from that night, after my shower but before my attempt to sleep off the tequila.  
I don’t drink tequila anymore, no matter how much I’m pressured.  

There’s a part of me that still doesn’t accept that it was assault, or rape.  A part of me that doesn’t want to cause an upset by calling it by that name.  

These friends become more and more distant every year, which in it’s own way is fate taking care of it for me.  

I think part of why I don’t like telling this story is that after the assault I was also dishonest.  And all sins are created equally, aren’t they?  But it’s been many years, many things have changed, lots of karma has come back around and of all places this one seems safe.  I don’t know if I’ll ever share this in a more mainstream manner, because of shame, of course.  

But if you’re reading this just know you are not alone.  It happened to #MeToo