Neither Could Dylan

Without getting too deep into the gritty details, here’s what I can tell you about my worst experience with sexual assault. 

I spent the years that followed it in deep denial. 

From the moment I woke up that day on a couch that was not my own, I knew something was wrong. I scrambled around a house I was only partially familiar with collecting all my things that, strewn around in different areas, suggested to me I had been in a hurry to leave the night before, but for whatever reason didn’t get all the way out the garage door where I found my shoes. 

While in the middle of this, feeling not at all myself and very foggy, I wandered up the stairs and through an open door. My entire body stopped moving as my eyes quickly scanned the room and I had the troubling feeling that I had been in this room before, but this was my first real time experiencing it. 

It’s a hard thing to explain. 

I felt sick. 

I ran into someone on my way back down the stairs who asked me what I was doing walking around the house and I mumbled that I was looking for my stuff. He didn’t say another word and disappeared into another room – nobody else seemed to be around. This person wasn’t who I later determined to be my assailant and I don’t remember him being there the night before, so I’m not sure what he knew or didn’t know, but I never asked him. 

I found all my things and got into my car to drive home. It was much later in the morning than I ever wake up and somewhere along the relatively short drive home, I completely broke down in tears.

Ugly, loud. It was so hard to contain myself that I considered if I should pull over. I didn’t because all I wanted in that moment was to not be where I was and be somewhere more familiar.

I still didn’t know exactly why, but I knew something was wrong.

When I got home someone asked me why I hadn’t come home the night before or at least checked in. 

I didn’t know. Normally I know.

When I went to the bathroom, I suddenly understood what had happened and why I felt so awful.

I’d never felt that type of internal pain before and I knew only one thing could have caused it.  

I broke down again, first in the bathroom and then silently in my room. 

I didn’t see anyone or say much the rest of the day while I mulled it all over, both trying desperately to remember and not.

My cell phone had a few clues and 1 picture that instinctively told me who would have the answer I still wasn’t sure I wanted. 

I had no interest in speaking to them, but I wrote a message out anyway. 

It was pretty brief. I asked what happened. Or, rather, I sort of demanded it. “I need to know what happened last night.”

We weren’t people that spoke often and I wasn’t sure he’d respond.

Shockingly, he came right out and told me and my suspicions were confirmed even though I still could not remember a thing. 

That’s how far gone I was that night. Zero recollection. 

And I’m sure he wasn’t completely honest about it all or the way it happened, but I had no one else’s word to go off of. 

To this day I’m not sure if that makes my experience better or worse but I lean towards better. Blacking out is awful but in this situation it may have saved my life – I don’t think I could handle remembering.

You don’t have to believe me, but there is no way I would have consented to it. Certainly not with this person, but even with someone I really cared for would have a hard time selling it to me. 

What I should’ve done was get checked out at the hospital – for a variety of reasons, but I never did. The shame you feel after this kind of thing is unsurmountable. 

Mostly, I just didn’t want to believe it. 

And with the way sexual assaults are handled by and large in the media, I had a whole lot of voices trying to convince me it was my fault. 

I must have said something. I must have did something. I must have brought this upon myself in some way. 

That never made sense and still doesn’t, but it shows me how powerful those types of words are and why I get so heated when I read or hear them now when other assaults are put into the spotlight. If someone tries to convince you hard enough of something, you’ll catch yourself wondering if they’re right. 

Sticks and stones may break my bones and words really matter to me.  

I mostly put this out of my mind after it all happened. I didn’t feel like I could talk about it with anyone and so I held it in and drowned my feelings about it, mostly with drinking. 

7 years after it happened, when I was now a few months sober, clear and feeling good about the direction my life was taking for once, it reared its head with a vengeance. Almost mockingly. “Thought I was gone?” 

Out of the blue, I had the most incredible breakdown one day. 

It was an absolutely beautiful day and I didn’t see it coming at all. I was completely alone and for whatever reason, I’d made a point to say the words out loud to myself. 

I said it twice to be sure I heard myself. The words I’d written in my journal that I never thought I’d write. 

I was raped.

It’s such an ugly word and I wince when I hear it and hesitate when I have to say it. But it’s an ugly word because it’s such a heinous act and we can’t be afraid of the word because then we don’t afford the conversation the attention it needs. 

When I say I had the most incredible breakdown, I don’t mean that in any sort of positive or enlightening way. More like, while it’s been a while since I heard the story, when I think about the flood that was intended to wipe out absolutely everything in its path from the Bible, I now imagine that as coming from the seemingly endless tears that poured out of me that afternoon.  

I cried so hard my entire body hurt and I begged for it to stop, but it just wouldn’t. 

By the time it was over I couldn’t even move. I laid so still, unsure if it was going to start up again and afraid to agitate any cell in my body that might bring it back. 

I feel like I should reiterate that this happened 7 years after the initial event. I had held all of that in for 7 years.

And somewhere in my breakdown I understood something else I’d packed away inside me.

It wasn’t the first time I was targeted and it wasn’t the first time someone had been successful in taking advantage of my vulnerability.

The first time I was sexually assaulted, I didn’t even know the words for it. I was too young.

That devastates me to think about.

No wonder my life had felt like such a mess. I’ve been walking uphill for a while just to be able to see what was around me.

I never really told anybody about this part of the experience; the breakdown, the clarity on my past. Not directly, anyway – it’s sort of sprinkled throughout my songs, though, and my therapist got a bit of it, of course. Everyone should be lucky enough to have access to a good therapist.

I still have a hard time expressing myself when it comes to things like this, but I know I’ll be working on that for a long time and I’m trying to be patient with myself about it. 

Writing songs makes it a little easier for me, but I’m still bitter about what happened. 

Official Lyrics:
I’m still bitter about what happened
Wish I wasn’t one to hold on to those types of feelings 
For closure I swore I’d cross any surface 
Instead I wade at the the base of your oceans

And I watch the divers
Chip away at the reef
Evicting the fish that kept it so clean
The treasure they’re searching is not so discreet
It floats through the water and right home to me 
It floats through the water and right home to me 

The sunrise looks different from so far below
Can’t tell if it’s warm or if I’m just so cold 
To act like I belong underneath the land
You walk on so boldly as though you’re God’s gift to man 

And I’m sure your mother would have a few things to say
If she knew what kind of boy she’d gone on to raise
I would never tell her for it’s not her I blame
You are your actions, you stand alone or you sink
You stand alone or you sink

There are parts of this now that I own myself
Like being quick to anger when I feel boxed out
But I’m growing gills and learning to breathe
It still hurts to inhale but it beats suffocating

And I ripped holes in all my jeans
Right where you’d place your hands on me
Cause they’d feel dirty right out the machine
Like the algae protecting those beautiful reefs
Like the algae protecting those beautiful reefs

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Keep listening and jump to track 10: Butterflies