Photos by Marlowe Whitlow this happen to me? This was not supposed to happen to me. But guess what? It did. Raped. Three times. Baseball rules say three strikes and you are out and that is exactly how I felt. I just wanted to go to the store; I just wanted to hang out with friends. How did these very separate days, very separate instances, involving very different people have so many similarities?
Raped in the back of a record shop. Raped two apartments from my own home. Raped in my boyfriend’ s home at a party by his roommates. Am I cursed? Is God mad at me? This clearly cannot be what life is supposed to be. So I hid behind a mask. Not a physical mask, but an emotional and spiritual mask. I smiled during the day and I plotted at night. I plotted how to get back at the men that did this to me. That scarred me. That hurt me. During the day, in the public I was one person, but privately I was a different person. I had to be. I had to protect myself from something so heinous and tragic ever happening again. One way one minute and another in the next, but the juggling began to make me tired and confused. My moods and personalities began to switch at the wrong times in front of the wrong people. The mask became too heavy. I just wanted it all to end. And so I tried to end it.
I figured the only way to stop the pain was to end my life. So when the overdosing of pills didn’ t work and the alcohol poisoning just gave me an upset stomach and a major headache I figured driving my car off the road or standing in the middle of the street would work. But I was left with nothing but a flat tire or a car blowing at me, with the driver screaming at me to get out of the street. My tears of frustration turned to laughter. The night of my third rape, a gang rape by my boyfriend’ s roommates, I heard a voice. As I lay on the side of street pray-
Spring 2013 / The Well Magazine 17