What Happened to Me Wasn't Like the Movies
**Content warning: The following text describes sexual assault and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
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**Content warning: The following text describes sexual assault and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
**Content warning: The following text describes sexual assault and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
**Content warning: The following text describes substance use and depression and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
I’m dreaming about the Eagle Nebula. Everyone recognizes a part of it even if they don’t know what it’s called—those three columns of glowing gas clouds and baby stars. I won’t remember anything about the dream once it ends but the shape of the pillars of creation remains stamped on the inside of my eyelids. My left eye opens before my right, which is glued shut by melted mascara. I blink stickily up at his glow–in–the–dark star–speckled ceiling—a poor substitute for what I’ve just woken up from. I try to reassess.
**Content warning: The following text describes sexual assault, violence, and substance abuse and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
**Content warning: The following text describes sexual assault, violence, and substance abuse and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.**
This essay is an honorable mention submission from Street's Love Issue personal narrative contest. Read some of our other favorite pieces here and look out for new pieces as we publish them throughout the week!
My flashbacks start with fuzziness. A dizziness that swirls in my skull, somewhere between a buzz and a murmur. Then the jolt in my arm kicks in, the ragged breathing, the frantic up-and-down of my chest until my necklace bounces against my collar. There is nausea sometimes, or tears, or just a stillness I can’t get out of. My flashbacks lock me in a night from years ago, leave me clawing at the present. It’s 2017, I tell myself. Existing in this year is a fight.
The night before an AP Physics test my senior year of high school, I walked up to my dad in my house kitchen and collapsed onto the ground in tears. This was my worst anxiety attack. Tension had been building in my mind throughout the semester. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what caused it, and that was the scariest part.
This year, I stopped stockpiling transfer application essays, which made me realize that I haven’t been happy here since my freshman year.
I don’t want to do this.
This week, Street's sex tips focus on where to do, well, whatever it is you crazy kids are doing. You're welcome.
Sex. To quote Cruel Intentions, (most) "everyone does it, it's just that nobody talks about it." Street's new column aims to change that. We want to open up an honest and inclusive forum to talk about doing it. Here's this week's question:
If you were to describe Penn’s hookup culture, it would probably be “fucked up.” I mean this completely literally, as well as metaphorically. We either have serious relationships or casual sex. The casual nature of the Penn hookup culture can be challenging, but it’s also kinda sorta the best thing that could happen to someone. I’ve learned a lot about myself through my hookups—I’ve learned to love myself and my body, I’ve learned how to love another person, I’ve learned how to hate a person and I’ve also learned how to be okay with the concept of casual sex.
When I walk down the street, I wonder how many women I pass have clipped wings. How many of these beautiful faces I encounter have forgotten what it's like to soar, to be free. I decide each time the thought crosses my mind—too many.
Today, she’s just a girl in my psych class. With dark jeans and expensive highlights, she could be another anonymous face lit by fluorescent lights. I’m all the way across the room. She turns her head and her dark eyes meet mine. I feel something echo in the space between us, something deep and darkened by sadness. I want to text her, but instead I turn off my phone.
I am a twenty-one-year-old woman and a senior in the College; last July a man whose name I don’t know raped me; last night this country knowingly elected a serial predator. I’ve known fear like this only once.
This is not the America I knew.
My first kiss was with a boy who told me I was lucky he didn’t rape me. We were on a wooden bench in my high school after track practice; he felt me up in my spandex and sports bra, and I thought that was some form of being cherished. He tried to push his fingers inside my underwear. When I said no — once, twice —, he shook his head, murmured, “Good thing you’re with me and not some of my friends.” He kissed me on my forehead. “Some guys I know, they’d be like — vagina!” And with his hands, he mimed assaulting me.
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