I tell people the story the same way every time, because if I don’t, it gets messy.

I was raped.

That’s the pretty sentence. The one that fits on paperwork, the one that fits in headlines, the one that fits in courtrooms. But it doesn’t fit in my body, and it doesn’t fit in my memory, so I end up telling the details like they’re acts in a play.

I was wearing a pink Taylor Swift “Lover” cardigan, the one my mom gave me for my birthday. I remember how the sleeves fell past my hands, how I kept pulling them down like that would somehow make me invisible. 

I don’t remember cake. I don’t remember candles. I don’t remember who was there.

I remember that cardigan.

I was raped at a party.

Yes, I drank.

Yes, he drank.

There was music loud enough that your chest pulsed with it, red plastic cups were everywhere, people laughing. And later, that became everyone’s favorite excuse: “well, it was a party”.

So the story changed.

First it was: I was raped.

Then it was: I was raped at a party.

Then it was: I was raped one night at a party, but maybe that’s my fault.

People started saying things like, “Well… are you sure it was really rape?”

People said I might ruin this boy’s reputation, that I need more evidence, that the word rape was a catalyst for destruction.

I had to start telling myself I was raped once.

Just once.

But that wasn’t true.

I was raped again when the rape kit opened in front of me. There were sterile tools, bright lights, and strangers who spoke gently but touched me clinically. I sat there feeling smaller than I’ve ever felt, like my body was evidence laid out on a table.

No one hurt me on purpose in that room, but I left feeling like my body had been taken apart and put back together wrong.

And then I was raped again on my brother’s couch.

I was watching Sixteen Candles, some classic movie everyone says is “hilarious.” On the screen, a teenage girl is too drunk to speak, too drunk to move, and the scene unfolds like a joke.

My heart started racing before I even understood why.

She couldn’t run.

She couldn’t say no.

She couldn’t stop what was happening to her.

And suddenly I’m back to that night, his hot breath against my ears. 

What day was it?

What day was it?

What day is it?

It’s my birthday. 

It’s my birthday

And the musics blasting.

I realized, sitting there next to my brother, that I had been living inside that joke the whole time.

I was living inside it then and there. Now and forever. 

Hello? Is somebody there?

No.

No.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I am screaming no.

Not again.

No. 

But the words aren’t falling out of my mouth.

My lungs, my heart, my–

Footsteps poured in as the walls squeeze me shut and submissive. 

What’s going on?

I’m drowning.

It is human tape keeping me from screaming. 

There was music playing in the background.

I always remember the music that was playing in the background. 

I started seeing it everywhere. In movies where a guy chases a girl who keeps saying no, and everyone calls it romantic. In party anthems that chant, “you know you want it,” like wanting is the same thing as consenting. 

I was raped. But I was also raised in a culture that made that possible then tried to make me feel crazy for seeing it. 

I started hearing it in everyday jokes too.

“Boys will be boys.” “She should’ve watched her drink.” “Locker room talk.”.

On my phone, it was worse. Memes about “crazy girls,” jokes about drunk girls, videos with millions of likes that turned women into punchlines. Girls lip-syncing to lines that made fun of their own bodies. Comment sections full of people arguing over what a woman “deserves”, blaming skirts, shots, and solitude.

And these boys

Thesse boys listen to the most foul of music.

The radio hands it to them.

“Hello. You’re listening to 102.3 KissFM station. Today we’ll be listening to the country’s most influential pop hits. So sit back and relax.”

They don’t relax, though.

They suck up the words like lightning through a straw.

It changed them. 

My perpetrator listened to the worst of it all.

And he still does.

He listens to Love the Way you Lie by Rihanna and Eminem, Wet Dreams by J Cole, Animals by Maroon 5, Candy Shop by 50 cent. The list goes on and on. 

Victims are forced to relive their trauma on a daily basis. 

I lost the ability to move through media without flinching. I lost the ability to laugh easily. I lost the feeling that the world was on my side.

I started scanning rooms for men who looked too confident, for jokes that might land like punches, for music that might replicate the lines my own rapist muttered into my ear that night.

Culture teaches boys to chase and girls to freeze.

Who wrote this script?

What happened to me didn’t feel like a random mistake anymore.

It felt rehearsed.

Practiced.

Anticipated.

Like my assault wasn’t just one person’s choice but the natural outcome of a world that laughs at women’s fear and calls it entertainment.

So now when people say, “It’s just a movie,” or “It’s just a song,” I want to ask them:

If it’s just a joke, why does it live in my body?

If it’s just entertainment, why did it shape my reality?

I was raped.

But I was also raised in a culture that made that possible and then tried to make me feel crazy for seeing it.

And that’s the part of the story people don’t want to hear.

Now listen to me. It is time to stop endorsing it and start speaking out about it. 

Will you speak out about it?

Or will you read my story and scroll silently?