Name

When I was eleven, I went to a sleepover with a girl I thought was my friend to work on a science project. This was my first sleepover since I'd moved across the country and I was very nervous, not wanting to do anything to ruin the friendships I'd finally made. I was doing everything she suggested due to this fear. She knew I wouldn't fight her, that I would do anything she said, and she took advantage of that. I was eleven years old, very thin, and would later be a late bloomer, and wore a pink Monster High shirt and blue jeans, both slightly too big. She spent hours molesting me, touching me, forcing me into roleplays and power imbalance situations. I won't make you listen to everything she did. When I went home early, having finally burst into tears when she'd accidentally hit me, I threw that shirt away. It had been my favourite shirt up until that point, and I threw it away and never wore those jeans again because I didn't want to be reminded of what happened. I was a sheltered child and didn't yet know what rape was, but I knew my parents had told me to tell them if anyone ever did anything like what she did. But I thought "anyone" only meant adults, not a girl my age. So I said nothing. After another year with her in the school, in my friend group, she was expelled. She'd claimed a fifth-grader had assaulted her, which was proven to be false beyond a shadow of a doubt. Fast forward six years after the initial incident, and I'd finally told my parents what had happened. I was finally in therapy over what had happened. And she was back in my life. I was going to a vocational school, which had students from several schools in the county, and one of those students was her. Only a few days after telling my parents, I picked a fight with her in the lunch room. I told her I hated her and that if she ever so much as thought about looking at me ever again, I would fight her. The timing of what happens next is important- one of my friends, also a trans man and a survivor of childhood violence like me, left the school because he couldn't deal with the bullies in his class. Shortly after he left, the rest of my "friends" started inviting my rapist over to the table. Every single day, she would come to my table and stand six feet away from me for five, even ten minutes, before she and two of the girls who I'd thought were my friends would go to the bathroom and vape. I would have panic attacks, I would throw up, I was too anxious to function. The only solution was for me to go to the nurse's office every time she came by, but my "friends" would forget to text me when she was gone and I wouldn't eat lunch, as I would spend the rest of the period in there and couldn't eat from the anxiety before. I tried to come up with other solutions- couldn't my friends go over to her table, or couldn't they talk in the bathrooms instead of close to me? My "friends" shot each of these down, saying they couldn't stop her from coming and that the current system worked fine. But it didn't, because I wasn't eating and was dealing with crisis after crisis. I tried talking to the principal, who'd gotten involved shortly after I threatened her, but he refused to do anything, even though the girl was violating Covid rules by visiting our lunch table. He gave me no solution and, like my "friends," shot down every solution I proposed. I seriously considered breaking my moral code and becoming a narc, telling the resource officer about the vape and getting them in trouble. But I didn't. I'm no narc, and they would have known who did it. The last half of my senior year was spent in online school, as things escalated until my father was almost forced to make the impossible choice to put me in a psychiatric hospital. It's been two years. I've been getting better and even unfollowed and blocked all of my "friends" who chose my rapist and her vape over me. I hope I never see any of them again. Except for my friend who left the school, I hate all of them. I don't know that I'll ever be able to forgive them, and I wish I could write all of this in a review for that school to warn parents to never send their children there. There is no end to this story, not yet, but there will be one day. One day, I'll be healed. I'll be happy. I'm in the process of picking up the pieces, and I know that one day they'll be mended back together with gold. One day, it will be okay. This storm will pass, I know it.