writing to process it

Freshman year started with the It's on Us training, all freshman packed into the basketball arena. Jokes about "drinking tea" started then and continued throughout college. He was there. Listening, making jokes about "tea." The whole first semester we had been friends, and he had often hung out with me alone to minister to me, the heathen liberal from up north. I was lonely and was happy someone was giving me attention. It turned into a bit more than friends, but it had to be a complete secret. No one could know, no one could see me going up or down from his dorm, and he acted closer in private and much more distant in public. I knew it wasn't the greatest situation but many people get much worse and I was afraid of feeling alone. He and others had also started instilling in me how wrong it was for me to be queer, and I wanted a guy on my arm so if anyone had heard that I was gay they wouldn't think it was true. That backfired, certainly, as everything had to be secret. At the beginning of second semester it happened. I went up to his dorm and he asked to do more, and I said okay hesitantly, wanting it to be okay more than I thought it would be. I froze. The next night I went up again and the same thing happened but he didn't ask first. I froze. "Stop" and "no" resounded in my head but I couldn't force my voice to sound, my limbs to move. I remember the bumpy texture of the wall and the shadows in the closet and the lamp on the desk and the upper half of my body positioned slightly into the wall, but he and the lower half of my body don't exist. It's inked out in my memory. They return when he tries to slip my pants down, and the change allows me to unfreeze, to say the "no" I couldn't force myself to speak before. He immediately stopped and got off the bed and leaned against the desk a few feet away and stared at the floor, refusing to look at me. I remember thinking he looked ashamed. I think I felt bad and tried to apologize but he still wouldn't look up. I wrote in my journal after that he went way too far, "it tore me up so bad," and that I hated what happened. And yet I rationalized that it was only too far, not too too far, and thus it was okay. I should have known, spoken, not been dumb enough to get myself in that situation. And despite realizing that he didn't ask for consent I still didn't realize that it was sexual assault. Rereading my journal I realize it affected me more from the beginning than I usually think. At first I missed having a friend while also hating it and being torn up about it. Later I started to heavily avoid thinking about it, and avoided him as much as I could for someone in my major. I remember avoiding looking at him and interacting with him in class when possible. We were very much in the same sphere, though, so avoiding the thought of it and trying to pretend it never happened was much more possible than avoiding him. I stopped being able to avoid thinking about it when I was assigned to work with him on a project my last semester at the university, a bit over four years after it happened. Having to work with him brought up so much that I'd been trying to suppress and forget about, and I started having to come to terms with what happened. I felt so much pain and anxiety, and one of my professors in particular noticed that I was off. She also, coincidentally, recommended me a book that gave me the words that I didn't have: that what happened was sexual assault. I later told her and another professor what happened, and they were both very supportive and understanding. One remarked that it made sense that I'd left university so suddenly - I'd left without finishing my second degree, deciding to withdraw the summer after finishing my first year, though finishing the first year with the intent to continue. The thought of leaving was freeing and, though he was graduating, if I left there was no chance of interaction and I didn't have to deal with the anxiety I felt on campus. Things have improved a lot since then though healing is never linear. It's been almost three years since I left university. A friend asked me on a trip to visit his family in the state that the university is in last year but I couldn't, the thought of going made me far too anxious - it was more important to be able to eat and sleep than visit. I'm starting to not avoid everyone from university. But, yet, I think because this is on my mind, this morning anxiety made me feel like I was going to puke. I couldn't calm myself down before I had to leave for work so I called off because I was afraid of getting sick there. I used to have a lot more symptoms of ptsd than I do now, though I haven't really seen a professional and have dealt with it on my own. I can write but it's still very difficult to speak aloud about what happened. The four-letter r-word is the hardest and my mind wants to scream that no, no, that didn't happen. A few months after it happened he told me he should be dead, because if any guy did what he did to me, he'd probably kill him. Four and a half years after it happened he said he didn't notice that I froze and didn't remember. I still struggle with anxiety (with a side of accepting what happened) and constant little reminders are difficult. And yet, things are much better than they used to be and I know the processing is needed to continue healing. I'm finally getting back into things that I enjoy and are 'me', and that feels good.