My sexual assault story

TW: Multiple sexual assaults, victim blaming, adults being inappropriate with a child

When I was in the 8th grade I met this guy, I'm going to call him 'Alex'. Alex and I became fast friends because we were both shy, nerdy kids with similar interests. After the 8th grade, we ended up going to separate high schools but we remained friends since we lived within walking distance of each other. We usually spent our school breaks together, watching anime and playing video games together. At the time, I didn't have a lot of friends. Alex was the only one I hung out with outside of school and for years I considered him my best friend.

Our friendship was pretty normal throughout freshman year of high school, but Alex slowly started to get creepy during sophomore year. The change was subtle. At first, it started with him wanting to watch more "fan service-y" anime together. The shows we watched slowly got more and more sexual. At some point, he started to send me images of characters from the hentai he was watching, telling me how hot he thought the characters were.

Now, I want to give a little bit of backstory.  Men have been creepy towards me for as far back as I can remember. Even when I was as young as 6 years old. Adult family friends and male family members have said inappropriate things to me. When I was 14, I had an online male friend who was in his 20s. He was super creepy with me too and at one point convinced me to send him ***. I stopped texting him shortly after that, but the point is so many adult men in my life have normalized this behavior. I didn't think Alex's actions were weird or a red flag. They were normal, I thought that's just how guys are.

Back to sophomore year. One day, we were walking to McDonalds together, which was pretty normal for us to do. But, this time, when we got to an isolated road, he asked me if he could kiss me. I was so confused and said "No???". But, he leaned over and kissed me anyway. I was so confused, I asked him if he did that because he liked me. Alex told me he didn't. he just wanted to know what it felt like to kiss a girl. I laughed it off and we continued going to McDonalds. But, later, when I got home I couldn't help but feel gross and violated, and I didn't know why. It was just a kiss, I told myself. He was just curious and it was harmless. I eventually convinced myself that I was overreacting and never brought it up to him.  

My 16th birthday came and Alex wanted to celebrate it together. The weekend after my birthday, he invited me over to his house. He had bought me my favorite snacks and even got me a cake. Which I thought was the sweetest and kindest thing a friend had ever done for me. His family was out that day, so we had the whole house to ourselves. Which I thought was awesome. We ate junk food and watched anime, and I was honestly having a great time. 

About an hour into the party, though, Alex then pinned me to the couch and raped me. I don't want to go into details, I barely remember them anyway. Weirdly, the one thing I do remember crystal clear was the walk home. I remember feeling so dirty and I felt strangely paranoid that the people in their cars driving by were staring at me, somehow KNOWING what had just happened. I felt so ashamed. 

I stopped talking to Alex after this. Which was so hard. He was my best friend and one of the only people I talked to and hung out with regularly. Sure, I had friends at school, but I barely ever talked or hung out with them outside school. Alex was the one I spent most of my time with. When I cut ties with him I felt so alone.

It took months until I worked up the courage to tell someone. I was so scared, but I just needed to tell someone what happened. I told my longtime friend from middle school. She had actually hung out with Alex and me a couple of times. I thought she could understand what I was going through since she had seen our friendship. When I told her, her response was: it was my fault for being so friendly with him, I was leading him on.

Honestly, I didn't even feel bad as she told me this. I just thought," Yeah, she's probably right." For many years, I blamed myself for the assault. In fact, after this conversation, I stopped believing it WAS an assault. I began to believe it was just a misunderstanding between friends and that I was overreacting. I even started to feel bad for Alex for ghosting him. 

The next year, when I was 17, I had another male friend invite me over to his house to play video games. When we were in his room alone, he started to touch me inappropriately. Luckily it didn't escalate into anything more. But, I just froze when he started to touch me. I didn't say so "no", or say "stop" or fight back. Like I did when I was assaulted by Alex. I think this reinforced my belief that these incidents were my fault. That maybe I sent this friend mixed signals. I even started to believe that I must have somehow wanted it to happen. 

For years, I have gone back and forward in my own head. I have convinced myself many times that I'm overreacting. That others have had it way worse than me. That it was my fault these assaults happened in the first place. That I wanted it to happen. I repressed these feelings for many, many years. 

I think I'm in a place now to believe NONE of it was my fault and I want to begin healing from all this. Thank you to anyone who has read this. I know it was a lot, but I wanted to get it all off my chest.