Letter to My Rapist (TW)

im 13, this is an open letter to my rapist

Dear... you.

I don't even know my name, but I can still remember the smirk on your face when you took away a piece of me. I can still taste the rusty blood that filled my mouth when you slammed my head down as I protested. I could feel the effects of the drugs rushing through my bloodstream, causing my eyes to close despite my fight. I felt my ankle snap and heart my ribs crack. I remember crying in the ambulance as the medics jabbed a needle through my vein to try to relieve the pain. I remember the nurses blue eyes as she told me to stay alive, whispered that my injuries were the worst she's seen in her time, my body, a scene of a crime. Hours went by, I was unsure if I would survive, left alone, no tears left to cry. After the cast was set, the pain wasn't gone yet, I saw the damage you imprinted. A black eye, your handprint on my neck, the image so graphic I couldn't recognize myself yet. I couldn't move for days, the time in the ICU, a haze, looking at the crime scene of my body. A week later, once I'm home, I lock the door, demand to be alone. I let the water burn, trying to scrub all of you off of me, but your hands are forever imprinted on me and the drain won't let your thick touch pass through. I hear the officer saying, men can't control it, they need sex, I punched the mirror, broken, upset. Because what you did to me was about violence, not sex. They burned in my brain that you were perfectly sane, that I shouldn't have taken a drink, that what I was wearing caused you not to think. Not once did an authority say I wasn't to blame, even when they saw me, just a child, in so much pain.

Why couldn't you stop? You know how hard I fought. I had bruises on my fists from all the punches and the hits. Wasn't I at the disadvantage? Half your size, drugged with glazed over eyes, you saw, I tried, but I couldn't fight off someone your size. You told me I wanted it, you said "Say you want it, then I'll stop". You made me say I wanted it, you made it seem consensual. When I told the officer, he told it was all my fault, it wasn't assault, because of three lying words, 'I want this'. Wasn't it obvious that I didn't? You had to squeeze my neck and wrists so tight that your fingertips remained for days. I still hear the officer saying 'It was consensual sex', implying that there is such a thing as non-consensual sex, but there's not, that's rape. You did not have sex with a 13 year old, you raped a 13 year old. You took innocence away from a stranger. You made it so that the simplest of things become a time of hate, showers showing the scars you left that add salt to an open wound in my mind when I see them. It feels like I am outside in a hurricane, just trying to live through what you did. Are these tears I've cried, or just the rain? I want to say that I'm not insane, but lately I can't trust my brain, because no matter what I do, I just can't let it go.

Maybe I'm the things preached, a slut, responsible, maybe I shouldn't have taken that drink, maybe I shouldn't have been alone, maybe should have stayed home, but I'll never be you.

I may be at wrong too, but I'm not a rapist like you.