Confused

Sexual assault is often something very confusing. Many people don’t really understand if what they went through was sexual assault. I guess I’m now coming to terms with this confusion. This message contains, well, vivid imagery.

When I was 14, my brother had a best friend. They were both 18. My room had a window in which you could sit on the roof if you climbed out. It was nighttime, and my two brothers and said best friend went out on the roof and got drunk. I drank a bit as well. The night carried on, and one of my brothers went to bed, the other shortly after. I’m not exactly sure why they left him in my room with me, or why he stayed after the last brother left. But he did. And we were casually talking. I’m 18 now, so I’m not exactly sure what led to it but he began to kiss me. I had only ever had one kiss before that, which was a silly truth or dare game in science class of sixth grade. But this went down a bit differently. He kissed me more, and got on top of me, and began to touch me. I was (thankfully) on my period, to which I let him know. So he just felt me over my clothes. A but later he moved my hand to his area and I said not under the clothes. He said okay, took his pants off anyway and moved my hand there anyway. He moved my hand on him with his hand. And I eventually told him I was going to bed. I always felt like I was supposed to like what happened, It felt nice that he wanted me. Like he thought that I was special. I guess I’m realizing now that that’s not the case. To this day, he’s still my brothers best friend and comes to every family event. He hasn’t tried anything since then. I don’t know how to feel, I don’t think about it much, but when I do I wonder if it’s more fucked up than I think.

When I was 16, I did acid. For the second time. I was with my best friend. I told her I wasn’t sure if I had prepared myself enough to take it, and that it was already too late in the night that I would still be tripping in the morning. She essentially urged me to drop the tab, and hyped it up, so I took it. We had a list of things we wanted to do. Yeah, so when you trip on acid, the person you’re with will have the same trip as you. Let me just save the explanation and say that my trip was awful, and so was hers. Thought loops, dread, fear, all that fun stuff. Anyway, amidst our god-awful trip, I tried so persistently to fix it. I remember trying to ground ourselves and started playing the Animal Crossing soundtrack, because it was the only thing in the material world that I thought would help soothe this chaos. I turned back at her, and she looked me in the eyes and said “help me”, proceeding to become unresponsive while laying in bed. I did my best to try and get some sounds out of her, saying familiar words and stuff. A little while on she regained her body, to an extent, and began to laugh. You could tell that she wasn’t really there. Now I’m not going to lie, this kinda freaked me out. So I told her I was going to bed. Side note: you can’t fall asleep on acid. So I’m laying there, and I start to hear this… sound. She had begun to masturbate next to me, and I was so afraid to move that I shut my eyes and cried. I cried for someone to come in and help me, to save me from what was happening. The sound consumed thoughts. I stared at the clock for what felt like hours (your perception of time on LSD is altered) and waited to the sound to subside. It never did. I eventually gained the courage to get off the bed and tell her she needed to leave. She just looks at me with a devilish smile. Her iris looked as if they were slits. The visual aspects of what I saw in her expression were very clearly influenced by the acid. I kept telling her to leave and her smile grew bigger each time. So I left. I went to my brothers room, woke him up at 5 in the morning and all I could get out was a repetition of “I’m sorry”. Eventually I was able to say the act of what she was doing. Fast forward, my mom was called back home from work and she called her mom and got my friend to leave. I wasn’t able to go back up in my room for a few days. There were many nights of me rocking back and forth wondering if this was my fault. I did eventually go back up there. It felt weird. Something bad had happened there and I didn’t want to be reminded of it. So I switched rooms with my brother. I never moved back upstairs. And I never took acid again. I told my friend what happened and she told me that she wasn’t touching herself and that it was all in my head. I wasn’t able to talk to her after trying to tell me that I hallucinated a trauma I’ve never experienced. Now, she has unresolved sexual trauma. Whatever she was doing to herself was clearly not her, it was the materialized thoughts of her reliving her trauma while she was tripping. I’m not a screwed up, druggie teenager. I’m fascinated by science, I have all As, and I’m going to college now to get my masters in medical illustration. And I say this because even intelligent teenagers full of potential do dumb stuff, and my fascination with science resulted in my fascination of psychedelics. Anyway, I had flashbacks for a few months after. They went away, and I’m fine now. I ended up reaching out again. A few months ago she accused me of trying to break her and her boyfriend up after giving relationship advice that it was unhealthy and she was being toxic to her boyfriend, which not that this is relevant, but she is emotionally abusing him and he has tried to break up with her many times. I still think about it sometimes, though. I’ve only been able to tell three people this story: my therapist, my current best friend, and my family friend experienced with these subjects. I wish I could confide in my significant other, but his best friend is (of course) the boyfriend of the subject of my story. I’m worried he would talk about it. This is the first time I’ve been able to type this story and feel… neutral. I want to tell my partner because I just don’t want any part of me that I have to hide. I’m very interested in having something genuine, but this story in particular is crucial to my character development and it sucks to feel like I have to keep it a secret to save her reputation. I still care for her. She needs professional help, she’s troubled, and I want the best for her. I wouldn’t tell anybody who knows her in the slightest so that they wouldn’t turn against her or spread rumors.