The ugly truth is this: even though I was only in college for three weeks, I was sexually assaulted while I was on campus. I was on drugs, which made it easier for my attacker to take advantage of me, and I was devastated after the assault. Instead of keeping it a secret like my attacker instructed me to do, I called friend after friend leaving vague voicemails, “Please call me… I’m really upset… something bad happened… I need to talk to someone… Hope you’re okay… Bye,” until someone picked up. I told my RA and my school counselor, and called the RAINN hotline. I got the validation and support I needed from some of these conversations. These are the ones I can’t remember. The ones that stuck with me were the bad ones. My counselor, who was concerned about my perceived “substance abuse,” asked me to walk her through the events of that awful night and point out every instance I could have done something to change the night’s outcome, and lectured me on the pitfalls of drugs. After I had returned home, I went to my synagogue and talked to my rabbi. That was the worst conversation of all. I had trouble even forming the words, and I finally told him, “I was sexually assaulted.” For him, assault equaled violence, and he asked me over and over, in different ways, “Did he hit you? Did hold you down? Did you have bruises? Did he choke you?”

That wasn’t how it happened.

The night comes back to me in bits and pieces. We are smoking pot by my school’s waterfront. I am trying to dance, but am too stoned to be coordinated. Jake wants to go to sleep and leaves me alone with a stranger. I’m under a pavilion by the senior dorms. No, I’m in my car. I’m falling asleep and can barely walk. He carries me. I’m naked. It hurts.

I told my rabbi, “He didn’t hit me. He carried me.”

When Rabbi answered, “Well, that sounds like a supportive thing to do,” I stopped talking. I listened to him as he recounted the “real” assaults he experienced as an abused child. His father hit him when he was young. I said I was sorry. I seemed to be apologizing a lot back then; I was sorry for disappointing my parents by taking drugs, I was sorry for having to come home from school, I was sorry for all the bad decisions I’d made. I was sorry for appropriating a term that was reserved for people who had had truly awful experiences, not the drug-induced mistakes I’d made. I left the synagogue feeling defeated. Maybe it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have been taking drugs. I shouldn’t have been getting high with a stranger.

It’s been five months since the assault, and sometimes it feels like it’s still the day after. I still wonder if it really happened or if I made the whole thing up for attention. “Sexual assault,” is a vague term, but Arabelle Sicardi‘s article for Rookie Magazine sums up how I feel. “If you have been in a sexual situation where you were too scared to say no, or incapable of saying no, that was assault.” I was in no way capable of saying no that night. As my tired head lolled against my attacker’s chest, I did not know what was going on. I did not know who he was or what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted it to stop, but I was too drugged to figure out how to make that happen.

I have been asked over and over if I would blame someone else who was in my situation, and of course, I say no. I am not so special that I deserve an exception, nor am I so special that people have the right to violate me. As I write this, I want to slam the laptop shut, curl up in a ball, and tell myself, “It was my fault. I deserved it. It was my fault…” But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be the friend I needed then and tell myself that I will be okay. If anyone came to me and said they’d been sexually assaulted, I would not question them. I would not blame them. I would not say they deserved it. I do not get an exception. It was not my fault. No matter what drug I take, no one has the right to harm me. The universe does not dole out cruel punishments like a strict parent. What happened to me was unfair. It was wrong. It was not my fault.