Content Warning: This post contains graphic description of sexual assault, trauma responses, and the aftermath of rape.
It includes description of both physical and emotional experiences, and the emotional and physiological toll of trauma. It may be triggering for survivors of sexual assault.
Please proceed with care and take breaks as needed.
Author’s Note:
This piece is my personal victim impact statement-one that I will never have the chance to read aloud in a courtroom. I wrote it not only as a way to process my own experience, but also in hopes that it might offer validation or resonance to someone else navigating the aftermath of sexual violence. It is raw, unfiltered, and emotionally intense, because so is the impact.
This is not a post I share lightly. My hope is that it can illuminate just how far-reaching the effects of these crimes truly are.
Please take care while reading, and honor your emotional limits. You can pause, exit, or return whenever you need to.
Hi. I’m here today to speak not just as a victim, but as a survivor.
I’ll start by saying that I was a girl who absolutely loved her Apple Watch. I wore it all day every day, used it to log my workouts, and tracked my steps each day to ensure that I was hitting 10K consistently.
In fact, two weeks before my trip to Mexico, I wrote in my gratitude journal that I was thankful for my watch, and the fact that its battery always lasted longer than I needed it to.
On July 19th of 2024, I was raped by a man who told me he was an Uber to take me back to the hotel. I don’t remember getting into his car, but I remember his face. I remember his car. I viscerally remember the moment that he had pulled over on a dirt road and I realized what was about to happen. I remember about the first 30 seconds of the assault.
When a group of guys asked me if I was alright, crying alone in the hotel lobby after, I remember coming into awareness as the words “I think I just got fucking raped” poured out of my mouth. I remember breaking into an uncontrollable sob, in shock and pain, confused and afraid.
I am so thankful for that group of guys, who helped me back to my room-when I finally got there and crawled into my bed, the last thing I remember from that night was the stinging pain of chaffed, dry skin rubbed raw.
But I remember waking up the next day and realizing he had stolen my watch, the watch that I had loved so much, a watch that was password protected-absolutely worthless to anyone but me.
With time, I have learned to be nothing but thankful for the blank space of missing time from that night. Thankful that I am free from the weight of those memories-I know that not everyone is so lucky.
Truthfully, though, it didn’t make it any easier. Instead, I had to wonder-and for a long time, I thought of little else. It plagued and consumed me.
I had to wonder exactly what had happened to me that night. I had to wonder whether he had called up any friends and let them take a turn. I had to wonder if there were pictures or videos, and if the most traumatic night of my life was immortalized on some dark corner of the internet.
While those questions have quieted down with time, I’m not sure that they could ever really go away.
A deep-seated, subconscious blanket of denial allowed me gracious survival through the last four days of my trip. Unfortunately, ignorance can only protect you for so long.
When I got home, safe in my own room for the first time, my mental defenses came crashing down as I began experiencing visceral full body flashbacks and facing reality for the first time. For the rest of my life, I’ll be lucky to never again be subjected to such a state of pure fear and horror.
Over the next week, I launched a full investigation into that night. I had nothing but questions-and without answers I was suspended in time, shattered and broken with no way forward or back. I was desperately searching.
So I set out to create a timeline, hoping that figuring out how long I was in the car could lead to more answers. I knew I had gotten back into my room at 4:36 am, and I knew I had to have been dropped off some time after 3:30. The only missing piece was the time I had gotten into the car.
Just when it seemed I had exhausted all possible information sources, I felt some sense of relief wash over me as I realized that the Apple Watch I had cherished so dearly could contain so many of the answers I was looking for. Surely my own physiology could point me in the direction of what exactly had happened to me that night.
And yet, I felt my stomach sink a little deeper as I poured through each section-steps, standing minutes, heart rate, energy log-and my watch gave me only one gut-wrenching answer. He had taken it off immediately after I got into the car.
At least it allowed me to finish my timeline.
Did you know there is science behind the reason that emotions and physical sensation are so highly connected?
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body. It runs from the brainstem through the neck and chest and into the abdomen, touching nearly every major organ along the way.
This nerve is a direct line between the brain and body-it’s why anxiety churns in your stomach, heartbreak tightens your chest, and grief can feel physically crushing.
It’s the reason I really felt my heart tear in two as I concluded my investigation that day-realizing that what should’ve been a 9-minute drive to the hotel, had instead been about 2.5 hours.
Case closed.
So, I was a girl who absolutely loved her Apple Watch. A girl who loved exercise, walks in the park, and spending time with her friends. On the night of July 19th, my life was torn into two-before Mexico, and after-an after that bred the darkest times of my life.
Now, I AM a girl who has grieved the death of the person I was before, and the life that I had before. I am a girl who wakes up gasping from nightmares, vivid replays of that night. A girl whose breath catches in her throat when she’s alone with a man on an elevator. A girl who struggles to feel safe at night and can’t sleep without her bedroom door locked. I am a girl who has experienced firsthand the perverse evil that lurks in the shadows and dark corners of the world, and who carries the weight of that every single day.
I am a girl with a new anniversary. A day that, each year-for the rest of my life-will stand marred as a painful reminder of the event that took place. At 23 years old, that’s a lot of years to go.
Now, I am not just a victim-I am a survivor. I have fought every day to get where I am. Through times that I felt convinced the pain was too unbearable, the weight of that night too heavy to carry, I survived. Through times I thought I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting, I survived.
I had to vow many times over that despite everything that he took from me, I wouldn’t let him take my life from me too. I clawed my way towards healing tooth and nail, and I am still fighting today.
Despite everything he took from me, he can never take my fight, my strength, my resilience, or my hope. He cannot define who I am. I survived. I am surviving. And that is my victory.
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