From the Other Side of My Bed

22. Forgive you

To Jovanni,

How are the kids? I bet they have grown so much since the last social media post.
How are things going with you? I heard you go to some driving classes because you got a DUI.
Does life feel heavy? Mine sometimes feel that way but it gets better on the brighter days.

How is life after you raped me?

For years you've reached out, even had tried grabbing me by the elbow at Walmart as I walked by, unfazed about your existence being so near me in that second.
Why do you still try? Why do you reach out? Not only have you texted me on my old social media and the new one, but also had asked my old friends about me. Why are you still searching for me? Are you obsessed with the fact that you murdered me out of a healthy life 10 years ago? I've tried for years to reason the why you still look for me everywhere, even to the point of thinking maybe you feel guilty in what you did. But I know I was just one more of your prey and that you're a monster.
You murdered me out of my life that I deserved,
You ripped and ruined my innocence and let in all the bad, all the nightmares, all the fears, all addictions and even, an unhealthy image of myself without even thinking how it would shape my life. And though I may sound angry, I just feel betrayed, because you were my friend.
I trusted you.
And you trusted me.
Is that what eats you alive? That you betrayed a friend?
How about knowing I was just a little kid?
I was 14, Jovanni, I was only a baby.
How can you be attracted to little girls like that? Because I wasn't the only one.
How about Robbi, your baby's mother?
How about Justine, your other baby's mother?
How about Lacey? She was barely 15 when you raped her.
Then there's me.
You preyed on me so carefully.
The way you would stay behind the scenes while I got wasted and high out of my mind. The way you would make eye contact with me while making out with other girls. The way you would tell Jaxon it was okay, that you would walk me home or drive me to a different location when I was blacked out drunk, how you held my hair after I threw up outside the car we were in one late afternoon because the oxxys didn't hit the right way. You are a monster.
You waited and waited up until Jaxon when to Juvi (juvenile jail) and you got closer to me. Hell, you even stopped having a thing with Lacey around that time because you didn't want her near us when we smoked back at your apartment complex.
You faked so much, you faked an honest demeanor, you acted passively, you made me trust you. Even believe there was goodness in you, how you talked about how Robbi had been the love of your life at that point in time but she was a victim of yours. You listened and asked me questions about my life, you maneuver your way into so when I fell on your trap, I wouldn't make such a big deal.
Remember your aunt's house?
The one you invited me that one April 16th of 2015.
The one with a basement?
Remember how you texted me that one night, talking about there was a party going on and that I should come over? And I fell for it? I'm no longer angry at myself for falling into your trap. At the end, I was only 14, I didn't understand stranger danger like others do and you knew this, so you took advantage. You made me go all the way there, made me go in the empty basement. I asked you where was everyone and you just shrugged and said that they would be late, that I was just early.
You said we should start the party and pull out your bong and we got super high. I could barely keep my eyes open from so much weed we smoked. And to top it all, you pulled out a sapphire bottle, and when I asked what that was, you said "rum".
Before you shared it with me, you turned to look at me and said,
"You're so beautiful."
Of all things, I blushed and looked away and in that second, I heard a rip of a paper and I tried thinking where it came from but when I look your way, you were cleaning the rim of the bottle and then offered it to me.
"Drink it." You said. "The one who drinks the most shots, takes all the pops," and you showed me from your pocket that you carried a bunch of pills. I excitedly started chugging from the bottle and when I stopped, I felt how it burned so bad my esophagus. It made me tear up and I tried to breathe, then I noticed my breathing wasn't the same, it was hollow, and my eyes were seeing double. I rubbed my eyes and tried to clear my sight, but nothing helped. So, I stood up.
And all the alcohol and weed hit all at once.
I felt wobbly. Like I couldn't walk, I was stumbling. And I fell bubby.
I remember I closed my eyes for a while, and when I opened them, you were in front of me, telling me I needed some fresh air. So, you forcefully grabbed my hand and led me to God knows where. I closed my eyes for a while and when I opened them, you had taken me somewhere dark and with trees, like I was brushing past trees, and I could touch them, and it felt cold outside.
In reality, you were taking me to a park nearby.
You made me sit down with you despite I didn't feel my body anymore. I couldn't even talk, and you held the bottle to my mouth and made me drink more. My eyes felt heavy while I tried to stay awake, looking at a rose bush in front of us with bright red roses. You got closer to me, and then your hand landed in my thigh. It moved until reaching my private part, and you fingered me, roughly while I sat there, my eyes becoming watery. I didn't know what was going on.
You did.
Because you then stood up, made me stand up and pushed me on top of the table and made me lay there and you got on top of me. You pushed my legs apart, made your way between then as you bit me, like a dog with a bone, all over my neck and chest. You lifted my shirt and cupped my breasts in your hands and sucked and bite on them, while I lay there, frozen in fear and drugged from whatever you put on my drink. When my hands were able to move, they moved to push you away from me, and you pinned them down above my head and looked at me in a way I'll never forget. It was something so vile, something so evil in that look. Then you forcefully kissed me then continued to leave bites on my neck, sucking the skin so roughly and still having me pinned down. Then when your hand went to the zipper of my shorts, I managed to say "no."

Then I blacked out after that.

You left me there, in that park, after you were done with me. As if I was trash now.
You never cared after.
You didn't care or thought what would happen to me. You just left me there, passed out on a bench, with my clothes semi ripped off from my body.
The people who found me, the maintenance guys, thought I was dead. I don't remember well their faces or what they said, other than that their lips were making the word "dead."
What ended up happening was I had to make my way home.
No one wanted to help me. No one trusted a girl who looked like me at that moment. If they only knew I was a child, then maybe I would have had more help. But I had enough helped that day when a good Samaritan man allow me to talk to him, more like begging him, to please take me home and showed him I had nothing on me, and he did take me home. God bless him.
When I got home, I passed out for what it seems like days but when I woke up, it was because of a stabbing like pain in me, more between my legs. I could barely walk to the bathroom. And God, peeing felt like I was peeing fire out of me. And I felt disoriented, lost. When I looked down on my underwear, I saw it.
All the blood, all over, even on my shorts.
When I wiped myself, more blood came out and freaking out I ripped off my clothes, suddenly I felt disgusted in those clothes, not because of the blood, but for what they meant now. And I didn't understand in the moment what had happened to me, all I knew was I hated and feared those pieces of clothes. And then when I looked at my hands, I looked at blood but also, on my wrists, I had handprints.
Your handprints. On me.
I kept looking at my arms, all covered in bruises and bite marks. I rushed to the mirror, and I saw it.
A sight of myself I will never forget.
The face of a raped person.
You know how that looks like?
Do you fucking know what that looks like, Jovanni?
Of big, blueish undereye with eyes that are hollow, with no light in them. With ashy, grey skin. Messed hair and bruises all over the neck and swollen lips.
I was a person who you murdered, and you never cared afterwards what became of me.
Except to tell me, years later, that you couldn't understand how I didn't like my rape.

A year after the rape, I made contact with you to get closure.
A closure I don't know if I needed or not, but I still made myself brave and walked up to a Kleiman park to meet you. And we sat, ironically, on a bench, facing each other. I told you, calmly, how this was a rape. That you took my purity away. That I had never been with anyone, and you destroyed my life.

You looked at me, confused, and said, "So, you didn't like it?"
.
.
.
.
You'll wonder and wonder all your life that, because you never understood what rape was. Maybe and I say "maybe" this was normalized to you. Maybe you grew up thinking and seeing this was okay.
But that never meant it was okay to rape me.
I spent years after being celibate.
I never slept with anyone.
I would freeze and panic when someone's hand touched me for years. I avoided affection. I resented it. I didn't understand what intimacy was. I didn't know what partners to look for. I just shut down. And still then, I got victim blamed by my own father by what YOU FUCKING DID.
Then when I told others what happened, they all looked at me and said, "why didn't you just report it?"
How could I? My dad helped you technically to erase evidence.
He fled with me to my country the third day I spoke up about what had happened.
And by the time I came back, it was already too late to report it.
And who would have had believed a Latina accusing a white man of rape?
You, once again, got lucky.
So that's why I ask again, how is life after you raped me?
Do you feel proud and big for what you did?
Do you ever dream of me?
I did, for years. You lived in my nightmares, in the "almost" I had with guys, when they were about to penetrate me and I would see your face in them and scream.
Does my memory follow you every once in a while?
You are in every man's face, your eyes, those vile, and full of hatred eyes exists everywhere, in every corner to the edge of the world, because there are a bunch of men who fancy little girls. For years, even till recently, I would stare at the missing person's posters of girls and boys and I would just sit down with the newspaper on my chest and cry. And I'm not a crier.
I would cry and stare at these kids, who probably will never be found, and there I was, alive. When I should of be in their place. Many of these kids disappeared maybe because a man/woman lure them in like you did and raped them and killed them possibly. And the crazy part is:

I WISH YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME.
I wish, with all my soul, you had. I wish the rest of my body had had been dumped somewhere in the dark dunes of Papago mountains or in the deep waters of the Saguaro River. I wish I hadn't lived through what came next.
I was just a kid who got raped, didn't understood the concept, got blamed, got bullied for it, lived in fear for years, had to deal through healing over and over again and still then I have to see your eyes once in a while when I'm intimate with someone.
Do you think that is the life I wanted?
And this is all thanks to you.
So here's this letter, the one who tells everything I wanted to tell you but also ask.
God knows I wonder, how much evil lives in people who fancy little kids like you.
I wish I had more views on social media to expose you, to prevent another little girl from falling on your claws. I wish I could have saved them. And God knows I cry every time I think how I'm also part of the problem.
Me living means I'm responsible for you keep hurting kids, because I'm silenced.
And like everyone who had never been raped, not even my readers will understand why I stay quiet.
No one understand the shame of being raped.
And no one knows how the world never listens to those who are raped.
Plus, I only stay quiet, until now, because I didn't want your kids to know you rape others. I want that little girl of yours to think daddy is a good man. And I want your little boy never to see the capability of causing harm like you do.
That is my cross and I will carry it unless there's a higher authority who demands me to testify against you. Which I hope one day, there will be justice for us.
Us girls who you raped.
With this end of letter, I only wish for God to forgive you, like I did.
You hold no more power over me, nor fear.
I'm a woman now.
Not a little girl anymore.
And she knows you can't hurt her again.
I wish for you, change, and my best regards.