At Night

An open letter.

[An open letter Rain writes to her sexual abuser]

My name is Rain, but you already know that. You've known me ever since I came out the womb. You got me my first bike. We danced to old music, blasting the speakers so loud that the neighbors would make a complaint. You would save me from mom's scolds and try to reprimand her. You were the best. I wanted you around me all the time. Little did I know you had other thoughts in your mind about little ol' me.

I am now 22 years old. Happily living my life with my fiancé, a great job, and a beautiful home. Away from you. Away from all the darkness you have put upon me. That darkness you have left is rape. Such a dirty word, isn't it? Rape. No one wants to say it out loud. The room goes so quiet that you can hear a pin drop. Rape, as we're told, is about power. It reveals itself through force that visible and apparent. But that same force can be shown be in invisible paths, psychological paths. The story about this invisible power is the story no one hears. The story that no court or police hears or asks. This is the story that I need to tell.

It happened at night. It happened almost every night.
It happened when the streets were quiet and the only light outside was from the moon and the street lamps in its yellow glory. It was when you can hear distant police sirens and creaks of little night bugs. The eerie darkness of those nights would never escape my memory. This isn't a story. This isn't a speech for you all to give me sympathy and feel bad for what I "have been through". Because I am not here for everyone's opinion on this nor am I here for people to blame me or give me advice for what I should've done. We tell ourselves stories so we may endure, so we can get through, or so we can cope with what we don't want to remember. But the body remembers all; it remembers every sensation. It remembers what shouldn't have been and what could have been. Each touch, each moment, becomes a story we tell so that we can prevail.
And I remember it all. Everything.