Who is She?

Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too.

So many.

She had been feeling equal parts uncomfortable and emboldened. The stories were so private, should they really be posted on social media? Wait. What. The Fuck. That has been the problem. That is THE problem. No one wants to talk about it because it is so uncomfortable.

For whom?

She posted Me Too. Just posting it led her to the questions, “Will people wonder what happened? Will they ask me? Will they judge the incident as being valid? How severe does it have to be to post it?” Wait. What. The Fuck.

The John Mellencamp chorus, “…and the walls come tumblin’ down

When the walls…. come crumblin’ crumblin’

When the walls… come tumblin’ tumblin’… down” kept playing through her mind. Yes. Finally. Yes. See!?! This is so prevalent it has been a collective normal experience for virtually all women, their entire lives.

At Last. Keep it coming…Keep it crumbling.

Hmmm. She started to recount her experiences growing up, trying to count the incidences.

Holy Shit.

She replayed them in her mind. So many. So hesitant to put them down on paper. Why do these women wait a decade, twenty years, thirty years to say something?

She’s on her first real date. He shoves his hand down her pants, groping around like he’s lost something and he’s desperately trying to find it. She’s thinking, “Is this really what happens here? What part of this is supposed to feel good? Does this even feel good to him?” She’s too shocked, too horrified, too numb to respond.

She enters the classroom and starts to sit down. She doesn’t notice he put a hand on top of her chair. In an instant, she’s sitting on his hand, it’s under her skirt, he’s feeling around with his fingers. She jumps up. This popular boy laughs and winks at her with a smile on his face that said, “I know, that was awesome right? Yes, you can have more of that.”

She tells one of her trusted friends about this and more. He replies, “Well. Just…don’t look so good.”

She goes to a party, on a blind date, a double date with some friends. Her friend leaves with her date, and she now ends up alone in a room with hers. He shuts the door and locks it; a large, heavy, dark brown, rough wooden door with a gold doorknob. Hours later, She’s left alone on the bed crying. She won’t recall all of the details until giving birth to her child years later.

She agrees to be the designated driver to a party at a close friend’s house, even though She is really sick and on cold medication. Once there, She lies down on the couch in a spare room away from the chaos of the party, figuring She can rest until everyone is ready to go home. She hears two boys laughing and stumbling by the door. The door opens. Eyes closed, She hears one of them say, “Is that ____________? Whoa. She’s passed out. You go ahead. I got this, she won’t even know.” Her heart starts beating; fluttering, like a bird flinging itself against a cage. She recognized the voice. He was a friend. The fluttering bird stills. Devastated, about to sit up, she hears the other boy grab him, throw him back into the hallway, and say, “Just stay the fuck away from her.” She sits up. This boy comes over, reeking of beer, yet puts his hand on her head and says, “You go ahead and sleep. I’ll stand by the door. No one’s getting in here.”

She comes home from college on winter break, at a party with her friends from her hometown. One of them pulls underneath her chin. “What’s this? Don’t you get fucking fat. You’re not allowed to gain the ‘Freshman Fifteen.’”

She’s an R.A in the dorms, giving a talk to the college students on her floor. One of them gets up to leave, walks by her, and slaps her ass in front of everyone saying, “Whatever you say, darlin’”. She tells a mutual friend that she’s going to “write him up.” He tells her, “Don’t do that. You’ll just make an enemy of every dude on this floor.”

These are a fraction of her experiences.

Do you understand yet?

Do you understand how this has been normalized?

Why does it matter? It happened so long ago. Everyone acted like that in high school…