The Things You’ll Feel After Being Attacked On A Sunday Afternoon

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Cold. You will feel cold. You will shut your blinds, blocking out the blazing sun. You will pile blankets on your bed kidding yourself that the feeling of cold is an external feeling provoked by the late November air and not one that is sprouting from inside your chest.

You will feel annoyed. You had things to do tonight. You had to prepare your lesson plans, do your laundry and call your Mom. You will feel angry that tomorrow morning, you have to wake up and teach a bunch of innocent children grammar points while you clumsily juggle being unprepared and the overwhelming feeling of nothingness. You will feel like you need to shower until the hot water runs out. You will want to lay on the tile as the water flows over the body that no longer feels like your own. You will think you should cry, but you won’t.

You will tell people you are “fine” and deal with the glares reserved for traumatized people like you. This will make you feel isolated. You will disappoint these same people by not being able to give them the broken, vulnerable girl they need to see. This will make you feel like you are doing this whole, “I‘ve been attacked” thing wrong. Bonus points if you are wondering, with concern, how your attacker might be feeling.

You will feel pissed off. But not for the reasons you think. You will feel completely irrational (but somehow completely rational) thoughts. You will curse the decision you made that morning to wear your favorite sweatpants, knowing now that you could never possibly wear them again. You will feel angry that he will be able to wear whatever he wants.

You will debate starting a dance party when your roommates come home to show them that you really are okay. You will later decide against this when you realize they will probably think you have officially lost it as a result.

You will want to tell everyone and no one what happened. You will wonder if you can tell your friends what happened, because this is, after all, the second time they have heard about a time your body wasn’t yours. You will wonder how many times a woman can be attacked in her life before wondering if it truly is not “her fault”. You’ll wonder if people are already thinking that.

You will feel incredibly stupid for the casual sex you had last week. You will look in the mirror at the eyes that felt empowered by unemotional sex and not remember who you are. You will feel cold pin-pricks of shame that it took someone shoving their hands between your legs uninvited to make you realize, again, that sex is a big deal. You will want to tell the man you casually slept with all this, but you won’t.

But mostly, you’ll feel cold.