I was raped. March 5, 2002. 11 p.m.

I was a sophomore at a small, private university. My ex-boyfriend and I went to a movie as friends. After the movie, he drove me back to campus and walked me back to my dorm.

I thought he was just being polite.

When we got to my suite, I said good night and went into my bedroom. He followed me in. He was angry because he had taken me to a movie and thought he deserved sex, which he realized I wasn’t going to give.

The images from that half hour are vivid in my memory. Looking at the dark green color of his shirt as he was on top of me. Running his hands through my hair as he told me how much he loved me. Hitting my fist on the wall next to my bed with every “No” I said. The excruciating pain of him forcing himself into me.

He didn’t have my permission, my consent. I had no control over what was happening to my own body.

After it was over, he got up and left. I laid there, numbly crying. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t comprehend. I felt so dirty, so ashamed. I went to the bathroom and my suitemates were there. They had heard it all. They asked me if I was OK. They told me that they would be around if I needed anything. I went back into my room and spent the rest of the night crying.

I walked around in a daze for the next month. It kept coming back to me in pieces. I tried to put a word, a name to what happened to me. But for 19 years, society had taught me that it wasn’t rape. I believed rape only happened to women who were found murdered in alleyways. It doesn’t happen in your dorm room with someone you know and trust.

Six weeks after the rape, I was going to have sex with my current boyfriend. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want him to touch me. I was afraid he was going to hurt me. I physically pushed him away. He watched me as I calmed down and then said, “I didn’t know you had been raped.” He knew my secret. It wasn’t all in my head anymore. It was real.

A week later, I told my two friends. We met in the dining hall and I blurted it out. They changed the subject. A group of girls sitting at a table close to us overheard. They stared at me.

I called my friend from home and told her. I told her I wanted to go to the police. She said I should, but that if I did, I would have to tell my parents and friends. Everyone would know. I didn’t want everyone to know my shameful secret. I never went to the police. I never reported it. I never told anyone again.

I went home for the summer shortly after that. All I wanted to do was forget it. No one at home knew. I acted like nothing had happened to me. It was no big deal. But I started having panic attacks. I had nightmares where I was being killed, stalked, kidnapped, dismembered; and I never got away. I hated my body. I started starving myself and going to the gym for three hours every day.

I transferred to Northeastern. During the fall quarter, I felt I had to have control over everything in my life and had to know what I was doing every second of the day. If anything unexpected came up, I couldn’t handle it.

But I began to lose control. I started going days without sleep. When I did sleep, I would sleep for 15 hours. I couldn’t handle the stress of my classes. My GPA fell from 3.75 to 2.6 in only three quarters. Every noise made me jump. I would hibernate in my room. I was barely hanging on.

During the fall semester, I became worse. I never went to class, I never went out, I didn’t talk to anyone. I failed three out of my four classes. Every little thing was too overwhelming and stressful. Whenever I was sitting alone in my room, that night would come back to me and it was like it was happening all over again.

Things became worse in the spring semester. I never did my work. I would skip weeks of classes. I holed myself up in my room, never talked to my roommate, dropped out of the organizations I was in, stopped talking to my friends, cried myself to sleep every night. I became completely numb to everything; my entire world could come crashing down, everyone I loved could have died and I would not have cared.

At the beginning of March last year, two years after my rape, I wanted to kill myself. I hadn’t survived anything. He had taken my life away from me. I had no future, nothing to look forward to. But the thought of suicide petrified me. I knew then that I could not keep this to myself anymore. It was too big, too overwhelming a secret. I reached out for help and I started counseling.

The course of my life changed that night three years ago. I am a rape survivor. And I will be one for the rest of my life.

Rape is real. And it has consequences.

– The author, a senior, wishes to remain anonymous.