If anyone else was talking about something that happened 14 years ago, it would feel like ancient history. Most of the things that happened to me 14 years ago feel like ancient history. How can it somehow be the case that the faraway memories of performing in A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody, my joint sweet 16 party with one of my friends, going on a trip to NYC and visiting the wax museum and running into our middle school teachers on the train, were all in the same time period as March 6, 2011 and the months that followed? How can it be that when I think about being a high school student, it feels simultaneously impossibly long ago and like it’s still happening now? 14 years is a long fucking time.

But I remember what the weather was like that Sunday. I remember the clothes I wore. I remember verbatim some of the words I said, some of the words he said. If I were to try to think about it generally, I can’t picture his voice, yet I can hear it in my head as if it’s an actual recording, saying those words. 

* * *

March 6th feels like I’m watching Avery break into a room with pictures all over the wall, storyboard ideas for my life, laughing to himself knowing he can choose whatever he wants for me, walk out of the room, go on with his life knowing it all began for me in this moment which to him is so mundane. 

He scans the photos, touches a few of them gently as he ponders what he wants to do with me. He smacks a couple right off the wall, and they fall onto the floor face down. He spends a long time looking at every possibility. I can tell he’s really thinking as he steps back and takes it all in, leaning against a table in the center of the room with nothing on it but a small DVD player. 

I can do nothing about any of this. I am not there; I can merely see it happening. 

When he makes his decision, it’s abrupt and decisive. He goes from stillness to pouncing at the photo depicting him pinning my legs apart; he forcefully yanks it off the wall. The corner of the photo tears off, and I feel it. He delicately bites the torn edge and reveals a transparent covering, which he peels off with his mouth and spits onto the floor. This reveals that the photo is actually a DVD. 

He shoves it into the DVD player, but it doesn’t fit. The CD cracks. He keeps shoving it in, even though the silver of the disc is chipping away. Finally he reaches into the CD drive and breaks it open, shattering the edges with his bare fingers, haphazardly piling the shards of the disc into place, and slamming it closed. 

He laughs as the image comes on the screen. He takes a full sized bleach cleaner out of his front pocket and a rag out of the other, dumps the cleaner all over the room, wipes it down, occasionally glancing at the screen and laughing. He’s just about to walk out, not caring about the ending, when he thinks again. Out of his back pocket he takes out a dongle for a bluetooth game controller. He crashes it through the screen. Out of his other back pocket he pulls out the controller, tests it out. Hitting X forces my eyes open. He laughs. He mutes the volume through the controller. And he walks out of the room.

* * *

I was 13 when I met him. I’ve known him longer than I didn’t know him. Unless you count that I haven’t really known him in years. Unless you count that I guess I never really knew him at all. Unless you consider that after I stopped knowing him somehow I knew him better than I ever had. In two years I’ll have been a rape survivor longer than I wasn’t.

Whenever I see children, teens, I am struck with how young they are. How long ago it’s been since I was so young. I think my brain is literally surprised to realize that.

I often have to remember that I was a child when this happened. Sometimes it’s as if it’s still happening, and I am not a child. And I didn’t feel like one then, either. And by the time I was an adult and supposed to be able to handle the aftermath, I was trapped. An eternal, but aging, 16-year-old adult.

I know I have come a long way. I still dream about him, but not as much. I still think about it a lot, against my will. I still even get confused by it. I still sometimes want to convince myself it wasn’t so bad. But most of the time I know what happened. I no longer am searching for more information to confirm this or to figure out who he really is. I know.

I’m no longer constantly partially reliving it.

I’ve come a long way with healing my relationship with sex. I can honestly say I enjoy sex, and I can say that without feeling shame. I can enjoy sex without shame.

And today’s March 6th and my body knows. And as ever, I can pretend to be okay enough to function, but I am far away. I am the girl in the photo being yanked off the wall. I feel it. 

I get through the workday. I get through my workouts. On the drive home I almost slam into the car in front of me because I stopped seeing the world for long enough to not realize it stopped. When I’m one block away from home I realize I don’t know where I am; I think I missed my turn. But a second later I realize I’m at my house.

I reported him to the police over eight years ago. I filed my lawsuit over seven years ago. I’m waiting on the appellate division to decide if it was wrong to dismiss it for missing the statute of limitations, which expired years before I had accepted I was raped. Avery’s team used my journals showing how deeply I was struggling from what he had done and deeply confused about it and him, to get the case dismissed. Look, Judge, she knew she was raped, so dismiss the case!  I thought about going into more detail about this but I can’t find the right words right now.

I wonder if I’ve done enough. If the limited consequences I’ve successfully fought for him to face have made him decide inflicting abuse isn’t worth the pleasure for him. I worry that the knowledge of the risk only makes it more enticing. 

I wonder if I’ve done enough to make up for the things I couldn’t prevent.

14 years ago I was 16 years old, and my friend Avery Peterson raped me for the first time. I will never know what my life might have been. I will never know how the wounds I already had would have healed. I’m mad on behalf of 16-year-old me, who did not have the tools to face what I was faced with. I’m mad on behalf of 19-year-old me, who blamed herself for still thinking about it. I wonder what she’d think of me now, still thinking about it, still writing about it, still not healed from it.

And now I’m 30. And March 6th drags me down into a dark place where it’s hard to remember where and who I actually am today. But most days don’t feel like this. Tomorrow won’t. So I’ll take this moment to honor the pain. It is here. It is real. It is hard. I’m doing my best, today and in life. There’s a lot to be grateful for in general, but there’s no silver lining to this. Just silver shards of a DVD Avery picked out for me.