No 3: IF IT HAPPENED TO ME

PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH

EMORY SCHWIEGER

he was my best friend, he made me feel safe, protected, okay to be alone.
i trusted him. he knew i did, and he used it against me
i said no, i did.
i said no so much. i promise i did.
i told him to stop. i pried his damp cold hands off of my warm body more times than i remember.
i did.
i did so much to make it stop and it still wasn’t enough.
he used me.
he ruined me.
i was broken for months.
honestly, to this day, two years later i can remember everything.
i remember throwing up in the sink after.
i remember leaving his house shaking, wondering if i would get in a car wreck on my way home, hoping i would.
i told myself not to tell.
i didn’t for a long time.
almost a year later i finally stood up for myself.

my voice broke as i poured out every piece of my memory to the detective across the table.
the man in a suit wrote down everything. it felt like i was being examined, like he was counting my tears and pulling my breath out from my lungs with every question.
it wasn’t enough.
i remember thinking if my best friend had done this to me what else could he have done ?
if he had broken the lock on my lips could he have done the same to my legs?
he was stronger than me, louder than me, and since i had no evidence, he was more credible than me.
“we believe you, no matter the outcome”
that’s what they told me over and over again.
like it matters.
if it happened to me at seventeen imagine who it happened to earlier than me, older than me. imagine if it happened to your mom, your sister, your future daughter.
i would rather die than ever have to carry my rapists child at seventeen. but then again, if the court didn’t believe me then, would they ever believe me now?
my best friend wanted control, he wanted me to be his puppet, he wanted to hurt me. but no one knew.
he wasn’t the type, no one would ever assume he would be capable of violating me in that way. but here i was, pleading a man i’d never met to help me feel whole again.
it was the hardest day of my life, telling my pain detail for detail to someone who would never know what it was like.

my case was denied this month.
i had never felt so defeated.
i crumbled, i begged for them to look at the case again, to give me another chance.
But i lost, and on June 24, i lost again, we all did.