I can't keep this a secret anymore.

[99 Percent Sure]

29. We. Are. Survivors.

All of the blame, the fault for our being victimized by twisted people who are physically stronger rests on us for a long while.

Blame and fault are placed on us by society, politicians, even, for a long time, law enforcement.

I was a college freshman in 1974 when I was raped by someone who was a fraternity brother and "friend" of the man I was dating. He lured me to his dorm room by invoking my friend's name, telling me that he wanted me to meet him there. Young, hick chick just up from 'Bama that I was, I didn't pay attention to my internal warning bell that something was amiss. Since my friend and I had hung out there numerous times, I rationalized it to be cool and entered a daytime nightmare.

I ended up hospitalized, broken from the trauma of all that occurred then and afterwards, and I regretted not getting the therapy offered me during my 10-day stay. I regretted not telling anyone immediately after it happened. I didn't even tell my friend; my attacker did that, and I was made to be the aggressor, the vixen.

Thirty-eight years later, I'm spiritually strong enough to not only have shed all the guilt, the blame, the fault, the shame but to talk about it openly. I no longer have low self-worth but not before suffering and being pharma treated for what a pathology psychologist diagnosed 20 years after the ordeal as chronic, acute and severe depression.

After treatment, I saw my attacker 25 years later, in 1999, when he'd become a successful defense attorney. Or rather, he saw me in a public venue and moved to approach me arms rising as if to embrace. I had not spoken to him since that terrible day, and didn't then. I gave him my "you know we don't talk" side-eye, and his face clouded with anger, rage whatever. He is now a sitting judge in a county criminal court. The irony doesn't escape me; however a lawyer friend recently told me that they walk a thin line between upholding the law and criminality.

By the mercy of God, I am finally free of the shame I carried around for years because he assaulted me. He's still an odious person but everyone reaps what they sow in this life, and my consolation is he now looks like the venomous snake that he was then.

I am a rape survivor. We. are. survivors. I'm glad to be one, and glad the dkos diarist and everyone else who have been sexually violated live another day to tell their survival stories.