My Unsent Letter

An open letter to someone who hurt me. This is something I’ve wanted to say for such a long time but I could never find the courage.

I often think about what you did to me, and I ask myself why it still pains me because it was so many months ago. The distress and discomfort and utter terror I experienced in that moment is long over. I’m safe now, and yet I don’t feel safe. I don’t think I ever will. This experience has forever tainted my view of intimacy. It’s like a black mark that will follow me for the rest of my life.

This happened back in November 2019, one of the hardest times in my life in terms of mental health struggles. I was stranded in an unfamiliar part of London in the dead of night, with nothing to do and nowhere to go until the trains started running again in the morning. I had just been discharged from a mental health hospital admission, so my head wasn’t straight. I couldn’t think clearly and I never saw the implications of going home with you until it was too late. You took advantage of my vulnerability, my kindness, and my naivety. What seemed to you like a brief moment of discomfort is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I get horrific flashbacks, moments where I feel like I’m suffocating, moments where the rage and the sense of injustice are almost too much to bear. I can no longer bear to be alone in a room with someone unless it’s someone I’ve been close with for years, and even then it still makes me uncomfortable. I fear that I’ll never be capable of having a healthy romantic relationship again because I simply can’t trust anyone or allow them to be close to me. So, I hope it was worth it for you. I hope those few minutes of satisfaction were worth the lifelong trauma you’ve put me through. And I hope that next time you’re alone with someone, you’ll think twice about your actions. I hope you learn some respect and common decency, but then again, if you had even an ounce of those then you wouldn’t have done this in the first place.

I was desperate for the police to bring you in - not because I expected this case to go to trial, but to give you the slightest glimpse of how serious this was. I want to look you in the eye and have you know the pain you’ve put me through - the terror I experienced in that moment, and the pain it causes me today and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life. I want you to sit across from a police officer and have them explain to you that what you did was a serious crime, not just an awkward moment that you eventually backed away from. The fact that you get to walk away from this is sickening, and what makes it even worse is that I’m far from the only one. This happens to so many people, and so few cases result in justice due to how flawed the system is.

Back when this happened, I remember telling myself that I had to forget about it, to see it as nothing more than a brief moment of discomfort and to move on as if nothing ever happened. I forced myself to repress it, to never acknowledge how serious it was for the sake of my own mental health. For six months I did exactly that, until the memories and the trauma started flooding back, along with the realisation of what you did. Throughout all that time, I swore that I wouldn’t go to the police because I was convinced that nothing would come of it. I still hadn’t fully processed the severity of what happened so I didn’t think it was serious enough to report, and I knew of the dismal statistics in cases like this and I thought that reliving all that trauma for the sake of being interviewed would all be for nothing. By the time I finally worked up the courage to go to the police, it was too late. Every piece of CCTV had been wiped. The worst part is that contrary to what I originally believed, they took it very seriously, meaning that if I had gone to them sooner there’s a chance that something would have been done about it. My failure to report this as soon as it happened is one of the biggest regrets of my life. I will never forgive myself for it. I will never forgive myself for letting you walk free without even so much as a reminder of what you did or a chance to realise the severity of your actions.

And don’t you dare try and say that it was my fault for misleading you or that I was leading you on. You tried to coerce and gaslight me by begging me to consent and trying to make me feel guilty for not doing so. Let me just say now that you were entitled to nothing. NOTHING. Us being alone together didn’t give you the all clear to make a move on me. As I said earlier, my state of mind was so impaired that I was oblivious to any sexual implications. I never realised that the situation might come with the expectation of sex, and you never disclosed such an expectation to me or even implied it (not that that would make it okay. If there’s no consent at that moment, it’s wrong regardless of any prior interest or agreement). Instead, you assumed you had the all clear without so much as asking me, simply because I was in your house, and as a result I was completely taken aback by your advancements. When I said no, you used coercion and gaslighting, trying to convince me that I had to engage with you. But like I said, you weren’t entitled to me. You were entitled to nothing.

Just before I left, you hugged me (I allowed this to happen because I was too scared not to) and said “we’re never going to see each other again, are we?”. And well, I hope we do. Even though it would fill me with terror and rage and bring all those horrible memories right to the surface, I hope we meet again so that I can achieve some sense of justice and perhaps closure. I often fantasise about exacting revenge - kicking in your teeth until you choke on them or allowing someone else to hurt you in the same way that you did to me, then maybe you understand what it’s like. The terror, the dread of what’s to come and uncertainty over how long it will last; the rush of adrenaline so strong that you’re shaking and wanting to scream, yet frozen in place, too scared to move. It’s indescribable.