I Grieve for my Innocence

The below excerpts are from journal entries by Siphumelele

I somehow feel like I'm being too dramatic if I grieve for my "freedom to say no" because compared to other women, mine wasn't taken violently. I feel that I was fortunate enough to still let time pass after the incident till I realised what happened. Not many are granted that opportunity. I feel like I shouldn't be crying as loud as other women, or I shouldn't be too depressed because I was never held at gun point, it wasn't a mass rape, nor was I beaten up for it. 

I really feel like if he really wanted it so bad, I would've given it to him eventually with enough manipulation. I think manipulation, as in making me think he loves me, then I eventually give it to him would've been far better than taking it without permission.

Perhaps there's levels to this thing. We can't all be crying the same way, bcuz it wasn't taken the same way. It's like having your loved one murdered. If they were murdered by being given an overdose of pills, that's somehow slightly better than being murdered with an axe, chopped body parts off. It's still murder but at least you don't have to cry about the pain they felt during the experience, but just only about the fact that they were murdered. Whereas the other family had to cry about how the loved one died, and the fact that they died.

They're not as fortunate as I am. To have "forgotten" that I was raped. To realise months later that it happened. 

I'm numb. The kind of numb that makes you cry bcuz you know there's pain inside of you but not too much.

I once thought of this example that, if a nurse gives you a vaccine without your consent, it doesn't matter whether you are friends with the nurse or they didn't inject you while traumatising you and scaring you, or even if you remember months later that you did not consent for that injection - it is still a crime that was committed against you

I grieve for my innocence. I was once the girl who believed she could save the world and I now can hardly make it out of bed, I can hardly help a single soul, even my own self. I grieve for my innocence, my naiveness but I don't really want to let go of it. It feels like it was ripped off yet I'm still covering the area that's left open with my bare hands. It's barely covered but at least it's not out there exposed to this cruel world. It's been over a year,  and yet I can hardly move past the feeling of seeing him on campus and something in my stomach drops everytime. Most of the time when I get that feeling, it's not him, but some guy who randomly looks like him. There's a guy on campus, I don't really know his name or anything about him but I don't like him. For one, he's Xhosa like my perpetrator, he spends a lot of time alone like my perpetrator and he has this intense face like the perpetrator. He too looks like a narcissist. I've never spoken to him but everytime I walk past him, I just don't like him and I look at him with disgust because maybe he has done the same thing to someone else. He definitely can see that I cannot stand him, and it is for the fact that he probably did it to someone else, and people who treated other girls like that need to be treated with little or no respect, how my perpetrator was supposed to be treated... but instead he is received with love and respect everywhere he goes, feels absolutely nothing no shame for what he did to me. But it's fine cuz I guess that's not my cross to carry.