Tuesday, May 19, 2015

The Game

Being raped is like losing the game. You know which game I mean, the one you have just lost. (And if you really don't know, please go here, and I'm sorry http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game) )
Being raped is like losing the game, daily, hourly, every minute, potentially for the rest of your life.

Not the physical moment of being raped. That's like...I don't know. Maybe like being almost murdered, but then allowed to live at the last second, but kind of wishing you were dead instead. Maybe that only applies to violent rape. Maybe it's not like anything else. Rape is a thing that is only really like rape, and even then one rape may not be quite the same as another one. Maybe I can't really describe what it's like.

I can tell you what it's not like, though. 

It's not like your hilarious mate Jonno taking your phone when you go for a piss and typing "I love dicks!!1" on your Facebook wall. 

It's not like your favourite team playing at the sports and losing badly at the sports so that you and your mates are like "oh no! The other team were better at the sports!"

It's not like your boss giving you loads of work to do, even 5 minutes before you leave to go home, even at the weekend.

Anyway so, the game.

When you wake up, the day after you have been raped, maybe you get a couple of seconds of bleary blissful morning empty mindedness, or maybe not, but either way pretty soon you remember what happened. You lose the game. And then, it's fresh and real and raw and sickening inside your head until you forget again. Maybe you sleep, maybe you get so drunk you forget your name and everything connected to it, maybe you go to the zoo and are momentarily distracted by the unexpected gracefulness of a polar bear swimming. Either way eventually your mind will be empty again. Then, you wake up, or sober up, or there are giraffes, and you lose the game again. And again. And again.

The first days, weeks, months and I guess even years after being raped you lose the game pretty much constantly. For me, it has been 5 years and almost 8 months, but I still lose that fucking stupid game, just about every day.


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