I should have shoved a candle up his ass. My “best friend” was just lying there naked, passed out after what I was beginning to realize was a long night of sexually assaulting my lifeless body. Upon waking up, I frantically searched for my clothes and my keys. When he had the opportunity to mark his territory and regain control over “the one who got away,” he did, and I will be scarred for the rest of my life because of it. He saw me as his property, and when I got married, I was no longer his. Lying next to one of the people whom I trusted the most, I realized that my friend’s emotional absence at my wedding wasn’t about his fling, it was about me. I assumed his new girlfriend had pissed him off and sent him into a whiskey bender, and thought nothing more of the matter.įast-forward to several years later, when I woke up in a room that I had never seen, in a house that I had never been to (which wasn’t my girlfriend’s house), without any of my clothes on. Even though he was physically present, his face looked as though he had checked out. It was a wonderful night filled with champagne and dancing and best friends and beloved family. When my longtime boyfriend and I decided to get married, we had a party. Sounds like a trustworthy person, right? Yeah, I thought so too. He had protected me, consoled me, and supported me for over half of my life. We had shared some of the best times of our lives together and had been there for one another during the worst. This particular person was someone who had been one of my closest friends since I was a teenager. At the end of the night, I wasn’t in the position to get behind a wheel, so my best guy friend offered to drive my car to my best girlfriend’s house. And we talked about how much we all had missed each other and how we couldn’t allow ourselves to go that long without hanging out ever again. I went out with some of my best guys and gals, and we all pretended like we were living the frivolous life of college kids again. My husband told me to take a night out, that he would handle our baby’s bedtime and bath so that I could escape the drudgery that is cleaning up multiple explosive poops and irrational toddler outbursts. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a new mom who hadn’t seen the outside of her house in months, hadn’t tasted the sweet elixir of a cocktail in over a year, hadn’t seen and laughed and hugged and danced with her friends in far too long. Sometimes it’s at the hands of your best fucking friend. Sometimes it happens at the hands of the people who have protected you in the past. Sometimes it happens at the hands of the people whom you trust the most. It’s not always the result of alcohol or strange and demented monsters or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn’t always play out in a dark alley while some frat bag disgustingly and willfully turns another human into a sex toy without their knowledge or consent. Rape doesn’t always look the way you think it does.