Silence = Death [trigger? Possibly]
I keep reading about the arguments on what is rape every day. I know that my audience is not necessarily the part of the population that needs to be educated.
Nevertheless. Know this. Rape is rape. I replay mine every time I read another of these articles. We are everywhere, perhaps we don't necessarily want to talk it out, but we are here. And you should know that. That is all.
ETA: First- thank you for all of you for your support. This has NOT been an easy thing to post. I have to remember, I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for those who are not fine.
Second - My most recent realization about this national conversation is that people (who apparently have never been up close an personal on the business end of rape) talk about this thing like it's just this... thing. It's this generic concept with no faces. Not something that happens to people. The people who might be standing next to you on the train, or looking across from you at the deli where you're getting your lunch. Or looking at you from across the breakfast table.
And the thing is, rape shouldn't define our very beings, at least if you're lucky it won't. I sure as hell don't want that to be the first thing people think of when they see me. But don't let that hope I have make you think for one micro-second that it didn't matter or that it didn't happen. It matters, it happened, it's happening still all around us and will continue to be an epidemic in our world until we start seeing the faces and taking this seriously. All of us.