I had sex with the man who raped me the morning after he assaulted me. I even drove him home after.

It has taken me a long time for that to make sense to me, but I no longer carry any shame over it. I know that I was doing my best to protect myself in the face of a horrific situation. I survived. I am a survivor. I know I am not alone in these circumstances.

For sake of mental wellness, I will spare you the precise details of the assault itself. After a night of drinking with friends and colleagues, we ended up at my house. I hadn’t even invited him out that night, but unluckily for me, he had reached out to someone I was with that evening and ended up joining us at the last bar.

It was just the two of us at my place when the assault happened around 3AM. He passed out soon after he had finished with me and I sat wide awake, trying to make sense of the evening’s events. My brain was in overdrive. I felt sore and tired. I was somehow drunk and sober at the same time.

On one hand, I knew what had just happened. I even thought about going to go get a rape kit done. But on the other hand, everything was so surreal and muddled. I was watching my life from the outside in.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the core functioning of my mind was changing. Our brains are wired to rapidly adapt when we experience trauma or a threat to our survival. My amygdala was in crisis mode and my prefrontal cortex had literally gone offline. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the human brain responsible for advanced decision making, rational thinking, impulse control — you know, all the things that make us, well, human. Simply put, my brain was overwhelmed and started crashing. I was unable to process things right in front of me while I was stuck in a loop of fear.

Not a great place to be and at the time I was just stuck in the ugly fogginess of it all. As obvious as it seems now, I couldn’t understand why I felt so gross and horrible. The concept of consent seems so simple, yet when you add the raw personal humanness and the complexities of trauma and the human brain, it can feel confusing and makes you doubt yourself in a way that I will never be able to fully explain.

I remember feeling tremendously ill all the while thinking that this guy was this handsome, charming, professional guy. There was no way he could have done what I think he just did. Right? I mean, I was the gross drunk director’s assistant who accidentally had gotten herself raped by the lead actor, right?!

Wide Awake

Just hours separating me from the assault, I was wide awake while my assailant lay sleeping in my bed. There was no way to distance myself from the person who had just harmed me. My brain began to spiral out of control.

Maybe he didn’t hear me when I told him to stop? Maybe he didn’t hear me cry in pain? Ugh. I’m so gross. I should have never gotten so drunk. I knew better. I shouldn’t have let him unzip my dress. Was it the dress? Was I dressed too slutty? Did I ask for this without realizing it? But we never even kissed. I told him it was a mistake. I hate him. But maybe I should feel lucky that he wanted to be with me. Did he want to be with me? But I didn’t want to be with him. Why didn’t he listen? Why can’t I stop crying? Why do I feel so used and gross? I’m so sore and don’t know what to do. If I go report this, then everyone will know. But no one will believe me. I will ruin the show if I come forward and everyone will be mad at me. I will lose my job and career. No one will believe me. Would anybody even care? I’d get into so much trouble. Would they have to cancel the show? Would everyone know why? Was this assault? Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe he didn’t hear me when I told him to stop and that it hurt? I am so gross and horrible. This couldn’t have been assault. I don’t want this to be assault. I don’t want to have been raped. He’s always been so nice to me. Did I bring this on somehow? This has to have been my fault. I should have never gone out last night. I shouldn’t have gotten so drunk. I am gross. Maybe I didn’t fight back enough. I am gross. I mean look at me. I’m so ugly. Look at my pubic hairs. They are so untidy. I am out of toilet paper in the house. What a failure. I am humiliated. I’m so gross. Of course this was my fault. I feel worse than I ever have and there is no way I am feeling like this because I was just raped. It has to be because I am gross and inadequate. THAT HAS TO BE IT.

It was all etched into my brain. That was the start of the horrible ruminating thoughts that would invade my brain — thoughts that I still struggle with sometimes to this day.

Over the next few hours, I somehow had almost completely convinced myself that this was all my fault. I thought that I felt gross and horror-struck because of something I must have done. I blamed my own perceived inadequacies. I clung to these ideas to try and ignore the fact that I had just been majorly violated, and had my free will robbed from me, in my own home. My survivor brain was reaching desperately for an escape, and I could not fully accept the truth of what had just happened.

As the night passed on, I paced around downstairs. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be laughable how little I knew back then about what to do in these types of situations. I thought about calling the police or getting a rape kit done, but at the time I didn’t know you could get the medical examination without having to file a police report. I also didn’t know the majority of rape kits sit untested gathering dust, and I thought it would be traced back to him overnight.

I automatically pictured myself being laughed out of the police station or somehow even potentially worse, him being arrested at work taken away in handcuffs while my colleagues and friends looked on, judging and blaming me. However naïve I was, I knew that survivors are frequently blamed and picked apart. I already felt like it was my fault and that the production team would be mad and blame me. I’d already been criticized and lectured for speaking up about other workplace bullying and harassment that was going on. I thought about having the police come to the house but didn’t know how they would respond and thought that I would then have to call my boss or a producer and explain to them what had happened. It was too much.

The Impossible Situation

Every option seemed more grueling and impossible than the next.

I was in a lose-lose situation. I felt certain that no one would believe me or care. I worried that I’d be fired and in turn, I would blow everything I had worked so hard for with my decade-long career. I pictured certain colleagues blaming me and how they would retaliate. I worried my life would turn into a media circus and that I’d be judged and laughed at on a very large scale.

I thought about my boyfriend, the love of my life. He was my heart and was my family. Had I just betrayed him? Was this my fault? Would he believe me? Should I call him? I didn’t even understand what just happened. What would I even say? I didn’t want to ruin what we had. I thought about other people I could tell or call but it was in the middle of the night, and at the time I just felt like I was in it alone and had no place to turn.

I thought the people I worked with were safe and were my community. I didn’t know this actor well, but had respected his work on the show and thought he seemed to like a cool, interesting guy. (I found out later that this is not unusual — in 8 out of 10 reported rapes, the victim knows the perpetrator.) Consequently, I never anticipated I would be in this situation and although it’s not like I expected a glaring neon sign reading “you were just raped” to appear, I didn’t expect to feel so incredibly clouded with fear and confusion.

The night went on and the longer he slept in my bed, the more I spiraled. The one thing I felt sure of was that I could not let what happened ruin my career or relationship. I was madly in love with my boyfriend and working in film production was my everything. It was my family. It was my community, livelihood, and my future. I also kept thinking about how scared I was going to be to see this actor on set from there on out. I had to interact with him a lot for my job. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became. Even though I was already blaming myself, I felt so scared of him and what else he could and would do to me.

I kept thinking how scared I was for him to wake up and would he remember what he had done to me the night before. What would he say? What would I say? Would he do it to me all over again? What did the morning bring? As the sun started to come back up, I was still trying to make sense and piece together the events from the hours prior — events that I couldn’t even process in privacy or safety. I felt this fear that I had never quite felt before. This nauseating, full-body fear that was felt by every nerve in me.

So somewhere in the next few hours, unable to even process the events that had happened and faced with seemingly only bad options, my survivor brain thought of the most genius plan of all genius plans!!! If I couldn’t fight him or report him, the threat still needed to be addressed. In that shell-shocked state, I decided the best thing to do would be to try and have sex with him when he woke up. At the time, the plan made so much sense. I think that I thought that if we had sex, that somehow it would erase what had happened the night before. I intuitively thought that maybe if I agreed and consented now, it would retroactively count as my consent for last night, erasing the horrible memories and thoughts flashing around my head. I didn’t want to keep feeling like I had been feeling.

Instinctively, I decided that if we had sex, this time with me not only consenting but initiating, that I could take away the pain and the injustice I had pulsing through me from the previous night’s encounter. I was returning to the scene of the crime. But this time, I thought that I was in control. I felt like if we could have sex, then it could keep him from hurting me. I thought that if I gave him what I thought he wanted that he wouldn’t have to try and take it from me. The plan made me feel a small sense of relief from worrying what he would do when he woke up. I also thought that it would make it less weird and nerve wracking to see him at work. I felt more confident about my ability to be able to walk away without further incidents of harm.

Every fiber of my being felt like I had to try and forget this ever happened in order to be able to function and move forward. What I didn’t see then, but see so clearly now, is that I was doing what I needed to do to survive and protect myself from that horrible experience.

You may be familiar with the concept of “fight-or-flight” responses but the two lesser talked about trauma responses are freeze and fawn/appease. While not as well known, freeze and fawn are both just as valid and documented.

When we feel either a perceived or real threat, our “rational” brain goes offline and our limbic system takes over. The limbic system is our survival brain. Our limbic system will respond by either fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning. Faster than the speed of light, our brains will automatically try to evaluate and analyze the facts of the current situation while scanning past experiences and memories like a database to help decide the best option.

Let’s say you are walking down the street and you see a bear. You don’t know if you could fight or flee, so you may become frozen, unable to move or take action. Maybe you try to befriend the bear in hopes of alleviating their threat and to be able to pass safely through. That’s the appease/fawn response. We wouldn’t judge someone for how they reacted after facing the bear, so we shouldn’t judge when facing other threats to our survival such as a sexual assault. We do what we need to do to survive and we don’t choose how our bodies will let us respond to those threats.

What happened next still feels like an out-of-body experience. Almost as a compulsion, I snuck downstairs with my bikini trimmer and tidied up. I made myself feel what I deemed was more “presentable.” I was in control. I was going to redo what happened prior.

When he finally woke up, I initiated and he consented, and we did all of the things he had done to me painfully, against my will the night before. It was weird and didn’t last long. I felt even more gross, ashamed, and confused. I am not going to even try to get into his mindset, but I think he was probably a little confused, too. It was slowly sinking in that my plan maybe wasn’t going to work out as well as I thought.

We got dressed as I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. I felt like everything was closing in on me. I felt even more desperate to fix everything. He didn’t have a car and I found myself offering to take him home. I drove him back to his apartment in a daze. He mostly talked about the TV show we were making and asked about future scripts. I chattered back nervously, full of adrenaline until I dropped him off. I felt so desperate to say the “right” thing that could maybe reverse the past 8 hours. But as soon as the car door closed, I felt completely overwhelmed and winded, like someone had just punched me in the gut. My plan had backfired, leaving me even more in distress and disarray. I kept replaying the events I could remember over and over again.

Part of me knew the truth of what had happened, but part of me was now more confused than ever. I felt like I had been violated, but then doubted myself because it didn’t make sense to me that I would have had sex with him just hours after he had hurt and scared me so badly. I had never heard of anyone doing anything like that before. All confidence in my plan was forgotten, it felt like I was losing my mind.

I didn’t know it then, but I now know that it is actually not uncommon for survivors to have consensual encounters with their abusers after an assault or horrific episode. In efforts to regain control, to retroactively consent and try to change our ill-fated outcome, we sometimes do things that on the surface do not make any sense to others. Things that make our pain and experiences seem insignificant or perhaps even made up. After all, this isn’t how survivors are “supposed” to act.

But for every person who is able to recognize and walk away from abuse immediately, there are more like me, who unconsciously try to appease or fix the problem because that is what our brains have been trained to do. For some people, that “fawn” response may very well be the only way our brains can try and cope with the enormity of what has happened to us.

People react and cope to traumatic events in a multitude of ways. Your current emotional state, age, culture, your support system, genetics, past traumas, your relationship to your attacker — all of those factors play a part. As I would later be told a plethora of times, there is no wrong way to react to trauma. It is our bodies and minds reacting normally to an abnormal situation. It is not a judgment of our character.

Some people may have a clear and firm understanding of their assault and take the immediate steps to advocate for their bodies and themselves. For others, like myself, it is not that clear cut. And both and everything in between is okay. All of those reactions are valid.

As a child of abuse and trauma, I have long picked up many habits that are damaging to my health — perhaps no more damaging than my innate desire to try and fix things. Little things, big things. Things that were my fault, things that were decidedly not my fault. It didn’t matter. The sooner I could alleviate the situation, the better. No matter if I had to take all the responsibility and blame. All that mattered was the need to fix and the need to try and eliminate dangers that invaded my already tumultuous upbringing. As this habit grew as I got older, so did the types of things I took responsibility for.

And in this instance, it led to my survival instincts telling me to try and appease the situation by having sex with the person who attacked me as a way to normalize what had happened and as a way to mitigate future harm.

All I wanted was for this night not to have happened and for no one to find out. I felt humiliated and scared for my safety. I just wanted my regular life back. My survival brain presented this as a safe option.

3 Weeks Later

It had been about 3 weeks since the assault. 3 weeks of nightmares and what I would later learn were flashbacks. I wasn’t sleeping. Both my mental and physical health were declining. I was working 80+ hour weeks in a toxic work environment. I had ended up in the emergency room with undiagnosed stomach pains the first time I saw my abuser at work after the assault. I was dealing with the nervousness of an imminent pre-scheduled surgery for an unrelated health matter. I was constantly collateral damage in a power struggle with those in power on the show, which resulted in not only me being yelled at and belittled but made it unsafe for me to come forward about what had happened to me. In fact, when I tried to bring up other toxic workplace concerns, I was told to sweep it under the rug and to not ruffle feathers. There was no way I could come forward about having been raped by the lead actor on the show.

I was still performing my job at a high-level but it was becoming harder and harder to stay focused. I was becoming more and more sensitive and on high alert. I felt self-conscious and believed that everyone thought I was horrible. At the time, I was internalizing all of the show’s problems and was terrified that I was going to be attacked again at any moment. The more I had to see my abuser on set and the more I got caught up in the above-my-paygrade power struggle of it all, I became unable to separate the disparaging comments and behaviors inappropriately directed at me as anything but confirmation that I was feeling so horrible because I was really truly horrible and everything was my fault. I felt alone and that what was going on with me didn’t matter. I would stand on set watching my assailant in real time. I kept trying to get the images of the assault and following encounter out of my brain as it did not match the person I saw before me.

What people don’t seem to understand is that rape is much more than unwanted sex. It is incredibly scary to admit it, but I lost all control over my personal autonomy that night at the hands of another human being. That night he increasingly and consistently denied my right to consent and make choices for my own body and person. It was terrifying. As he continued to violate me, I truly feared for my safety, because I had no idea what he would do to me next or for how long it would last.

And it constantly felt like I was back there the night it all happened. I felt stuck reliving that night and fear over and over again. But I wasn’t. Time kept moving and the world kept spinning. I kept working. I kept having to interact and work with this guy. And he held a lot more power than me.

I would watch him on set being friendly and professional to others. People raved he was pure magic and the next big thing. It didn’t make sense to me. I could not comprehend that this was the same person who hurt me so badly weeks before. In retrospect, I think that my brain knew it wasn’t safe for more to fully process what had happened yet. I was also getting yelled at and put in a lot of unfair, unprofessional situations at work. I was constantly afraid at work and scared that I was going to make him angry. There was no place for me to turn.

I was exhausted. I was working 18+ hour days and instead of my nightmare filled sleep, I opted for drinking and smoking weed. Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had both just taken their own lives. To me everything felt dire and heavy. The more I pretended to be okay, the more I suppressed what had actually happened to me. It was easier and less painful to pretend like it was a mutual encounter. Though the more I suppressed it, the more alone and confused I felt. I remember telling a friend that I was spiraling and I just didn’t know why. In a matter of weeks, my brain could no longer keep pretending that I was okay. I was desperate to do anything to stop the pain.

More than ever I realized that if I wanted to continue my life as I knew it, that I had to bury what had happened. But I didn’t know how. It felt more urgent than anything I had ever been up against. In order to survive, I continued to do my best to pretend that it didn’t happen. I am a determined and focused individual once I set my mind to something, and for better or worse, I was somewhat successful with pushing the night of the assault away. Or so I thought.

A New Plan for Survival

After weeks of only talking to him for work and avoiding him as much as possible, nothing seemed to be alleviating the trauma symptoms or personal hell that I was living in. In fact, things started to get worse and worse. I was desperate to make it through. I would have done anything to stop the agony that I was in.

I considered trying to talk to him but didn’t know how to say, “I can’t shake this feeling that you raped me but I’m super confused and totally frightened of you”. As naive and desperate as I was, I even knew that he would not respond well to that and realized that plan wouldn’t work. And so somehow, the opposite plan seemed to make the most sense. Without even fully meaning to, I convinced myself if I could make something happen with him or get him to want to be with me that I could make what he did to me okay in my mind. I thought that if I gave him what I thought he wanted that the pain would stop. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see him on set anymore. I thought it would make me functional. I thought if I could be with him that it would make things feel less horrible. I could quiet those intense, nagging thoughts trying to expose the truth of what happened.

I thought that if I was in control and went in willingly that it would make what he did to me okay. Like it wasn’t for nothing. Because if we really cared about each other or were sleeping together, it would mean that he didn’t really violate me because people who care about each other don’t do that. I wanted to make it all normal and okay.

Sound logic for a brain stuck in survival mode.

Part of me knew I shouldn’t reach out to him. I think that was the rational part of my brain begging to be let back in. But again, I was so desperate for relief from this very real threat that I convinced myself it was a good idea. I wanted him to respond in a way that would make me feel less violated, in a way that could prove that what happened, didn’t happen.

I thought long and hard and prepared draft after draft on what I thought I’d send to him. In my mind, I thought I was being so smart that I was making it as clear as possible that I did not expect a relationship from him. That I was available for sex if he wanted. Because that’s what I thought he wanted, and I just wanted to give him that so that I would be safe again. At the time, I didn’t understand that rape was more about power and control than the act of sex. Again, I didn’t want to anger him or stress him out. The show’s hectic nature was taking a toll on everyone, including the actors. I was scared that meant further harm and repercussions for me. I wanted to make nice and fix the situation. I wanted to make things less weird and painful. I wanted to befriend the bear. And I thought that is what I was doing.

I ended up emailing him, asking if he wanted to get drunk and have some fun. My crown jewel of an email. I cringe now thinking about how I thought I mastered it. That took me like 6 drafts?! But at the time, I thought it was perfect.

Not completely unexpectedly, he immediately turned me down, crushing any hopes of my increasingly poorly conceived plan. The more he rejected me and the more I failed to hear what I so desperately thought I needed to hear, the more I found myself needing to hear it. I dug myself deeper in as I kept trying to throw him compliments desperate for him to offer anything of substance that could free me from the prison that his torture he had left me with. When it didn’t come, I walked away even more ashamed and scared.

I wish that I could have felt the same compassion towards myself that I carry now. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to be ashamed. I would tell myself that I know I was doing the best I could to try and survive a really horrible time. I wish I could go back and give myself a big hug and tell myself it wasn’t my fault and that it makes sense that I would respond by trying to appease and fix the situation. That at the time, my brain believed it to be the only possible solution.

I Survived

And even if others may not understand it, it’s how I survived this. I am here writing about it. I survived, so it worked.

But I almost didn’t survive. Less than a month after the assault and just one week after I sent that email, I tried taking my own life. I see so clearly that everything up to that point was me doing the best I could to survive any and every way I knew how. That was me fighting for my life.

I feel lucky that I am here to write this and share part of my story with you. It’s important to me. Ever since then, I have learned that I am not alone with any of this. I’ve spoken to and read about other survivors who had similar experiences. I have learned about trauma and the ways our bodies respond. I have learned that any and every response to trauma are all normal reactions to abnormal situations. I have since been able to accept that what happened was not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong, in fact, I did pretty darn good.

Thank you to the younger me for using your brain and your skills to help me survive and get where I am today. You are strong and resilient. You did the best you could, and now, we are learning and growing every day. I admire the woman I was and hold space for the woman I will grow to be.

So, today, I share this in hopes that maybe at least one person who reads this feels heard, seen or validated. You are not crazy or lying. I believe you. I stand with you.