The Downfall

High school sweethearts. Everyone thinks their partner will be the one they are going to spend their life with. Not everyone is lucky enough to be right on the first try. My love life has been a mess since I started dating. Being an openly gay individual in a small town is a very unique experience: your options are limited and boys try to experiment with you. In my sophomore year of high school, I ended up in an unhealthy relationship with a boy by the name of Brayden Huffman.

I was infatuated with Brayden; I would do anything and everything with him. He would drive me to school and after we would go on adventures together. We had bumps in the road, but we persisted through them. In hindsight, I should have noticed some red flags. I was very codependent on him, and he started off as a rebound from another relationship. He broke up with me on Valentine’s Day and my 16th birthday for reasons I still don’t fully understand. During one of our breakups, our mutual friend had a birthday party. Of course both of us went and as teenage parties go there was some drinking and smoking. Throughout the night, Brayden would keep asking me to do things with him that I didn’t want to do. He tried to cuddle with me and slide his hand to places that I didn’t want to be touched at the time. He then began to pretend that he was sad and that the only way to fix it was to do these things with him. After about six drinks, I caved. We went to a private room, we started to do our thing when suddenly, I didn’t want to continue. I told him that I wanted to stop. He didn’t listen, Brayden shoved my head down and forced me to continue. I had tears in my eyes and I could feel the blood in my body moving. My body went on autopilot. I was watching everything happen as if I was a viewer in my mind and I was sitting at a window. I closed my eyes but I could still feel everything, and in my head I was begging for it all to end. After what felt like an eternity of suffering, Brayden was done. We walked out of the room and he went to the drinks table and downed a shot. He acted as if what just happened was nothing and to him, it was nothing.

I went home and it was the only thing I could think about. I felt dirty. I got in the shower, and all I wanted to do was scrub my body. I wanted to remove the physical touch of Brayden. I wanted to wipe away the emotions of what happened, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t cleanse myself of the event. The worst part of it all though was that I blamed myself for it. I couldn’t believe that Brayden would purposefully do those things to me, because deep in my heart I still loved him and I thought he loved me. In my mind I would defend him every day, and it caused me to hate myself. It made me hate myself so much that after our final break up, and lots of other things going on in my life, I thought I didn’t deserve to live my life. I attempted suicide. I went to the hospital. I left and began group therapy.

One day in group therapy, we learned about trauma and the things that cause it. That day my therapist helped me put the puzzle together. I was raped. Brayden Huffman raped me. That thought would haunt me for a year. That single thought caused me to fall to my knees and break out into a waterfall of tears. I felt stupid. It took me three months of my life to figure out something that seemed like it should’ve been obvious.

After that day I didn’t know what to do. I had already felt sad when I had to walk past Brayden in the hallway every day, but now I was filled with emotion. I had to change the way I walked to class, I had to move my seat in classes, I had to come up with lies on why I couldn’t go to events that Brayden was also attending. My life became a living hell. I tried everything to undo the events of that night, I tried to erase him completely from my mind. That’s not how it works though. My therapist hit me with the words that stick with me to this very day, “Someone who loves you wouldn’t do something that awful”.

Every day was a battle.The smallest things could remind me of Brayden. Government class was the hardest because that’s something he loved. I would walk into that class and all I could think about was Brayden; I would get flashbacks of the night. I would physically feel it all. My throat would close up, tears would form in my eyes. I had to ask to use the restroom every day, and I would be in there for a while with my head in my hands with tears filling my eyes and the palms of my hands.

One day I got the courage to tell some of my friends about the night; some of them helped me a lot. Others said I was a liar. Taylor,my best friend at the time, was one of those people. Her saying, “you weren’t raped” destroyed me. Eventually, someone reported it to the office. To this day I still don’t know who did it. It’s my story to tell, and I had to forcefully tell it. I had to talk to an officer and my parents about it before I was ready. My parents wouldn’t let me move forward with the case. I still despise them for that. After talking to the officer, I returned to class; everyone’s eyes were on me. Whispers filled the room.Everyone knew and there was nothing I could do about it.

After that day, I saw Brayden in the hallways more than usual.He didn’t say anything, but he would get as close to me as he could. I was scared; I had no idea what he wanted or what he was trying to do. He would come into my advanced foods class everyday and talk to the teacher for an eternity. I gained the fearlessness to speak to the teacher about what happened, and she understood right away; she was the first adult to actually help me. Brayden was never seen in that class again.

After that win came a huge loss though, that same day I came home and me and my mother got in a big argument about grades. I tried to explain to her that I was going through a lot and then words came out of her mouth that I wish I never heard: “Maybe if you weren’t drinking that night you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess”. Those words tarnished my relationship with my mom even to this day. Those words made me spiral into a depression again. I no longer saw flowers in the weeds; I lost my coping skills. I had to start wearing long sleeves in the heat again. I was a mess. Luckily, I had friends that noticed this. An old friend invited me to go to homecoming with her group of friends. When we arrived, we mingled and I saw my other friend Kamryn.She was at the party the night I was raped. She helped me a lot: at homecoming Brayden arrived with someone. Part of me wanted to warn her, but the other part of me knew that I needed to stay away from Brayden that night. I tried to do just that, stay away from him. However, Brayden had other plans. He continued to dance close to me and my friends, and eventually I told Kamryn how uncomfortable I was. She helped cheer me up and we reenacted a scene from our favorite show where we stuck our middle fingers high and danced while staring him down. He didn’t get the hint. Kamryn then decided to “accidentally” bump into Brayden which made him fall. It’s the little things my friends do that always mean the most to me.

That night made me feel like I finally had some power over Brayden. I didn’t have to succumb to his pressure anymore. I was able to hold my head high whenever he was near. I didn’t have to be scared of his lies anymore, because when it comes down to it, I know the truth. Anyone who didn’t believe my words didn’t deserve to hear them. My life was ready to be taken into my own hands. To this day I still struggle with the flashbacks and depression, but I have the right ways to handle it. Brayden no longer has power over me. I am my own person creating my own positive path. Even though I had to go through that awful night, I’m able to grow from it and even help others who are going through the same thing. I am a stronger person now. I am Logan Avery Perkins and I was a victim of sexual assault, but now I am a survivor.

Related posts:

A view on writing the best crime fiction with the victim fighting for dignity, as revealed in the detective thriller novel Tom Stone: Subterfuge

Maxwin 1890 telah mendapatkan peringkat dan kepercayaan tertinggi di kalangan penggemar slot online Indonesia, menurut ulasan komprehensif yang dianalisis oleh berbagai forum dan situs web. Bagi…

When it comes to maximizing the efficiency and productivity of your screening equipment, selecting the right Polyurethane Fine Screen Panel is of paramount importance. These panels play a crucial…