With so much conversation about ‘Blurred Lines’ everywhere, guest writer Molly Caudle shares a private moment to help start discussion on clear lines that should never be crossed.

I’ve always been a reserved person, quiet, observant, removed. Before it happened there was a bubbly undercurrent that would surface if you were patient. Now there is a dry riverbed, because he turned that babbling brook into a torrent of tears. My heart is dry, and it aches and no matter how much positivity I try to pour into it, it leaks out through the cracks.

I used to love to go out and meet people. Make out with strangers, in the comfort of a well-known bar. Dance with all the right-wrong people. Cop’ a consensual feel at the bar counter. Have my breath taken away by someone at the bus stop. When he wrapped his hands around my throat, and forced my face into the pillows he wrung out my spontaneity. Now instead of passion for the new and unknown, I feel trapped in a cave when left with new people, blocked in and nervous.

I used to love to be watched and to watch, we all people watch. Now everyone’s eyes are on me even when they aren’t. Tearing me apart like animals at the feed. Waiting for me to play the victim, or bluffing into survivor mode. I feel pressure from all corners to be strong, to be weak, to get over it, to relax, to not take it so seriously, to take it more seriously, to get back on the horse, to take my time. Nothing I do will ever be right in other people’s prying eyes. Their prying judgement:

I didn’t react properly,
I don’t react properly.
I’m obviously lying.

Some people think I must just be so traumatized, or even better that I’m a liar, or I was asking for it. It was circumstantial event, he obviously “wasn’t aware”, he was just too “into it”, or maybe (!!!) it was bad kink scene.

Beating a woman you just met, and fucking her without a condom shows complete awareness – he knew what he was doing, and trust me when I say he was REALLY “into it”. I’ve had bad kink, from people who were kind of scummy, but when I said no or used a safe word they always stopped. This wasn’t bad kink. Baiting me for more information that will somehow prove that I asked to be treated horribly and inhumanely shows just how much we as a society just want to pass the buck… shows how we believe that we have no say in how these things play out:

She must be a slut, it is her fault. How did she ask for it, how didn’t she ask for it. How can we not blame rape culture. How do we look the other way while an entire group of people are screaming out in psychological and emotional pain.

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Molly Caudle is a small town girl lost in this mess you call civilization. If anyone happens to find her paddle boat please return it to frenchland Canada, she will recompense with cookies.