I was 22 years old, and had been attending a church for a few years, with my parents. One day, an angel walked in. Or so I thought. His last name was Miracle, and I began calling him "Mister Miracle" because I felt that he was a gift to me from God, sent there to marry me. We connected instantly, and became close friends. We both expressed our desire to stop dating and find the one, and I began hoping my suspicions were true, and that we would end up together. But you can know someone, and not really know them...

 

I would always stop at his place after dance practice, and we would just hang out. I trusted him completely, and valued his time and friendship more than anything. Even more than my dreams of us getting married someday. We would make music, watch movies and television, and cook together. His appartment became my haven. But one night, these innocent visits turned into something else.

 

He offered me iced tea, and I drank it. I still don't know if it had some kind of drug in it or not, because I became increasingly "out of it" throughout the night. He complained that his back had been killing him, so I gave him a massage, as I had done before when he complained like that. He lay on his bed, and i massaged him, normally, just as a friend.

 

After the massage, we got into a deep conversation about the kids at our church, and I suddenly found myself lying on his bed, facing him. He hugged me, out of nowhere, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. I pulled away, telling him that I couldn't breathe, and then, out of nowhere, he kissed me.

 

I had been dreaming of this moment for a year, since I first met him. So, I kissed him back. I thought that was as far as it was going to go, given the nature of our relationship, but apparently I was misled. As he began to make sexual advances, I said over and over that we should stop, but he would just shrug it off, saying, "the key word there is SHOULD" and keep kissing me, probably knowing that when he kissed me, I was paralyzed.

 

I kept trying to refuse him physically for at least an hour, literally trying to push him away a few times, before I finally gave up. He was so forceful, and I was so confused. This was the love of my life, as far as I was concerned. I did love him, but I did NOT want to have sex with him that night. I had NEVER slept with someone the same night as our first kiss! It had been SEVEN YEARS since I had been sexually active, and the whole thing was traumatizing, to the point of speechlessness on my part.

 

When it was over, and when I could speak again, I told him how I hadn't done that in seven years. He looked like he felt bad, but he didn't feel as bad as me. I just kept thinking about how it wasn't at all like i thought it would have been, or SHOULD have been. 

 

I didn't hear from him much after that night. He was already scheduled to leave for college in a few days, and that is probably one of the reasons why he did it. A few months later, he apologized to me, and that did help, but it didn't make it okay. I had lost my best friend, my hopes of a future with him, and above all, I had been violated against my will. By someone I'd trusted completely!

 

I was in shock and denial for a while. I got kicked off of the dance team at church that I had been faithfully attending and helping with for 4 years. All because I was raped. Everyone acted like it was MY fault. No one at my church believed me. I started to not believe myself either, until I started RISE.

 

I was doing research for RISE on the internet one day, and I came across something on RAINN.COM called "Was I Raped?". It explained how to tell if you were raped or not, and as I read over it, I realized fully that what had happened to me WAS rape, after all. I started having flashbacks after that, and it was hard to have any kind of physical relationship with my fiance [who I'd fallen in love with about a year afterward]. But the flashbacks slowly went away. I created RISE to help other people, but it has ended up helping ME as well! And I hope this story helps someone else see that even if you're in love with a guy, if he forces sex on you, IT IS RAPE!

 

Sometimes,

a rapist comes as a miracle in disguise.

We need to be able to see the wolf in sheep's clothing,

before it's too late.