Down but not out

The stories that I hear and I tell shape the way I understand the world. Therefore I want to share stories that marked me greatly around the time when I was nearly raped:

Although I felt the creeps when I met him, I befriended him. I had not much choice as we were only three people working and living in that African office and, for a while, things seemed fine despite my initial mistrust. I remember going out for dinner and feeling happy walking down the street framed by my two colleagues. They were tall and I felt special, in the middle, being nicely teased by them. 

Then he started bullying me and discrediting my work but I still shared with him my struggles. Maybe by inertia, maybe trying to please him, I told him that I had quit smoking a year before and was committed to celibacy. I confided that I blamed myself and thought that my bad luck with men had to do with dating the wrong people. So vowing not to smoke nor have sex, reflected my effort to find healthy relationships and judge character better. 

Things got worse and one day he found me smoking. He told me a story: “There lived a man who started building a house. When the bystanders saw him they laughed at him...  Hahaha, you will never finish that house! The man got angry and destroyed what he had built so far.”... “When you smoke, you are that man,” he concluded. I felt like shit.

The stress pushed me to chain smoke. I read documents labelled “Are you suffering from burnout?” and ticked all the boxes. I knew I was not doing well and I reached out to male superiors who ignored my complaints and labeled me problematic to the point of eventually inflicting on me a 20/24 — a nasty way of firing people: you are sacked without need of explanation, you take 20 kg and you leave in 24 hours.

Burnt out, just fired and leaving the mission the following day, I was left alone with him for the night. He offered me a cigarette and, out of the blue, his abusive behaviour shifted. This guy, who had been belittling me for weeks, now declared his love and, unrequited, touched me while I flopped. “Why are you doing this? You know I don't want this,” I muttered, hoping he would react. He replied, “I want to marry you, I want to take you home with me.” It was not romantic, it was crazy scary. He continued the unwanted caresses. When he tried to remove my trousers, I realised he would not stop on his own accord.

I feared for my life and integrity, I had seen his bursts of anger. If he could yell at me in front of other employees and even expatriates… what could he do in the privacy of a guesthouse with no witnesses? I gathered strength and, somehow, managed to get back to my room, to the safety of a tiny lock.

The next day I left. At headquarters the doctor I disclosed to stated “you are strong, you escaped rape”. She shaped the way I constructed my narrative of what had happened: a survivor, not a victim. Down but not out. 

I reported to a man, a human resources manager I had not met before. I feared I would be judged, I did not know what to make of my experience, so I sat down and reeled off what had happened. He listened to my recount of the events, he did not interrupt me or questioned me. Only at the end he asserted: “It is unacceptable.”

No need to say anything else, he believed me and that meant the world to me.

Still nowadays I am grateful to these two people I disclosed to in the first place. I would want them to know how much they helped me. They became crucial as they were the exception, not the norm, of the institutional behaviour I faced. Because, no matter how little support and how much harm I suffered later reporting the abuse, these two conversations set a path of confidence and certainty — the awareness that I had escaped rape and the conviction that what I went through was unacceptable.