The Slow healing trust

By Ben R

Disclaimer: mentions sexual assault

“Knock! Knock! Knock!” The sound my mother heard when the cops came to question me.

The day started off normal. I went to school, then my friends and I walked to the local food stand. We got our usual food, some fries and a milkshake, and ate normally, sipping our drinks, dipping our fries in each other's shakes. Then I went home. No one was home, like always, so I just went to my room and thought about getting on my game, but instead just laid down and watched YouTube on my phone.

After an hour or two went by, I heard my mom’s car pull in. And she looked angry and disheartened at the same time. The next words sent me into a hole of darkness that I’m still trying to get out of now. “Did you sexually assault a girl?” she demanded as she pulled my shirt toward her in anger. I was shocked and couldn’t answer for a few minutes. Then she asked again. “Benjamin, did you sexually assault her!” 

“No,” I responded, and then she laid her head on me and cried. She told me she knows I didn’t and that I would never do that to any girl.

For the next month or two, I locked myself into my own room, refusing to go out, even shutting my window, completely surrounded by darkness, even in my own heart. I cried myself to sleep for weeks, which turned to a few months. Then I had to go to take a lie detector test and I was forced out of my shell. But as a precaution, I told my mother to guide me everywhere, because I blocked my own eyesight. And refused to look. And so I took it. They told me no girls were anywhere near and I could take off my blindfold, so I took it off but then I realized the cop was a woman. What she told me helped me recover a tiny bit of myself: “It’s okay, you’re safe here, no need for you to be scared.” Those words helped me continue to  trust in my own teachers, and the girls I call my own friends/ family. There weren’t many.

In the time I spent in my own isolation, I thought about what I should be doing and what changes I need to make to myself in order to make sure I would feel protected. A blindfold, I thought. I could blind myself so no one could use me seeing them as a means of blaming me.

Eventually when I returned to school, everyone asked where I was and why I was wearing a blindfold, but the teachers and two of my closest friends knew. But sooner or later, news spread. And everyone knew. Mostly everyone treated me the same and even tried to comfort me, and I didn’t really want that. But the real help was from my closest friends Jordan, Kallen, and another friend. The best way they helped me was just acting the same, like nothing ever happened. Without them, I don’t know where I would be.

Around the time this happened, I got three kittens named Shadow, Tang, and You. I loved them so much and would spend a lot of time with them and when we were not playing, they would lay on my desk or my lap sleeping, and they would sleep with me in my bed, showing that there was light even in my own darkness.

After another month or two, we got the results. And to no surprise, they found out that I wasn’t the one who did it. And that another man was responsible for the crime.

We jump a few years in time, and even though I no longer wear a blindfold, I still distance myself, and even step away from some people because I don’t want to touch or even have the chance of getting accused again. Even now as I write, I look down and away from individuals whom I don’t know and trust. Even after four years, I cry a lot about it and what it did to me. But I am grateful to have the people in my life who helped me during my time of need. 

For the Warrior Times, this is Ben Rios.