When I wrote this essay, I was naive about the repercussions women who write about sexual assault face. I shrugged off a friend who warned me about “trolls” because I thought trolls were Internet bots, not actual people who turn out to be kind of awful and might also threaten to kill you. On Facebook, where my essay was shared more than 10,000 times, commenters argued that what I wrote about was not rape but regret, that I was selfish, that I was a pathetic slut. A few were savvy enough to tag my personal accounts on both Facebook and Twitter, just in case I missed their comments on one platform (which I did not, because I could not stop obsessing over them).

I had been certain about what my now ex-boyfriend had done to me, but the moment I opened it up to interpretation, I became suddenly less certain. My account was so vehemently contradicted by perfect strangers, I began to wonder if perhaps they had more information about the incident than I. Had I, I wondered, made it all up as they suggested? I write these facetious words even knowing that someone, somewhere — possibly even a friend or family member — will point to this and say, “See. You said it right there. You aren’t even sure if you made it all up.” The truth is that while I am sure about what happened to me, I’m still not really sure what it means.