Here’s one sick part: I don’t feel good using the word “assault.” Part of the reason is my feeling of complicity. Part is my humiliation. And finally, there’s the thought that someone reading this will think that it’s not “as big of a deal” as intercourse. That I am being overly dramatic. That the poor guy was just trying to make a sad girl feel better.

But that, in fact, is the worst part. The blur.

For some women, the way it feels for someone to force themselves on you in a nearly emotional way carries with it a certain diabolical confusion.

I didn’t kick the man in the head. I didn’t scream. Deplorably, I felt that if I kicked him, I’d not only be considered unreasonable but even unhinged. I remember, with an indescribable nausea, that I didn’t want the man to feel he was not “doing a good job.” Even just writing those words makes me feel powerless, existentially subjugated. Self-hating.