My 2018 #MeToo Story

This is a story I’ve debated sharing on here for almost a year. Sometimes I want to, but I don’t know what to say, and other times I want to stick my head in the sand and hide from it. Part of me feels like I’ll lose friends, that people will think differently about me, that I’ll be mocked and ridiculed, that people will think I’m tainted. I’m scared, as I sit here writing this, and I still have those worried. I still fear I’ll lose people and that people will think less of me. I don’t understand why, though. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything to cause this. This was all someone else’s fault and someone else’s choice and I had no say, so why would people think poorly of me? But that’s the way it is with these types of things. A woman who has been sexually assaulted becomes a pariah. And one who talks about it, expresses her struggles, talks about the anxiety, depression, fear, feelings of worthlessness, loss of hope, etc., is just whining and looking for attention. But I’m not. I want people to know what happened and what I’ve been going through and how this has affected me because I want the people who care about me to know that I need them. I struggle asking for help and admitting my moments of weakness, but I’m trying to be better. How can others show they are willing to be there for me and that they truly do care about me if I’m not willing to tell them when I need them? This is hard for me, but I need people to know. This is my 2018 #metoo story.

On the evening of April 3, 2018, a coworker who I had become friends with came over to join me on my evening walk. I used to walk roughly 3.5 miles around my neighborhood in the evenings and most of the time it was really late and really dark. He said he was concerned about me walking alone that late at night and offered to go with me. I said yes.

After the walk, he was supposed to go home, but he said he wanted to chat for a few minutes and see how things were going. We talked for a little while, but I shouldn’t have let him stay. School had started that week and I was back to getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I’d gotten 4 hours of sleep the night before and was really tired, which he knew. And it was late. I ended up falling asleep during a lull in the conversation. I was just going to close my eyes for just a second, but we all know how that goes. I woke up to him whispering “If you don’t want it, tell me to stop.”

I was confused and had no idea what he was talking about. It didn’t make sense and I was trying to figure out what he meant. And then I felt it. His hands were down my pants and he was attempting to stick his fingers inside me. I freaked out and shoved him away, telling him to get out. He touched my arm, I’m not sure whether he was attempted to grab me or put his arm around me, but I pushed him away again and told him to leave. Thankfully, he left. And I cried. I sat in shock for a while, just frozen in place, wondering if what had just happened had really happened, and then I cried.

I don’t even know how to describe how I felt. There were, and have been, so many emotions. I felt violated, humiliated, weak, pathetic, stupid, guilty, ashamed, worthless, dirty, disgusted, angry, sad. It was all so much.

Over the course of the next six months, Lonny kept telling me I was being mean to him because I wouldn’t let him back into my life. He said “the punishment doesn’t fit the crime” because I wouldn’t talk to him unless I had to or unless there was no way for me to avoid it without causing drama at work. I didn’t want to throw up a big neon sign that something was wrong, so when others were around, and he tried to talk to me, I would be polite and answer and attempt to be friendly. Sometimes I felt like, for my own sanity, I could treat him like everyone else and like nothing had happened, but that didn’t go well, and I quit talking to him unless I absolutely had to. He would tell me I was treating him like a monster, making him feel bad, hurting his feelings, overreacting, blowing things out of proportion, that he was only trying to help me feel good, that he was only trying to help me relieve some stress, etc. And he kept asking me to hang out, to go to dinner with him, to hug him.

I told him over and over and over again to stop, that I wasn’t going to hang out with him, that I didn’t want anything to do with him, and to leave me alone. I was never rude to him, I didn’t call him names, yell at him, or even say anything in a mean voice. I responded to his messages by telling him he’d sexually assaulted me and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He’d leave me alone for a week or two, but then start right back up with it again. He was still touching me at work when I walked past, asking for hugs periodically, staring at me, trying to flirt, closing doors to rooms where it was just me and him and the kids we were with, even after I told him not to. Sometimes it felt like he was going out of his way to make me uncomfortable.

Yes, I did go to my boss about it. I talked to her multiple times and she had messages showing he was harassing me. But she did nothing. She protected him and told me that other girls who had complained about him sexually harassing them had been fired. She told me not to go to HR about what had happened because I would get in trouble for having a relationship with Lonny outside of work. But we didn’t have a relationship. I’d told him several times that I didn’t want to date him. We’d had several conversations about my religion and how I don’t want to have a sexual relationship with anyone outside of marriage. I’d encouraged him many times to look elsewhere for someone to date because I wasn’t going to date him. Every time he’d asked me on a date, I turned him down. We did have lunch at a park one day when we had lunch breaks at the same time and we hung out a few times, but I told him on multiple occasions that I did not want to date him and that we were just friends. He said he understood and accepted this, but apparently not. He asked me to be his girlfriend a few days before he assaulted me and I told him no.

A few weeks after, I talked with my boss about what happened and she promised to help me, but actually did the opposite. She did nothing to help me. A few weeks later, she got fired and I’m not entirely sure why, though I have heard some interesting rumors. After this, Lonny continued his leaving me alone for a week or two and would then go back to harassing me for a while. Then he’d leave me alone for a week or two before harassing me again. I felt like there was nothing I could do to make it stop, other than quit my job. But you all know how much I loved Kid 2. I felt like I couldn’t leave Kid 2 with him around and wanted to make sure Kid 2 would never work with him. It may sound silly, but I really did worry about him hurting Kid 2.

By the time Kid 2 moved to another state in July, I didn’t want to quit. I didn’t want to leave the kids I loved and be the one to run away. He was the one who had done wrong, not me. So, I just dealt with it. I avoided Lonny whenever possible and did my best to pretend like he was just another difficult human being I had to work with. Every job has that one awful person everyone dislikes working with, but they put up with because they feel like they have to. For me, it was him. And, I would find out later, it was the same for quite a few others.

In July we got a new operations manager (OM, what our company calls an office manager) and she left in October. Her last week there, I found out that Lonny was training to be the new OM. As soon as I found out, I had a complete meltdown. I had dealt with him hitting on me, asking me out, telling me I was being ridiculous for being upset at what he’d done, rubbing my back or squeezing my arms, staring at me, and trying to flirt with me for six months. I kept telling him to stop and to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t. If he was willing to do that as just a coworker, what was he going to do as my boss?

The girl who told me he was to be the new OM could see I was having a strong reaction and asked me what was wrong. I told her Lonny had groped me (I didn’t want to go into details about what he’d done) and that I couldn’t work for him. She offered to watch my kid so I could take a break, but I wrote a message to the regional manager telling him I was quitting, effective immediately, because Lonny had groped me and then I went into the current OM’s office, where she was training him, and in front of him announced that I was quitting because he had groped me and I couldn’t work for him.

I wish I could say I felt empowered and bold for having said something and told other people at my work about it, but I didn’t. I felt raw, humiliated, afraid, and like my whole world had just fallen apart again. I had such a bad panic attack that I couldn’t walk and was a blithering idiot for all my coworkers to see. It was so, so humiliating. Everyone at my work now knows that he put his hands on me. What I’d spent 6 months fearing and trying to avoid had just happened in the space of just a few minutes. When I got to where I felt able to walk and not collapse again, the coworker who told me Lonny was the new OM and had talked with me until I’d calmed down walked me to the front door to make sure I wouldn’t have to face him alone if he was still up at the front desk. But he wasn’t, thank goodness. I’ve been fortunate that the last time I saw him was when I told the previous OM that he’d put his hands on me, but I wasn’t even looking at him, I just saw him out of the corner of my eye and pretended like he didn’t even exist.

Over the next few hours, I began to hear about how Lonny had been sexually harassing other girls at the clinic. He’d made crude comments to them about what he wanted to do to them in front of the kids and made other inappropriate sexual comments and suggestions. Many of these girls had complained to the same boss I had, yet she did nothing for them, either. I also heard about girls who had worked there previously and had complained about him. It’s ridiculous how many girls he was harassing and how he was allowed to get away with it. Some of those girls went to the regional manager and told him what Lonny had said to them, too, and Lonny ended up being suspended and then fired. The only light in this very dark tunnel has been the humor to the fact that Lonny was hired to be the new OM and didn’t even make it through training due to his own bad choices. He has nobody to blame but himself for losing that opportunity. His own choices and actions brought about this result.

After all that went down, I took a couple mental health days from work. I was too humiliated to go back and almost quit for real. The outgoing OM suggested I stay until the regional manager made a decision about whether to keep or fire Lonny and I agreed. The regional manager came down from Portland right away and suspended Lonny. The part in all this that upset me was that nobody would tell me for sure if Lonny was suspended and for how long. I went to work every day after that freaking out about possibly seeing him and being retaliated against. Heck, I lived my entire life for weeks fearing being retaliated against at home. One of my spare keys went missing during the time we were friends and he joked about having taken it so he could see me any time he wanted and he was open about going to his ex-wife’s house and hanging out there while she wasn’t home, so I was afraid he’d either be in my apartment when I got home or come in during the night and hurt me. I kept my door barricaded when I was home so nobody could come in at night. I eventually got my locks changed, but still kept my door barricaded for a couple more weeks. The first thing I would check each morning was if the stuff in front of the door had ever moved. It sounds so silly writing that now, but it was real. I was so afraid every night and had a lot of trouble sleeping. I still do sometimes, but now it’s more from what is being replayed in my mind than of fear from someone coming in at night. I did take a self-defense class last summer, so I feel a teensy bit better about being able to defend myself if the need arises.

Since that day in October, I feel like my life had been a big ball of stress, anxiety, anger, doubt, worthlessness, and a lot of depression. I’ve struggled so much with feeling like what happened was my fault, that I was so stupid for not paying more attention to the red flags that I could see so clearly now, that I was such an idiot for falling for the lies and the charade. It’s interesting because before October I felt like I was managing everything okay and that I was coping fairly well. I didn’t like people touching me all that much, but I went on dates and had even had a boyfriend for almost two months. It was long-distance and after being around him a couple times I realized he was not the kind of person I wanted to date, so I ended it a couple days shy of two months. I felt like that meant I was handling what Lonny did, and was continuing to do, in a healthy way and was fine. I was laughing, having fun, doing things I enjoyed, and feeling okay. Nope. Turns out I was just suppressing everything and bottling it all up.

Since my meltdown at work in October, life has been a struggle. I took a week off from school to take care of myself and later ended up flaming out on my last assignment of the term. I got halfway through the essay and ended up writing about how I was feeling in relation to what had happened with Lonny and my meltdown at work instead of the essay topic. Got the lowest grade I’ve ever gotten on a final (50/100), but I still ended the term with 86% in that class, so it wasn’t too big a hit. I wasn’t mentally able to put my best work into my other assignments, but I still got good grades. I felt like I was going to fail everything because I was so mentally fried, but I surprised myself by doing really well in the other three classes. Small miracles, right?

I think school ended up being another way for me to avoid dealing with what happened, though. Once school ended, it’s pretty much been a cycle of feeling okay for a few days and then feeling like the bottom has dropped out for a few days. It’s been hard. Really, really hard. This last weekend was the hardest, though. I haven’t cried that much since April when I was first trying to process what happened. I cried every day for about two weeks back then. Most of the time since then I just feel really down and will cry a few times, but this last weekend was me crying off and on for four days straight. I’m feeling somewhat better now, but I know it isn’t over. I don’t even know why this last weekend was worse and why this is continuing to affect me so much right now. It just is.

I think one of the things I really struggle with is feeling like I can’t talk to people about it when I’m struggling. Nobody is going to understand. Nobody is going to be able to fix it. Nobody is going to be able to say anything that will make it all better. I don’t think anyone even really wants to hear about it. I don’t even know how to describe how I’m feeling most of the time. Or why. The strongest emotion I feel when I’m struggling with all this is worthlessness. I just feel like this tainted, broken person that nobody is ever going to want if they find out what happened. I’ve told some people about this over the last year, but the usual reaction is “Oh, I’m sorry” and then I don’t hear from them much. I feel like nobody wants anything to do with me because of all this. There have been a few who treat me like I’m normal and the way they always have (Holly, Rebekah, Zach), but other seem to distance themselves. It hurts. It really does. I just keep thinking over and over again “what is wrong with me? Why does what happened make me into the one to avoid? I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault. Why am I being blamed?”

I have so many emotions right now. I feel like I’m lost, like I’ve lost my tether and I’m just floating aimlessly. I feel like my anchor was ripped away and I can’t find it again. I don’t want to write, I don’t want to take pictures, I don’t want to go outside, I don’t want to read. I just don’t want to do…….anything.

I do feel like it was my fault a lot of the time. I feel like I should have known better, that I should have seen or sensed that he wasn’t a person to be trusted. I feel like my own blindness and stupidity caused this to happen, that I should have somehow known that he was the kind of person to do something like this. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t sense it. I didn’t know. I fell for the lies. I fell for the charade. I was blind and wanted to believe he was a good person. I want to believe everyone is a good person, which is kind of an irony because I have a hard time trusting people. There were so many red flags that I didn’t pay attention to. I knew he wasn’t the kind of person I could ever date or have a lasting relationship with, but that just never translated over to understanding he wasn’t the kind of person I could have a friendship with. I guess I just wanted to believe he could be better than the way he portrayed himself sometimes. But he wasn’t.

I don’t know what the future has in store for me. I don’t know how many friends I’ll lose for writing this. I honestly don’t even know why I’m doing this. I guess I just feel like I need to tell my story and get it all out. I thought I would feel emotional and cry a lot while writing this, but for the most part I just feel empty. I feel sad and really down, but I also just feel…………….nothing. Like I am nothing and I will always be nothing from now on. Who is going to care about me now? Who is going to want me now? How many people are going to blame me for what happened? I think those are the things I struggle with the most. I’m not worth anything anymore. I know someday that feeling will change, or at least I hope it will, but that’s what I’ve been struggling with the last several days. Feeling like I’m going to cry comes and goes, but I do still feel the emptiness and sadness. I think that’s the prevailing emotion most of the time anymore. I can fake being happy and like nothing is wrong when people are around, but most of the time all I really feel is sad.