When the Truth Isn’t Enough
By Anonymous
Trigger Warning: This piece discusses sexual assault, social exclusion, and the emotional aftermath of speaking out. Please read with care.
Sometimes I wonder what the point was in speaking up. In telling the truth. In cracking myself open, bleeding shame and fear and memory just to say, this happened to me.
Because people know. They know what he did. I told them. And still, he’s out there. Smiling in photos, getting invited, clinking glasses, being called ‘a good guy’ by people who know. People I used to respect. People who heard not just my story, but others, and still chose him.
He is doing a well-respected course. The kind that opens doors, that guarantees a good job. I am sure he’ll have a prosperous career. I imagine him in five or ten years, holding a polished title in a shiny office, doing just fine. Better than fine. He will be thriving. He will be trusted. He will be liked.
And me? I will still be carrying it.
I dated him for almost three years. That’s the part people forget. Or ignore. It wasn’t just one night. It wasn’t some abstract, isolated incident. It was a relationship where things happened that I now know weren’t okay. That were violent, even if I didn’t have the words at the time.
I kept quiet for a long time because I loved him. Or I thought I did. And then I kept quiet because I didn’t want people to look at me the way I feared they would. Like I was messy. Like I was bitter. Like I was the problem.
Eventually I spoke. Not because I wanted to ruin his life, but because I couldn’t carry the weight of it anymore. I couldn’t sit in rooms with people who spoke highly of him while I sat there with my fists clenched under the table.
When I finally told the truth, I thought things would shift. I thought people would listen. And some did. But many didn’t. Many nodded quietly and said things like “that’s complicated” or “I’m staying out of it” or “I don’t want to take sides.”
And somehow, despite everything, he got to keep his reputation. He has a new girlfriend now. I don’t know her. I don’t know if she knows about what happened. I think about that more than I want to admit. Not because I want to hurt her. But because I remember what it’s like to be her. To believe you’re safe with someone who smiles and says all the right things.
And there’s something about that, knowing he gets a clean slate, while I get the label of “the ex who made things difficult”, that feels like a punch to the chest.
What hurts the most isn’t even him. It’s everyone else. The ones who stayed silent. The ones who still go out of their way to praise him. The ones who tell me privately that they believe me but do nothing publicly. The ones who follow both of us, knowing what happened, and still think that’s a neutral position.
Neutrality is not neutral. It is a decision. And it tells me very clearly whose comfort matters more.
There’s a part of me that wants to block every single one of them. Everyone who stayed close to him. Everyone who looked the other way. I want to disappear from their feeds. I want to build a wall and say, you don’t get to see me anymore. You don’t deserve access to my life.
But then there’s another part of me. The part that wants them to see me doing well. That wants them to watch me thrive. That wants them to see that even though he broke something in me, he didn’t get to keep it. That I rebuilt. That I am still standing.
It’s an awful kind of limbo. Wanting to be invisible and radiant at the same time. Wanting to vanish and be seen. Wanting to heal in private, but also wanting people to know that I’m still here. That he didn’t defeat me.
There are days I feel like I imagined the whole thing. Like maybe I overreacted. Like maybe it wasn’t bad enough to warrant all this pain.
But on those days, I remember the phone call I had with my friend after the last time he did it. I remember the screaming, the crying, barely speaking through the sobs. I remember the way my body shook and how I couldn’t breathe properly for hours. And in that moment, I know I didn’t make it up. I couldn’t have. No one makes up pain like that.
That’s the effect of being surrounded by people who treat your trauma like gossip, who file your story away under ‘he said, she said,’ and then carry on as though nothing happened.
But I didn’t make it up. I didn’t exaggerate. I didn’t misremember. I lived it. And then I spoke up. And still, I was the one who was quietly pushed out of social spaces, who stopped being invited, who became someone to avoid.
So, what is the point?
Some days, I genuinely don’t know. Some days, I regret it. I wish I had stayed quiet and protected my peace. Because at least then I could have kept some of the people I lost.
But other days, I know why I did it. I know that silence was swallowing me whole. That it was killing me to pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t. Speaking up didn’t bring justice. But it brought me back to myself. Slowly, painfully, I stopped hiding. I stopped lying.
And even if no one else listens, I did. I listened to myself. I believed myself. I told the truth.
That still means something. Even in a world that pretends it doesn’t.
Dublin Rape Crisis Centre Helpline (24 hour) - 1800 77 8888
Women’s Aid (24 hour) - 1800 341 900
Student Counselling Service (Mon-Fri) - (01) 896 1407 / student-counselling@tcd.ie
