A year and a half ago, I was a high school junior in a small town south of Johnson City. I was a highly respected individual in my school and community. I was very active in extracurricular activities, community service, academic programs, and church functions.
With my said resume, I was ready to take on the world, but then my world got flipped upside down without warning.
Since I was well- known in my area, I was often invited to various social activities. Even though I had a really good image in my community and was respected as “a girl with a good head on her shoulders,” I led a secret life behind closed doors.
I loved to party! I would get dressed up, hop in the car with my older friends and head to wherever the Friday night party was happening.
When we arrived, we immediately filled our empty hands with whatever alcoholic beverage was available. Since I had a certain love for liquor, beer was almost always out of the question because I went straight for the hard core pure grain alcohol, PGA.
My strategy was, “Take one drink of liquor straight, and nothing will bother you the rest of the night.”
However, my plan was never foolproof, and I often ended up spending the early hours of the morning puking my insides out in somebody’s front lawn, but the buzz of drunkeness made it all worth it.
Nevertheless, one such night my party world came crashing down forever.
I went through my usual routine of picking out the proper party attire, selected with the hope of attracting the attention of some hot guys, then I met my older friend and headed out for the evening.
The minute we got to the party, I realized I didn’t really know anyone. I pulled out a Gatorade bottle filled with PGA and began drinking.
Pretty soon, I felt like I knew everybody and I was having a blast. I remember sitting out on the porch with a bunch of people, when a girl I’d known years ago approached me.
She said she had something for me inside and asked me to follow her. By this time, I was completely wasted.
Inside on the kitchen counter was a thin line of a white powdery substance. My first response was, “If that’s cocaine, you can forget it because I don’t do drugs.”
“No,” she assured me, “it’s not cocaine, it will make your buzz really good.”
I had known a great number of people who had taken hydrocodons before. I knew that it had never hurt any of them so with a second contemplation, I licked up the crumbled pill.
From this point on, my images of that evening are very blurred and were only established after months of going over the events of that night.
My memories are as follows: As I was talking to the brother of my friend, and I blacked out. I was climbing up a set of wooden spiral stairs, holding on to someone’s hand, and I blacked out. I was lying in a bed making out with my friend’s brother, and I blacked out.
He kept saying things like “Come on, you’re so beautiful, let’s take off that shirt.” At this point, my conscious self began to recover and I sluggishly realized what was going on. I began repeating, “No, we have to stop, You have a girlfriend.” He argued, “No I don’t have a girlfriend. We broke up tonight, it’s OK.”
“I am a virgin, and I don’t want to have sex with you,” I murmured through my numb lips. I felt as thought my body was floating above me, and terror ran through my limbs, as all the rape education zoomed through my head.
I thought, What have I done? How am I going to get out of this? At that moment, I began to focus on regaining control of my lifeless body.
I somehow found the strength to push his drunken body off of mine and began putting my clothes back on as quickly as possible.
I remember focusing on my brown Skechers as I slowly descended the stairway. I felt nauseous, dirty and I yearned to find the nearest exit.
Once outside, I stumbled to the near bush and began throwing up all the poison I had put into my body.
For the last time, I brushed the hair out of my face and walked back to the party to find my ride home.
It was all over. The drinking, the buzzing and the partying – it was over. Drunken fear had changed my life forever.
All I could think was, “Oh my God, I was almost raped and I was so messed up I couldn’t have really done anything about it.
Now I am in college, where almost all my friends want to drink and party. I sometimes will even go along with them. But now, my role is happily identified as the designated driver, because one experience my junior year turned my party world upside down and changed by life forever.

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