“Get Over It.”

How do you respond to that? Get over it.

I've been told to do this twice is the last two weeks. The first time, a little less bluntly, by a man who knows nothing about me, but would like to think he's a good teacher (he's not. He talks to much and thinks he knows a lot about the world, when, really, he's as innocent as the children he teaches.) And that's why he asked me what why I had stopped caring about his class. The truth was I had never cared, but I'd only just stopped pretending. He never actually said the words, “get over it” - but he implied it, when he asked, uncaring, if there was anything wrong. He expected me to lie, so I didn't.

I hate being predictable.

“I've been having some problems, actually.” With a private smile, “But I'll be fine.”

You see, it's a private joke – I'll be fine, when I know that I'll never be fine again. Or perhaps I was never fine in the first place.

Eventually it melts away and doesn't matter, everything but the emptiness that replaces happiness. Isn't this depressing? The worst part is that I should get over it, I know that – but somehow, there's still a gulf in my head, the Before and the After, the now that is melted now, once beautiful, now ruined forever.

“Oh. Well I don't want to get involved.” Then why ask? I looked him in his eyes. They were blue like mine. He was much older than me – and so much more of a child. It wasn't a good idea to tell him – people look at you differently, stop talking when you walk into a room.

“I don't want to involve you.” I said nothing more, smiled as if it didn't matter, and left. I suppose he thought it was a normal, stupid teenage thing, break ups, boyfriend, acne, weight. Things I envied other people for worrying about.

The second, but pedantically the first, to tell me to Get Over It was my rapist. “God,” he'd said – we were having another argument, because what else do we have left? - and I'd told him I'd tell his girlfriend, poor girl with the hippie name and no dress sense, the girl who wanted to be me when she grew up, “stop going on about that, it was ages ago. Get over it.”

Get. Over. It.

I've tried, believe me. I tried eating comfort food, and starving myself and concentrating on the hunger. I've tried sleeping until it seemed like a dream, and staying awake to avoid nightmares. I tried staying inside all day, I tried going out all night.

And still I just can't stop crying whenever I pass the smell of Lynx, whenever I see a guy without his top on, whenever I – most of the time, actually. I suppose it's one of those things you just have to live with, like a chronic illness, one that destroys everything, your soul, your heart, your mind, and then there's nothing left.

Get over it. Good advice from the other side, the world that hasn't yet imploded.

But nobody said being a rape victim was going to be easy.