To You, a letter from all the women who had to say 'me too'

December 8, 2023

“You're going to get through this, don’t worry.” The greatest cliche there is. 

How would you know? Have you ever experienced it? 

Complete darkness. Suffocating mentally and physically. Glaring eyes turned black from dilated pupils and sharp words that cut deeper than a razor blade. Feeling as if there is no escape from that old, silver Volvo, or that large, dark basement. Have you ever felt that? Having everyone tell you they don’t believe you, until years later when it happens to them? Until you have, don’t tell me “not to worry” and that “I will get through this.”  Just don’t. 

According to the official Me Too site, annually, 1.5 million women know that feeling. An even scarier number, “Every 98 seconds, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted and a new survivor is forced to carry a burden no one should.”

So, you, after six years of telling people “We just didn’t work out,” why don’t you tell them the truth? Tell them, you are just like every other man in that 1.5 million statistic, and more than once joined that 98 second statistic. Tell them you watched the tears well up in my eyes while lying underneath you, begging you to let me breathe. That you watched my face turn pale, to red, to purple, back to the palest it has ever been. Does anyone in your life know that story? 

Well, they are about to, because if sharing what I went through can prevent another woman from feeling the pain you endured on me, I will never stop telling it.  

Dear You, 

I met you in the middle of our freshman year of high school and once our school year was over we communicated non-stop. Texting, phone calls, facetime, you name it. We planned to hang out all summer long, and it finally happened. 

At that point, I saw you as a kind, respectful man. A man who could never hurt me. 

You took me on real dates and we adventured all summer long; it was right out of a Nicholas Sparks book, the “teenage dream.” We had our perfect ferris wheel moment like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook, and we experienced what I thought was a connection comparable to Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough in Safe Haven. Your floppy brown hair, your freckle-covered face and seemingly genuine smile paired with your ridiculous sense of humor I thought I adored so much. It all seemed so perfect. 

Quickly, though, reality set in. 

I learned what the Me Too Movement was before I was ready to. I realized I was involuntarily in the movement at the age of 15. 

It took realizing you wanted “all of me,” but not in the way I thought you meant when you said those words to me.
 

I learned quickly that “you loved my smile” because you liked where you could force my lips to go, and that you “loved my body” because it was something you’d soon take a part of for your own and that the “love you had for my heart” was actually a love for my innocent vulnerability. 

Don’t worry though, you sure as hell cleared that up for me in the not-so longrun. 

It’s crystal clear now. 

But is it crystal clear to you? Is it crystal clear that over 67% of women under 18 years old have been sexually assaulted? Is it clear that your actions have added to that number, even after what you put me through? 

There are boys who are not experienced enough with girls to know how to treat them right and then there are boys like you who are experienced to the point that they know exactly what they’re doing and how to manipulate you. 

I will never thank you for what you did to me or the internal and external pain you forced onto me countless times, but I will tell you that because of the trauma you caused me at such a young age I have learned how to support myself, stand up for myself and I know what I deserve. 

The scars that are still visible on my skin from my nights with you have been loved correctly, respected tremendously and healed in ways I never could have imagined. I’ve since been loved for what was beneath my skin rather than what was beneath my clothes. I’ve experienced having my breath taken away with someone’s charm, rather than their hands. I’ve been told I love you, rather than I love your body. But more importantly, I’ve learned on my own that I’m allowed to use my voice. I shouldn’t fear the consequences of vocalizing my feelings, and most importantly, I’ve learned to say no. But those people who helped me in my journey of recovery did not take away the hate and anger I have toward you for permanently leaving them there. 

Though those people could not take away that pain permanently, I found my greatest role models in life through all of this. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, or better known as Lady Gaga, famous songwriter and actress, spoke out about her sexual assault when she was 19 years old. 

She began a mental illness foundation called the “Born this Way Foundation.” Her reason being: “Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad,” she said. 

After feeling this way herself, it was her mission to help other women who struggled with the same PTSD that she did. “One may be Born to be Brave but remaining brave has so much to do with older role models and mothers in particular.” says Gaga’s mother, Cynthia Germanotta when interviewed for the Born This Way Foundation. 

Lady Gaga’s bravery is the reason that so many women have felt comfortable telling their stories, and the reason I finally told mine after over a year of holding it back. 

So, You, I will leave you with this. 

To you and every other cruel man who envisions holding a little girl of your own one day, remember one thing. She is precious, big hearted and everything to you. And when she comes home one day crying and broken-hearted because the boy she thought she loved hurt her, ruined her precious heart and took her for granted, you won’t be able to help her. All you will be able to think about was the day you were the guy that hurt a man’s daughter. You were the men who caused the tears our fathers had to wipe for us, wondering how someone could ever hurt their little girl so deeply. In that moment, your body will go numb and you’ll finally feel the way we felt that day, when you broke us. You’ll never be the same, just like us. 

How will each of you men who are in that 1.5 million who traumatized a woman for life, tell your daughters you can’t help them because you were that man? 

I pray for her sake you are a changed man whose hands are incapable of the pain you caused on me, because that little girl deserves to grow up believing in happily ever after rather than be traumatized for life. 

Sincerely, 

Spencer Desmarais, and every other woman who has to say “me too.”