Dear Survivor:

It's funny how you think you know a bed. Every inch of it warms you as the sun rises. It envelopes you. It shields you from the morning breath, breezing through the crack in the window--you're awake but too sleepy to open your eyes. You can't even comprehend what time it is or the events of the day ahead but you know your bed is sustaining you. It's security, it's warmth, it's tender, it's kind. It's always there when you need it. It is love.

Then your bed becomes repulsive, nauseating and hideous. I hated that bed after I was raped, and everything it stood for. The bed was keeping me in the dark--letting me go on believing everything was fine. It was a bed of lies and deceit. A bed that I never want to forgive.

But, after all, it is unreasonable to blame an inanimate object for the rape. Clearly the bed could not do anything to stop it from happening, and neither could I. After spending 12 weeks at the Rape Crisis Center, I know that now. Nobody deserves to have its trust violated--not the bed it happened in, not the pink jersey extra long sheets with white little flowers tainted with blood and sweat, not me, and certainly not you.

I have a new bed now. It is secure, loving, warm, tender, but also conscious of the fact that bad people that want to hurt us exist. It is hard to wrap our head around. It is not the enemy, but rather the only thing that experienced the rape with us. There are no words for that kind of intimacy.

I don't know if there is anything I can offer besides, do not allow your bed to be your enemy. Do not allow the devil's advocate inside you to exist. Nobody deserves this. Rather, embrace your bed as part of who you are and allow yourself to make peace with it so you can sleep every night. That, at the very least, is what you deserve.

I know you can do it.

"Look at you/ Little white lying/ for the purpose of justifying/ what you're trying to do/ I know you feel my resistance/ I know you heard what I said/ Otherwise you wouldn't need the excuse/ So please don't/ Please stop/ This is not my obligation/ What does my body have to do with my gratitude?"--Ani DiFranco

-Krista