I May Destroy You, You Helped Me Face High Exposure | culture

WWhen I May Destroy You aired in the summer of 2020, I hadn’t yet been infected. Michaela Coel’s comedy-drama, based on her own experiences with sexual assault, follows Arabella (Coel) as she realizes she has been drugged and raped on a night out. With one in four women in Britain experiencing sexual violence, the 12-part series was difficult viewing for many. If it is not relevant, it is confronting and familiar; Something that has happened to others, but close enough to know that it could happen to you. Three months later, that is an act It happens to me. I remember going back to a guy’s apartment for a second date, but then there was nothing major that I haven’t been able to understand since.

The next morning, confused and embarrassed by my memory loss, I asked him what happened. When he said we had sex, and I told him I couldn’t remember, he seemed upset, as if his amnesia was an accusation. After tea and toast, I left to meet my sister, who, when I told her I had passed out after only three drinks, suggested I had been drugged. I initially dismissed this – this is what lecherous strangers do to crippled women on sticky club toilet floors. Not the men she likes in nice apartments with comfy sofas. Not guys you were going to have sex with anyway, consciously and consensually. Then I remembered the half-empty bottle of wine, left over from a dinner party, that had been offered to me but untouched.

Twenty minutes later, I was on the phone with the police. An hour later they were at my house. I was scanned and my nice underwear was put in evidence bags, never to be seen again. I tried to answer their questions in a way that didn’t look like I was lying, even though I wasn’t. When they asked his name and address, she wondered aloud what would happen to him. They said: “We will arrest him.” It seemed so dramatic, irreversible, life-destroying, and how could I be sure? I could actually hear my own insecurities being used against me.

If he had been a stranger, the investigation would have continued, but since I knew him and did not reveal his details, I was withholding information, so the matter ended there. Either a crime has been committed or it hasn’t been committed, and if it has, they need a name. Absent that, my samples won’t be tested, but they will freeze my urine and keep the swabs in case I change my mind. I put the police officer card on my bedroom shelf and in the back of my mind, where it remained for the next five years.

This year, after a conversation with a friend who had gone through something similar, I decided to rewatch I May Destroy You, perhaps in the hope that it would become a catalyst. I felt nervous. It bothered me the first time, so what would I do now that I was faced with my own version of abuse? Will it be catharsis or reopening the wound? For years, I carried the guilt that, by protecting one man, I may have sacrificed other women into unknown, evil black holes.

During the fifth episode, when Arabella is being praised for her bravery, she pauses and goes to look for her officer’s card. I called 101 and asked if they still had a record of the case. I got another phone number and talked to more people. No one was sure how to apply after all these years, or if my sample was still in the fridge. I searched for his name on WhatsApp to find a picture of him on his profile holding a child like a father holds his child. I felt more and more confident than ever about the decision I had made. Could this father have really violated me in the way I feared he would? At the same time, I was angry that he continued to live a completely normal life.

In the differences between Arabella confronting, avenging, or understanding her rapist in the final episode, we see different accounts; The ones you’ll never have, I’ll never have, and most women will never have. But upon rewatching I May Destroy You and picking up the phone to ask these questions I finally have something like closure.

The case is now in limbo but I feel better for following up on it. Even though I still lived in uncertainty, just knowing that reopening the case would be more complicated than I thought, and unlikely to lead to the resolution I’d spent years secretly imagining, felt like a full stop, an end to the guilt and shame that was never meant to be mine. unknown

In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available on 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html