*Content Note: Sexual assault*

By Kabzuag Vaj

There have been three times in my life that I can vividly remember having an out of body experience. Once during a horrible winter car accident, the other two were right before I was sexually violated/assaulted.  

The first time I remember having an out of body experience was when I took my mom’s grey Pontiac Bonneville to Minnesota to see a boy, during one of the worst Midwest snow storms, and got into an accident. That particular day, it had snowed non-stop. The roads were icy and for miles cars were lined up on the side of the road or in the ditches. It was impossible to drive, I could only see a few inches in front of me, and yet I continued to stroll along trying to get home when suddenly I lost control of the car and went off the road into a ditch.

Fortunately, no one in the car was hurt and I was able to drive out safely. But as the car sprung out of control and flew into the ditch, I remember thinking I was going to die. I remember it as a surreal moment, a moment of being in between reality and a dream— feeling my body and the car spin but watching everything happen from somewhere else. As the car landed, I collected myself and figured out a way to get out of the ditch.

I completely blamed myself because I had ignored all the danger signs.

The second time I had an out of body experience was when I woke up from what I thought was a nightmare only to find out it was actually reality. The night before, my childhood friend slept over because we had been out late. That next morning, I had a nightmare that I was watching someone hovering over me while I was asleep. My spirit must have sensed it before my body and tried to warn me. I woke up seconds later to find my childhood friend standing next to my bed lurking over me.

I remembered him asking if he could lay down with me. Still confused and scared, I answered yes, but then I calmly got up and left the room. Though I don’t remember him touching me, I still felt violated and betrayed. I remember calling a rape crisis hotline to speak to someone. How could he do this to me? He was my childhood friend, he was my brother-in-law, I thought we were family.

Once again I completely blamed myself because I had ignored all the danger signs. Did I say something, do something? Did I lead him on? Was I not clear? Why wasn’t I able to see this coming?

The last time my spirit left my body was while out of town at a summer Hmong cultural festival. I became stranded and got a ride from a police officer who was a relative of a friend in my neighborhood. I had met him a few times prior and knew that he liked me, so I felt safe. While at his house we started kissing and making out. At one point, he wanted intercourse, but I knew I didn’t so I clearly told him “no!” As things progressed, he got more physical and tried to force himself in me.

I knew I wasn’t strong enough to physically stop him, so I decided to prepare myself for the worst. I started to disassociate my mind from my body to prepare for what I thought was going to happen. I felt myself watching the assault from across the room, when suddenly a calm came over me and I snapped back into reality. It was then that I tried talking to him. I said, “I really like you, let’s take it slow so when we do have sex it will mean something.” Surprised by my statement he got off of me. I quickly got dressed waited calmly for him—the guy who just tried to assault me—to give me a ride to safety.  

For years, I’ve blamed myself for not being able to identify “danger signs” in the sexual assault situations.

But we live in a society that values cisgender men over women/girls/queer/trans folks, and these values are instilled into every system that manages our lives. Whether we like it or not, most of us are conditioned to believe this and live this belief out in ways that are toxic and abusive to each other—like rape and sexual assault.

I grew up in a very traditional Hmong household where boys were more valued than girls, women eat after men, my brothers’ needs and desires were more important than mine. This conditioned me to believe I was secondary to boys and men—and their needs and desires. In a culture that believes my body isn’t mine—or that as a woman I’m less valued than a man—there could be no signs that just by accepting a ride home or inviting a friend over, I was in fact inviting sexual assault and rape.

If it has become our norm, then there is no way of knowing. This is what has made it so easy for those closest to us, who have the most access to us, to cause the most gender-based violence against us. They can because they are not held accountable for the harm they cause. 

I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life trying to figure out what it would take to create and build a world free gender-based violence, and what it would be to have transformational communities where abusers are held accountable, survivors don’t abuse, and victims have what they need to survive. I’ve learned so many lessons along the way. I now know that misogyny and patriarchy is part of our culture, and therefore we must create a new way of being—where women, girls, queer folks are valued, loved and cared for.  We must be brave and create new moral compasses.

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I must be gentle with all victims including myself—whether they were raped, almost raped, sexually assaulted or got away. I’ve imagined in my head all the different scenarios that could have played out, and no matter what happened I survived. No action I took was right or wrong, all that mattered is I survived. No warning signs, danger signs could have stopped someone from harming me if that’s what they wanted to do. Only those who caused harm can carry the shame for harming.  

If not healed, those who are harmed can also harm others. We must be careful who is surviving us while we are surviving. Learning about consent, healthy sex and love is important to creating a rape free society. The body remembers even when the mind has forgotten. It’s important for all victims and survivors to love themselves and forgive themselves in order to heal. Healing is more than just deepening our analyses. We must also take care of our bodies, so that it too has new memories.

*This essay is part of our monthlong collaboration with FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture,  Rape Can & Must End*

Suggested Readings:

Derrick Weston Brown, Tafisha Edwards,  Teri Cross Davis, “Rape Can & Must End: Poems“, RaceBaitR, 2018

Kalima Y. Young, “Musings on a world without rape: A listicle“, RaceBaitR, 2018

Richael Faithful, “Rape culture tells us it is normal. My body knows this is a lie“, RaceBaitR, 2018

Phill Branch, “Heteronormativity makes us prey: At 15 I believed acting out my crushes was worse than being exploited by strangers“, RaceBaitR, 2018

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Kabzuag Vaj was born in Laos and came to this country as a refugee child with her mother and siblings. She is founder and co-executive director of Freedom Inc. Freedom, Inc’s mission is to end violence within and against low-income communities of color by building the power of Black, Hmong, and Khmer, women, queer folks and youth. Kabzuag is also a co-owner/founder of Red Green Rivers, a social enterprise that works with Artisan makers, most of whom are women and girls, from the Mekong Region in Southeast Asia.

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