MeToo

Letter to My Rapist on the Three Year Anniversary

Pain comes to remind me that it's always a fat buddha squatting outside my door.

Hi L—

Today I had a flashback: how I sat on the bed in that tiny cheap motel room with my cats--shivering, chain smoking, vomiting.

I’d never been so afraid in my life.

I’d never been so betrayed in my life.

I didn’t know that I’d make it to where I am today. I didn’t know if you were going to kill me.

And if you didn’t, I didn’t know how I could resurrect myself to survive the pain of what you did.

I remember thinking, “I can’t wait until I haven’t seen that man for years, until he’s just a distant memory.”

I haven't seen you in nearly three years now.

Back then, I’d seen enough Dateline episodes and your favorite TV show, You. I’d read the books on Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. I got a degree in psychology. I'd always wanted to understand the psychology of a sociopath, which felt so opposite anything I could imagine. I read enough stories to know what I was in the middle of didn’t usually end well for people. Even the man who survived Jeffrey Dahmer struggled lifelong with addiction and trauma.

I also knew the statistics on rape victims and suicide: Daisy Coleman--made famous for being drugged and gang raped at 14--had recently died by suicide.

And I was in shock: what you did to me was difficult to process. Yet I'd found the evidence of your obsession and violations: the microphone in my apartment, my missing underwear, my missing childhood home videos, the places in my journal where you crossed out things you didn’t like.

You crossed out where I said you seemed lonely.

You crossed that out because it’s true.

Your shame.

Stupid me, I wanted to help you not be lonely. I wanted to soothe my own loneliness too. But you crossed out where I said I wanted to be friends, that friendship was better than sex.

It was one thing to know you held my private journals in your hands, to imagine my maintenance man coming into my apartment—alone with my cats—and going through my things, but it’s another to see the types of things that were triggering you, to venture into the horror of your psychology and pain.

I also had to reflect on my own psychology. Suddenly I could see how completely naive I was, how my instinct was to constantly cling to your false self, how I underestimated the danger, how I excused every red flag. I also found you attractive, so I needed to interrogate within my own trauma responses that caused me to attract to someone so deadly.

I found the rotten root: DAD.

The man whose pathology I was denying in order to hold onto loving at least one parent when both my parents had ASPD.

They both didn't love me. Or each other. Or anyone.

After that hotel, I had to document my mental crisis to my job to get disability accommodations to teach from home. It was humiliating to have to share what happened with colleagues, and some people didn't treat me well over it. It was another painful lesson to learn.

My classes moved online, and I didn’t leave the house for four months. I was afraid my agoraphobia would be permanent.

But now I’m here, where I’d prayed I’d be those early days when I was playing your cat and mouse game of terror, trauma, and survival.

In those years, I was prey. And you taught me, my predator, how to be a crafty one.

But what I’d hoped for in that hotel room then never truly came to pass: you have not yet become a distant memory.

On the contrary, I feel like this all happened yesterday.

In my mind, you rape me every day.

You break my heart all over again every time I wake up.

(Is that how you feel about your mother?)

I was victimized by you, but I'm no victim. I’m not even broken. I’m only broken-hearted.

You'd probably hate to know that my life has become better than I could’ve even imagined.

And the most fucked up part: I feel like I couldn’t have done it without you.

I’m grateful you happened to me. It is a hard thing to admit, because you really did traumatize me.

But the way I survived you--miraculous.

The way I healed—miraculous.

The way my vision cleared and my wisdom and compassion deepened—also miraculous.

The way I continue to improve my life and grow, feeling more clear-headed and blessed as ever, having come into an authentic sense of worth and self love, stuns me.

A content creator I follow, Rachel McNassor, said that trauma will show up in life eroticized as desire because the longing pulls you into a re-enactment of your childhood so you can face your shadows and heal.

The promise of physical attraction shows up on your doorstep like a Trojan horse that'll shift you from victim to victor. The poison, ultimately, is the sneaky antidote to the lifelong curse.

Consequently, my solitary healing has been the most exciting romance journey I've had in my life--while falling in love with myself, I saw the reason I'd continually attract to men who weren't choosing me. Deep down, I knew that I had enough love that was worth someone overcoming their fear and rousing their consciousness.

I just didn't know the person who was too fearful and needing to be roused to love me all along was me.

You collapsed my life, but you also collapsed all my denials and toxic codependencies. This trauma sent me on a path to deeper healing and my highest potential, more than I ever thought possible. It’s an astonishing life that unfurls before me like the bloom’s of Persephone’s spring.

It's the hour now in which I was first passed out, when you took the crow bar to my door and crept into my room.

It's like the witching hour when I was a kid: how from 12am to 2am my cousin and I were scared out of our wits, the sigh of relief when the hours passed by without any apparitions, every subtle noise enough to quicken our pulses.

I wait for a werewolf or a zombie at my door--wearing your clothes, your face.

A face I see in my mind as clearly as my own face in the mirror.

When I was a child, I dreamed of a man with no face stalking me, and now he has one. I dream of you often.

I wake in cold sweats, married to your trauma.

But let’s not dwell in the pain: I took myself on a date today.

I bought myself a couple gifts. I got stoned out of my mind. I cooked myself a nourishing meal.

I live in a new state. I quit my job. I am my own boss now.

That’s the most shocking effect you had on me: you told me your dreams and I told you mine. As I healed, I got all of my dreams and beyond, and then I got your dreams too, dreams I didn’t even think were possible for me.

You said your ultimate dream was to build tiny houses. I went to visit a commune ecovillage that built tiny houses with natural materials, and I could’ve lived there. It was an affordable and a very creative and beautiful place off the grid with a wonderful mission and experiments in community, and they approved my application, though I decided to pursue more independence and healing in a climate that appealed to me.

So far, I’m happy with that decision: it was a crossroads in which both your dream and my dream to leave Texas were available to me. Even as I didn’t pursue yours, I got to witness and think about the fascinating alternative living communities operating in the U.S. It was an adventure, and it got me to break my agoraphobia and drive cross country—feats I’m proud of.

You said your other ultimate dream was to be your own boss.

I said I wanted to live off my writing and have more time to write. I wanted my work to be impactful enough to attract readers. After you happened, during my agoraphobia, I began to blog about my traumas. Most of what I wrote pertained to you. I was so enmeshed with you and traumatized in the weeks you assaulted me that I felt like I could feel your feelings and understand NPD and ASPD as if the ghost of your dead inner child was permanently inside of me.

I now blog on three platforms, and I have over 26,000 followers combined.

Then I became an independent contractor doing tutoring, online teaching, SAT prep, and abuse and rape recovery coaching.

No learning experience taught me as much as you did--or widened my heart like you did.

Even more important to me was the collection of poetry I wrote to you and the chapters about you in my memoir, which I think are the best writing of my life.

The process of writing them helped me grieve and alchemize the pain into something beautiful, something I can leave behind in my life that I’m creatively proud of.

They were as emotionally painful as childbirth—the rebirth and reparenting of my healed inner child.

I look at them like children created from rape.

You impregnated me with pain. These children weren’t wanted, but they’re beautiful and loved.

My soul thanks your soul on a higher level for these gifts, though I still loathe to think about your hatred for me, your dangerous behaviors, if anyone else is getting stalked and raped as I write....

It’s hard to hold opposing truths at once, but it’s what I must do when it comes to you.

Many things made more sense after you:

I understood the psychology of trauma which created a rapist and stalker, and I began to write about that. I also understood the behaviors and feelings I felt from you. I began to understand my own pathology and heal my childhood wounds, wounds I was in denial I even had, like the deep wound of my father.
I started to see my worth and love myself genuinely. My faith became unshakable. My miracles undeniable.
I worked through my stages of grief, and the more I read about ASPD—a memoir called Shot in the Heart was most impactful—my compassion for you and my family grew. I began to pity and forgive you. I could’ve never imagined forgiving you, but it’s not even something I did for you. It just happened. My empathy made the anger vanish, though it still hurts--and on days like today I still cry over it--this pain of mine is sacred and I accept it. You taught me self love, unconditional love, and forgiveness of those who don’t deserve it.
I began to understand the connection between these disorders and ugly histories and events like genocide, war, slavery, prisons, colonialism, and all kinds of abuses--from domestic violence to mass shootings to pedophilia to witch hunting.
Then when something shocks the world--such as the recent photo of the Israeli hostage kissing the forehead of his captor--I sigh an exhale of relief, because I understand it.

This is Stockholm syndrome, feeling love for the person who has held you captive and abused you. On one hand, this is perceived as a mental illness. On the other, it just feels like reality to me: in situations of trauma, humans in confined spaces feel love for each other.

It’s a broken and painful love, but it’s love. It’s inevitable.

It’s what the true nature of us is at our core—to love each other, to depend on each other.

Anyway, this bond, this trauma bond, first began in our families as children.

I know that if I saw you, I should be scared, I should see it as death arriving to usher my soul out of this world, but....

....what I’d want to do is hug you and ask you how you’ve been, as I often do in my dreams of you.

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

In addition to uncovering my BPD and understanding ASPD, I began to understand other psychological experiences I could document in my writing to help those suffering: insomnia; agoraphobia; cPTSD--especially anniversary cPTSD experiences like this one; the side effects of stalking victims; paranoia; denial, suicidal impulses; homicidal anger (yep, I wanted to kill you).

I also began to understand my gender dysphoria and got diagnosed with autism: these were ways that I knew myself better and things I could communicate in my work. These were all blessings in the long run, though many of the experiences are still really painful.

7. I cut all toxic enmeshments out of my life. I feel like I’m breathing clean oxygen when I used to breathe smog. I can’t believe how much abuse I overlooked, how lacking in self worth and boundaries I was. Though, I remember my favorite people in the past fondly. There are a lot of good memories, and I miss them, just like I miss conversations with you.

8. My life has a lot of peace and freedom. People still sometimes lash their fangs at me, and often they do sting me emotionally or anger me with their abuses of others, but mostly I know what they are and I keep it moving.

At times, it’s hard to know what to do with peace after a life of chaos, but mostly, it’s a really nice life. I also take a lot of time for gratitude.

Ever since you gave me a near death experience, I wake up and count my blessings.

Those Saw horror movies make sense now: how some people survived the psychopath and then they got the memo to stop taking life for granted and clean up their act.

They broke addictions, they healed, they began to glow—and they owed it all to some majorly extreme sufferings.

I hate those movies. But they're accurate.

It took years of work and it’s still an ongoing project, but—bit by bit—I healed my behaviors. I quit smoking. I quit self harming. I can see how much I glow, how my health improved. I’ve taken myself on trips.

I dated myself to love myself. I’m writing poetry I love. I cherish every bite of food, every sip of coffee, every new experience, every time I get to make art, every beautiful moment with nature or an animal, every soul I’ve loved on my journey.

I talk to old friends--narcissists too--and I share love and nostalgia for them all. I see our oneness.

I see how I glow now.

Sad things have happened; I lost my sweet cat, and grief has visited in other ways, but depression didn't take me under.

I still feel a level of happiness and gratitude for this life experience, even the worst of it, maybe especially for that.

(I saw on your social media that you lost your dog around the time I lost my cat: I'm so sorry for your loss. I know one thing we had in common was how deeply we loved our animals. We both felt it was the only love we've ever known and a reason to live).

Thank you for not killing my cats and for allowing me to have more time with my angel.

I understand now how monster myths link to NPD.

Everything from stories of child demon possession to werewolf tales to vampires to Jekyll and Hyde to the myth of Narcissus link to NPD and ASPD for me now. Biblical stories--like Judas and Jesus, the sociopath and the empath--tell the same tale of radical love, betrayal, violent death, and resurrection that I spiritually experienced with you.

Persephone and Hades resonates most deeply. I feel like the Queen of Hell walking through a new spring– a woman abducted by the god of the underworld, a story of rape and incest, something that plagued both our traumatized family bloodlines.

This isn’t even the full list of the changes or wisdoms this experience gave me, but I’m already uncomfortable by how long and fawning this letter is.

Because there’s another side to this:

The guilt

I read of so many who don’t survive or who got treated worse than you treated me. There are stories that send chills through me that made me want to thank you for having some limits.

But, at the same time, why did I survive when so many don’t? That’s just chance, right?

Or is it privilege?

I had the privilege to be at a job in which I could get disability accommodations for the trauma, which also gave me insurance for trauma therapy I could afford. I also had a psychology degree and I’d had decades of therapy, starting at 18. Access to that was all privilege. Even a college education in America is a privilege, right? It’s one you didn’t have. In this sense, even my autism has been a privilege, because I have advanced pattern recognition and oversensitive empathy, which has fueled my writing on this topic.

I’m also lucky to have pursued an art lifelong that I can embrace as a fulfilling purpose to process my pain.

Additionally, I feel the weight of the fact that due to my race, had I wanted you in prison, I could’ve put you in prison—you’re a Mexican in Texas with a prison record, and there was evidence and A LOT OF IT.

Did I do the right thing in staying in my morals about prison reform and mental health care?

Had I even wanted you in prison, I don't know that I could do it knowing the racial and genocidal history that precedes us in Texas that led to your mental health condition.

Then I think....are you hurting other people?

Are you hurting children?

Are you hurting those more vulnerable?

Are you hurting people who won’t survive like me?

There’s survivor’s guilt, privilege guilt, and feeling responsible for your future victims.

Though my life is humble, I’ve made so many dreams, creative pursuits, and travels come true, and I have good memories and treasures in my life which are wealths of insight for reflection. It’s an abundance beyond what I imagined I deserved, and sometimes I feel guilty by how blessed and happy I currently feel, despite so much pain in the world and how much pain in my life I've had to overcome and heal.

In moments like these, pain comes to remind me that it's always a fat buddha squatting outside my door; the core of my spirit, the hard pulp of an avocado...

You.

What an apt title of your favorite show. Such a simple and common word: so deadly terrifying when chanted on repeat.

The pain of you roots like a tumor.

I read the book and watched the show a year later to see if I could glean insight into your psychology. The accuracy was a little too eerie; I felt like we were both archetypes and not people. I even think that stalker looks like you. The main character he pursued was a POET.

She had a bunch of untrustworthy narcissist friends and shitty narcissist sex partners all abusing and neglecting her. She had older men and mentors coming onto her. She even had daddy issues like mine, mostly of emotional neglect and feeling abandoned.

And then there was the man obsessed with her who studied her like a vulture studies roadkill.

You.

But she died. And I survived.

Why did I survive?

After I escaped you and looked up your family on social media to glean insight into my predator, I saw your sister post about how the two of you were at a lake, and a woman was drowning and screaming for help, and YOU SWAM OUT AND SAVED HER.

Something about that gutted me.

Why did I end up the raped girl and not the rescued girl?

Or there was the time I looked up the reviews to the new apartment you worked for, and I felt validated that several tenants complained about a "nosy maintenance man" who creeps up on them unannounced and comes in when they aren't home without permission.

But then I wondered, why were you a creep to them but a monster to me? Why did they get the stalking without the violence?

And why did I survive?

Or…did I survive?

Every time I woke from the GHB coma with the flashes of memories of you assaulting me, I was surprised you hadn’t killed me yet. As you continued to stalk me, even after I escaped– you found my new address--I wondered why you didn’t just do it already.

I think you did kill me. You killed me the way you were killed as a child: you killed my soul, my spirit.

It was a crucifixion. You killed me for your own sins.

And I resurrected. It was a miracle.

The person I used to be needed to die.

I needed to break my denials over my childhood and feel the grief of my anger.

You pushed me there, and I was reborn, a Phoenix to emerge from the ashes.

How can I not love you? Without you, there is no me.

Without you, there is no muse.

We are ONE.

But who is the YOU I’m talking to? The rapist, the stalker, the man with no face?

Sociopaths have no self and no remorse, so who is this letter addressed to?

You are different people around different people, a chameleon of chaos. Are you my demon, my destiny, my shadow twin flame?

The you inside of you is the wounded child in your ribcage, the one whose childhood sexual trauma was recreated in my bed, whose pain I’ve had to process and heal.

The you inside of you is the same you in the Exorcist who carved “help” into the child’s belly from the inside.

It's that man whose eyes looked at me pleadingly, after you'd raped me, and said, earnestly, "I'm a good man. I TRY to be a good man."

The you is the boy who needed me to believe that.

The you is the child before the vampire was born.

The you is your soul essence, your sacred wounds, your higher self.

The you is, of course, also me.

I pray for you (us) every day.

You (we) didn’t deserve what happened to you (us).

You were a perfect child.

We were perfect children.

With love,

Your nemesis and long-lost obsession--the one who got away, survived, and thrived,

Anne

Past letters:

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Anne M. Champion is the author of This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder (KDP, 2024), Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (KDP, 2024), She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She has degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing.

It's the hour now in which I was first passed out, when you took the crow bar to my door and crept into my room.

No learning experience taught me as much as you did--or widened my heart like you did.

Many things made more sense after you:

Because there’s another side to this:

The guilt

You.

You.

You.

Past letters:

Check out my books at this link:

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