Repercussions in Numb

TW
Months after the incident I still have nightmares, I saw him twice on campus and had my first panic attacks because of it. What he did to me wasn’t really an assault, he just scared me to the point where trusting anyone or letting anyone touch me became almost impossible. I know that so many people are not as lucky as I am, and thinking about them makes my heart hurt. Still, because of this one bad decision I am stuck in an endless loop of flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks that I don’t know how to deal with. I went to therapy and thought it had been long enough, thought I had worked through it enough to put myself out there again. I’m young, I shouldn’t let this one bad guy keep me from the good ones. My therapist recommended I go on a coffee date with this nice guy I had been talking to for almost five months. He seemed great, and one public date wouldn’t hurt me. I thought I was finally ready. When I got back to school the first thing I did was arrange the date. I was excited and nervous but I was trying to move forward, I am trying to move on. The date was perfect, truly, he was smart, sweet, cute, nice, and kept up the conversation easily. I had never talked to someone so easily. This eased my mind so much, this great date led to three more even better dates. He met some of my friends and because we had been talking for five and half months we started discussing what we wanted from this. I didn’t know if I really had time for a relationship, but he was so perfect it would have been really stupid of me not to at least think about it. After four dates he still hadn’t kissed me, and I thought that was fine because after telling him what happened to me he promised to do only what I was comfortable with, I told y’all he was perfect. Fifth date he came over for a movie, we cuddled, he held my hand (which I hate) but whatever. As the movie went on I noticed that every time his thumb would brush over my hand I felt cold, numb, frozen. I thought it was nothing and just kept sitting there. As the movie came to an end my whole body was stuck in this horrible cold ache and I didn’t know what to do so I just pretended I was fine. All I could think about was that last bad guy, I was back in his apartment, his hands were back on me. As my new perfect guy got ready to go he told me that he had been wanting to kiss me since he first saw me, and asked if that was ok. I was completely gone, watching this interaction from above like some trapped spirit. I told him yes, and he kissed me, it was perhaps worse than the bad guy. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know if he is a bad kisser if I am or if I am just broken and don’t know what it is supposed to be like. I felt nothing, I felt wet lips and nausea and the urge to be anywhere but here. I wanted it to stop so I pulled away but it just kept going and going and then finally it was over, and I was outside and he was about to leave, but then he was kissing me again and I was pleading for the porch to give way so I could just die. When he finally left and I got inside everything came crashing down on me. I couldn’t breathe and I just started to sob, I had never had a panic attack this bad and the only thing I could think to do was call my roommate, she was out but she got back to me in five minutes. I felt so sick I threw up and still kept crying, shaking, rocking, thinking, none of it would stop. My roommate talked to me and held me and I was back to the day of my bad date, unable to explain or understand why I felt this way. I kept telling her, he’s perfect, he understands me, he’s easy to talk to; but, this is an important but, every time I think about him now I want to throw up, I can’t think about the kiss or else I cry and get nauseous and now when he texts me I get this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. I feel like bad person for letting him talk to me for this long, get excited for this long, tell his family and his friend about me all in the hopes that I would be something special; when in reality I am not, I am broken and I am incapable of being around someone for too long without absolutely falling apart. I am horrified to see him now because I am associating him with what happened to me, every time he texts me I am back to when the first bad guy was finding ways to contact me even after I blocked him, using his instagram, snap, other peoples phones, anything just to make sure I felt like I had done something wrong because I didn’t stay. Now I am stuck two days after I have last seen the perfect guy, he is confused as to why I am not talking to him, and I am trying to figure out how to explain that it isn’t his fault his touch made me violently ill. I do not know how to let anyone else in at this point, and yet I feel awful pushing them away. I never want to see perfect guy again and I know that, my friends know that, my mom knows that, and he doesn’t because every time I think about how I am supposed to tell him, I get sick and I cry and I get stuck in another endless loop that only brings me pain that I don’t understand. If anyone read this far, thanks, and I would also like to ask two questions: 1. Am I supposed to feel anything when someone kisses me? and 2. Am I just another one of the bad guys for letting someone in just to have to push it all away again?