I met up with him in December of 2024. I wanted to see if I could face him after just short of 15 years, after I’d confronted him in writing privately about the welfare check 14 years previously and after I’d sent him the “My Me Too” blog post as an attempt at closure in 2018.
And we had lunch, and I faced him. And I was nervous the entire time.
This is an abridged version of the text that poured out of me a week later, when I finally told Jared exactly what had happened:
“…The FB block is from when I sent him the My Me Too blog post in 2018 I sent it to him via messenger and he blocked me then…. he blocked me then. Hopefully his crappy memory won’t remember and unblock me.
There’s something else.
He forced a very deep kiss on me in the parking deck when he walked me to my car after lunch Wednesday. I was going to kiss him on the cheek after hugging him but there was literally zero time…. None. All of a sudden there was tongue in my mouth. Deep almost in my throat. For like 2 minutes because he was holding me tight. I was clear instantly getting in the car that it wasn’t consensual.
It wasn’t consensual– I wasn’t interested in cheating on you. I was ready to go and not look back. I’d gotten anxious in the restaurant. He invited me to his room and I told him no. I used you as an excuse as we left our table at the restaurant– there were people at the table right next to us and I said, “No, I don’t think Jared would like that.”…
We should probably both get tested for STI’s because he’s had throat cancer due to HPV. He told me about the throat cancer on Wednesday and when I said I was sorry to hear it, he said, “It’s okay, I deserve it.” It wasn’t until Thursday morning that he told me it was due to HPV and that people called him a “dirty dog”– his words– for “swapping bodily fluids with too many people.”
In the parking deck I told him that you can track my phone, before the forced kiss. On Thursday when I messaged him…..to tell him I was there, he saw my phone in my lap, and said, “I thought you might not have your phone with you.” It didn’t occur to me at the time but I realized later that he thought I might have left my phone elsewhere so that you wouldn’t know where I was. I didn’t tell him that I’d told you exactly where I was going….
It was not my intention to be unfaithful to you at all. I needed to face him. I needed to see exactly for myself that I wasn’t wrong about 26 years ago– I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t wrong in my memories from November 12, 1998 and that I was strong enough to face him…..
I didn’t lie on Facebook, either– even with all that, he was so much more appropriate than I thought he might be….”
There was a lot more to that text documentation that is saved so many places at this point.
And I don’t know the words that Jared had with him in the aftermath, but I do know I crumbled, and for months I became hypervigilant, and immediately I became concerned about HPV exposure and visited my doctors and the dentist for exams as best they can do (since there aren’t actual screening mechanisms for oral HPV itself unless it becomes symptomatic)…..
And I won’t lie, even in the midst of the psychosis of last Spring that set up in the aftermath of all this, I had the wherewithall to schedule a complete hysterectomy and ovary removal because I was worried not only about future throat cancer, it occurred to me that I’d been involved with this guy 22-27 years previously and I was concerned about the cancers that can happen after STI exposure from decades previously. And sure enough there was significant fibrosis and scar tissue when my surgeon got in there, and I have no idea what silent diseases I dealt with in my younger years that would have caused all that, though my surgeon assures me that future cancer risk in my pelvis and abdomen is low becuase she got all the fibrosis and there was no cancer in the pathology from the organs that were removed.
And I did actually have quite the extended low-key psychosis last Spring in the aftermath of that season of contact. And in predictable fashion, when I was in the vulnerable season of surgical recovery, as I emerged from that psychosis, I thought, surely I must have been wrong in December. Which is how October happened.
And I know throat cancer takes decades to develop. But every time I get a wierd sore throat, I think about it.
I did tell him that I was worried that he’d exposed me to his HPV. He tried to tell me “you know that’s not how that works,” gaslighting me. That’s exactly how that can work, even if it may not have been how he probably acquired it himself.
Great lips is the title of this post. “Great lips,” were his exact words, his only words other than “Goodbye,” after he shoved his tongue down my throat.
I was simply an object to him. Not a person with feelings, not a person he had a history with who he might have had a duty to respect, due to the history if nothing else.
But my assumption that any sort of regard for any history is built on my utter inability to fathom that a person might simply feel that level of cold indifference to anyone, much less someone they’d known for well over 25 years in whatever capacity the history was.
And it’s April of 2026 now and the seasons of renewed contact proved to me that no, even in the midst of my unwellness in 2010, I was quite on target that November of 1998 was indeed the sexual assault I’d identified it as in 2010, and that yes, the school-girl fantasy request of October of 2025 proved that indeed, all I was to him was a school-girl fantasy object fulfilled for an extended period of time. A literal object useful for my youth relative to his own age.
And honestly, the reframing that I’ve done in my own mind since October of 2025— the going over and over in my brain not only the recent history of 2024 and 2025 but also the entirety of my memories from 1998 to 2003…..
It’s been devastatingly sobering and utterly heartbreaking to realize that in all that history, I was literally an object for consumption to that man for an awfully long time. No more, no less.
And even though for the rest of my life I will worry about throat cancer, I am grateful for these seasons of recent contact. I have learned a lot about trusting myself throughout these exercises. I have learned that indeed, I made the best choice in 2003. I have learned that I have a marriage stronger than any other marriage I know. I have learned that I am ready to move forward and live in the present. I have learned that yes; I am strong. I have learned that it is true: when someone tells you exactly who they are in both words and actions, believe them. I have remembered that there is evil in the world, and I have remembered that I do not have to punish myself by being present with that evil.
I have learned that I have a great life; I am learning currently that there is a whole lifetime of opportunity in healing; I have learned that the best justice possible is for me to enjoy my life knowing that he will never, ever, ever know the depth of richness of relationships and love that I have in my life; he simply doesn’t have the capacity for comprehension of the types of goodness I come in contact with daily in the amazingly beautiful souls I am fortunate to live with, much less know in my communities around me.
Yes, trauma has hurt. Yes, trauma will continue to hurt. And yes, I am grateful for this path that I am on, that I will continue to explore because in learning to heal, I learn a little more every day about love and the type of person I want to be.
