I had previously found Michaela Coel’s 2020 drama relatable and familiar, but decided to rewatch it after going through a similar experience – and it spurred me into action
Content warning: this article contains references to sexual abuse which some readers might find distressing
When I May Destroy You aired in the summer of 2020, I hadn’t yet been spiked. Michaela Coel’s comedy-drama, based on her own experience of sexual assault, follows Arabella (Coel) as she realises she was drugged and raped on a night out. With one in four women in Britain having experienced sexual violence, the 12-part series was a difficult watch for many. If not relatable, then confronting and familiar; something that had happened to others, but close enough to know that it could happen to you. Three months later, it did happen to me. I remember going back to a man’s flat on a second date, but then there’s a vast nothingness that I’ve been unable to make sense of since.
The morning after, confused and embarrassed by my memory loss, I asked him what had happened. When he said we’d had sex, and I said I couldn’t remember it, he seemed offended, as though my amnesia were an accusation. After tea and toast, I left to meet my sister, who, when I told her I had blacked out after only three drinks, suggested I’d been drugged. I initially dismissed this – that’s what depraved strangers do to paralytic women on sticky club toilet floors. Not men you like in nice flats with comfy sofas. Not men who you would have had sex with anyway, consciously and consensually. Then I remembered the half-empty bottle of wine, leftover from a dinner party, offered to me but untouched by him.
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