I can't stop thinking about that customs guard at Heathrow airport reading my journal. He was going through my things because apparently I arrived back from a high risk country, Belize. He found the journal and opened it, and I asked him does he have to read it, and he said he would have to.
I just said he was welcome to read it but it is personal. As soon as he started reading the first page I knew what he was seeing and I started crying. He finally understood why I had asked him not to read it, but he continued to read it anyway.
I felt so extremely vulnerable standing there in front of him, like I was somehow being violated again. He asked me if I went to the police and I said yes, that is all behind me now.
He explained that they have to read journals because sometimes people write in them how much drugs they swallow. Obviously he found nothing else but sadness in there so he let me go.
But somehow this event affected me so much. I can't stop wondering how he felt, if he told his colleagues after, that he thought he was maybe gonna find something about drugs since I asked him not to read it, but instead he just found a sad girls story about a rape.
The unspeakable uncomfortable word. Rape
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