By now, many of us have read last week's Daily Beast article about Emma Sulkowicz and Paul Nungesser. The article includes an extensive interview with Nungesser and a series of seemingly friendly Facebook chats between him and Sulkowicz, some of which were sent after the night he allegedly raped her.

Many of us have decided that this case is closed. Hordes of Spec and Bwog commenters claim that the Facebook messages are damning evidence that prove Sulkowicz is a liar and a psychopath, and that Nungesser is the true victim. But to me, these messages don't seem like definitive proof of anything. Many survivors of sexual assault maintain cordial, even affectionate, contact with the person who attacked them. I know, because I'm one of them.

A little over two years ago, I was sexually assaulted by a friend. He was part of my tight-knit circle of new Columbia friends who all lived in the same building. I'm hardly alone in that; the vast majority of survivors knew the person who assaulted them.

People react to trauma in unpredictable ways, and one way is to bottle it up, pretend it never happened, and to act like everything's fine. Rape is a terrifying thing to add to your personal narrative—no one wants to think of themselves as a helpless victim. Many survivors are assaulted by people they trust, even people they love, giving them another reason to pretend it never happened. I have months of "friendly" Facebook chats with the man who assaulted me—I probably made plans to hang out, or said I was excited to see him, at least a dozen or more times. It's not the "right" way to respond to sexual violence, but it's how a lot of people respond in real life.

For me, I pretended nothing would happen to avoid the social consequences of being the girl who "cried rape." I made a tearful call to a close mutual friend the next morning, who made it clear that he was skeptical of my story. After all, the friend I was accusing was a nice guy, we were both really drunk, and maybe I just needed to "talk it out." Over the next few days, friends told me that they didn't believe me or that if I didn't take it back and apologize to him, I wouldn't have any more friends. These were my oldest and only friends at Columbia, so I bit my tongue, said it was all a "misunderstanding" and pretended we were still friends. He still lived in my building, and I was terrified of what he might do if I cut him off. Though our conversations were ostensibly affectionate, I started having panic attacks after we spoke at parties or after he'd stop by my room to chat.

Months later, I finally cut off contact after hearing that he'd assaulted someone else.

I wasn't a perfect victim. I'll admit that I didn't have a shred of evidence. If I had pursued charges, no University panel or jury would have found him guilty, and I understand why. But that doesn't change the fact that I was assaulted, and that I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

[Related Article: An open letter to President Bollinger and the board of trustees]

I can't speak for Emma Sulkowicz, or why she maintained contact with Nungesser. What I can say is that those Facebook messages don't prove she's lying; I've seen too many survivors follow the same pattern I read in Emma's messages—masking denial, fear, and confusion behind a friendly façade.

Campus sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in the country—the Center for Public Integrity estimated that about 95 percent of survivors don't report their experiences. There are many reasons that might be, but one is that, like mine, many stories don't fit the standard narrative of how a victim is "supposed" to behave. When we demand that anyone who speaks up fit a certain profile (a woman who calls 911 right away, who isn't too slutty, who cuts off all contact with the accused), we forget how complicated and fraught sexual violence is.

Not everyone who is sexually assaulted responds "right"—there is no perfect victim.

The author has been granted anonymity due to the personal nature of this content.

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