A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains.
Somewhere in the sun-washed space between Southern California’s hills of sand and the present desolate volcanic sprawl I was crossing, my legs had strengthened, but – invisibly – so had my will. The w...
She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one cause...
Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of...
In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have...
I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.
If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.
I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.I realized that the most empowering important thing w...
I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.
Maybe I'd die. Maybe I'd burn to ash in wind, or blacken like the pines. Charred skeletons, I'd add one to the count. I didn't feel scared. I didn't think to panic. The trail wasn't burning. I was raw...
I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness...
I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'...
Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless. But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no lo...
It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.
She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I too...
Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.
The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape—my word. The subsequent silencing and exile—misplac...
I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.
Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they’ve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn’t a child anymore.
After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.
