20 Minutes Can Last a Lifetime
This past week I’ve been working on transforming my first novel Sweet Fire (published in 2001 by Serpent’s Tail Press) into a memoir, entitled The Hummingbird Kiss. The process has been rewarding for the most part though describing my mother’s rape when I was seven years old set my hands to shaking. While I kept the recitation of that event short and sweet, I wanted to get the idea across of the lasting emotional impact it had.
I was reminded of that lasting emotional impact a few days ago when I read the letter written by a young woman who was raped while she was unconscious after getting drunk at a Stanford frat party.
The rapist’s father told the judge that the young man in question should not get a harsh sentence for “20 minutes of action.” What that father fails to realize is that those twenty minutes have utterly altered his victim’s life, as well as that of her family. The letter writer told the rapist, “My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became distorted beyond recognition. I became closed off, angry, self deprecating, tired, irritable, empty. The isolation at times was unbearable.”
When my mother was raped, she could not shut down and grieve the way she needed to. She was offered no emotional support. She had to suck it up and go on with her life. She had her work and a child to take care of. Because there was no help for my mother to deal with the fear and anguish she suffered, she was haunted by it for the rest of her life. Decades later she’d still have nightmares, crying out in terror.
My mother was not the only who’s life was changed in one dreadful night. This is what I wrote in my memoir: “And what did it mean to that seven-year-old child, who had woken up to hear her mother screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’ to the operator because she thought that was the only way to get help? Or when the kid who lived across the street said, ‘My parents heard your mom screaming but they didn’t do anything because they thought your dad had come back.’ You don’t need a degree in psychology to understand the rage that was born in my heart that night. That night the girl junkie who was willing to destroy herself as long as she took someone else with her was born.”
When I worked with women in prison in the 1990’s I discovered over and over again the emotional devastation caused by sexual abuse and assault. Before many of those women became criminals, they were victims. A single act of violence has ramifications that can last a lifetime. Twenty minutes of action? Hell, it only takes twenty seconds to kill someone.
On my website: www.trishmacenulty.com, you can order a signed copy of my most recent book, The Pink House, inspired by my work with women in prison.
I was reminded of that lasting emotional impact a few days ago when I read the letter written by a young woman who was raped while she was unconscious after getting drunk at a Stanford frat party.
The rapist’s father told the judge that the young man in question should not get a harsh sentence for “20 minutes of action.” What that father fails to realize is that those twenty minutes have utterly altered his victim’s life, as well as that of her family. The letter writer told the rapist, “My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became distorted beyond recognition. I became closed off, angry, self deprecating, tired, irritable, empty. The isolation at times was unbearable.”
When my mother was raped, she could not shut down and grieve the way she needed to. She was offered no emotional support. She had to suck it up and go on with her life. She had her work and a child to take care of. Because there was no help for my mother to deal with the fear and anguish she suffered, she was haunted by it for the rest of her life. Decades later she’d still have nightmares, crying out in terror.
My mother was not the only who’s life was changed in one dreadful night. This is what I wrote in my memoir: “And what did it mean to that seven-year-old child, who had woken up to hear her mother screaming, ‘Fire! Fire!’ to the operator because she thought that was the only way to get help? Or when the kid who lived across the street said, ‘My parents heard your mom screaming but they didn’t do anything because they thought your dad had come back.’ You don’t need a degree in psychology to understand the rage that was born in my heart that night. That night the girl junkie who was willing to destroy herself as long as she took someone else with her was born.”
When I worked with women in prison in the 1990’s I discovered over and over again the emotional devastation caused by sexual abuse and assault. Before many of those women became criminals, they were victims. A single act of violence has ramifications that can last a lifetime. Twenty minutes of action? Hell, it only takes twenty seconds to kill someone.
On my website: www.trishmacenulty.com, you can order a signed copy of my most recent book, The Pink House, inspired by my work with women in prison.
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