One in Four

by Lucinda Berry

Women had to be put together if they wanted to be taken seriously. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But it was the patriarchy we lived in.

Javon used to talk about it in our sessions. How the bridge she ran by in the morning, swearing she was never drinking again and going to get sober, was the same bridge she had to talk herself out of jumping off every night when she was drunk. I’d never heard a more perfect description of addiction.

Addicts stop when they’re ready and not a moment sooner. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. Or equally hate them. Punish them. Reward them. Yell at them. Coddle them. There’s nothing you can do to keep an addicted person from using.

one in four girls experience a form of sexual assault by the time they’re twenty-four.

That’s the thing about trauma. You never get to go back to who you were before it happened. It doesn’t matter how badly you might want to or how hard you try. That person is gone. Along with that life. It’s a marker that forever changes you. And if it doesn’t? Well, then it wasn’t real trauma. Because real trauma? You’re altered forever. Anything else is just a hard time.