Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

Perhaps it is not the particulars of the assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after; the first time you are left alone. Something slipping out of you. Where did I go. What was taken. It is terror swallowed inside silence. An unclipping from the world where up was up and down was down. This moment is not pain, not hysteria, not crying. It is your insides turning to cold stones. It is utter confusion paired with knowing. Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly. So begins the brutal awakening. I lowered

3/25 Would it have been better if I had been able to know right after? Or would I have pretended nothing was wrong? Would I have scrambled to invent a story so I wouldn't have to live this one?

I put my name at the bottom, a big loopy C and two lumps for the M. I stopped when I saw the words Rape Victim in bold at the top of one sheet. A fish leapt out of the water. I paused. No, I do not consent to being a rape victim. If I signed on the line, would I become one? If I refused to sign, could I remain my regular self?

This is so vivid. When you survive trauma, this is how your brain works.

Not once did they sigh or pity or poor thing me. They did not mistake my submission for weakness, so I did not feel a need to prove myself, to show them I was more than this. They knew. Shame could not breathe here, would be shooed away.

What a disservice pity is

Which is why, thinking back on this memory with them, the discomfort and fear are secondary. The primary feeling was warmth.

My only memories are strikng solitude --an insistent buzzing that finally woke me in the deserted, bright apartment, strong fall sunshine streaming through th open curtains, the clock readung a unbelievable 4:00pm

Every year Grandma Ann (not blood related but our grandmother all the same) made extravagant paper hats out of recycled material; the mesh netting of pears, colored comics, indigo feathers, origami flowers. She sold them at street fairs and donated the proceeds to local organizations, including Grateful Garments, which provided clothes for survivors of sexual violence. Had this organization not existed, I would have left the hospital wearing nothing but a flimsy gown and boots. Which meant all the hours spent cutting and taping hats at the dinner table, selling them at a little booth in the sun, had gifted me a gentle suit of armor. Grandma Ann wrapped herself around me, told me I was ready.

Jesus fucking Christ are our priorities so fucked up that grammy has to do crafts to put clothes on sexual assault victims. Why the fuck wouldn’t we, as a society, fund something so relatively inexpensive and fundamental to simple dignity?

He must have fingered her, me. Google finally sat me down and broke the news.

When the news comes unexpectedly and so impersonally, there's a special shock

Everything I had recollected, details I’d fumbled to provide into that little black recorder, had been typed into transcripts. Reporters must have sifted through them, using my words to construct their own narrative for the public to pore over. I felt the walls of my life being torn down, the whole world crawling in. If words spoken softly at a rape clinic were projected over a megaphone, where was it safe for me to speak?

3/25 If there is a choice, we ALWAYS sacrifice women rather than make men uncomfortable

As I stood at the head of the table, unable to fill the silence, I broke. Bent over, my mouth opened in cries of pain, wet gasps. I heard the chair scrape the wood as my mom pushed away from the table, springing up, immediate, the same way she had when my sister was drowning. She held on to me tightly, one arm locked firmly around my side, the other hand stroking my hair, whispering Mommy’s not mad, mommy’s just scared. She would be there until I found my breathing, until I felt the reassurance of ground beneath me.

How I wish I had told my mom. My heart longs for the support she would have given me

She asked a few questions in a gentle tone, but I kept shaking my head, holding my breath, until her voice faded away. I waited for something to happen, perhaps talk about scheduling. But when I looked up I saw a tear rolling down her cheek. I felt a small shock, something inside me awakening and softening. I was not in trouble. I was not stupid. It was sad, she was sad. I was stunned.

Jesus. We have done sexual assault victims wrong for so long.

I was teaching myself to ask for help, and in return beautiful things were happening.

Is this what happens?

powerful

I could use fancy wordplay and speak fast and bring down the house by verbally annihilating a dick. Now that I was the one assaulted while unconscious, I could hardly speak.

3/25 This is why we need the voices of all women. The act of violation affects everything

I hadn’t thought of this incident in months, and it now showed itself to me, freed the memory from its anchor. But how do I explain this? That a repressed memory has bubbled to the surface?

Because thos is how trauma works. Sometimes combined with shame, it pulls memories down to not be retrieved for years.

What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.

This is beautiful

You have to hold out to see how your life unfolds, because it is most likely beyond what you can imagine. It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do.

I love this so much.

Pain, when examined closely, became clarity.

The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

That fucker lost his job. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

In court they’ll try to make you believe you are unlike the others, you are different, an exception. You are dirtier, more stupid, more promiscuous. But it’s a trick. The assault is never personal, the blaming is.

I don't know if that's true. My assault felt pretty personal.

Most had multiple medications, and I sprinkled what looked like pouches of cocaine into their food. I was reminded that having extra needs does not make you too difficult, too time consuming, but worthy of compassion and love.

Jesus. She keeps making me cry.

They took me out walking, often carrying, when back legs were rickety. I ate when they ate, a simple lesson in self-care. My small house became a place of restoration and transition, getting them cleaned up, nails clipped, hair combed, ready for their permanent home. I liked seeing their confidence and personalities emerge, as they grew more comfortable and became themselves.

3/25 It seems so obvious now that love and gentle care and rest are always the answer

Every day she reminds me of the Muttville slogan: It’s never too late for a new beginning. It was a promise to her and a promise to myself. Whatever past you came from, you don’t have to go back.

I love her.

Mr. Hernandez pointed out that we never actually saw the shark until about eighty minutes into the film. Instead we heard horror stories, glimpsed its sinister fin; primed to be scared, so that when the shark made its grand debut, we saw everything we’d been taught to see, the merciless, blood-seeking Jaws. Before the cop pulled Philando over, he’d reported the man resembled a robbery suspect, commenting on his wide-set nose. By the time the cop stepped up to the window, he didn’t see Philando, he saw everything he thought he knew about wide noses, blackness, guns, added it all up to threat in his head. The problem is not who we are, the problem is what you think we are.

They spoke as if his future was patiently waiting for him to step into it. Most of us understand that your future is not promised to you. It is constructed day by day, through the choices you make. Your future is earned, little by little, through hard work and action. If you don’t act accordingly, that dream dissolves.

But we are taught, if you speak, something bad happens to him. You will be blamed for every job he doesn’t get, every game he doesn’t play. His family, friends, community, team, will unleash hell on you, are you sure you want that? We force her to think hard about what this will mean for his life, even though he never considered what his actions would do to her.

It starts in middle school: 'Why did you get him in trouble?" My daughter heard this when she reported an assault against her.

Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she’d say, well, I went to work. She didn’t pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That’s it.

This is it. We only push back when we can't just live anymore.

Sitting in the company of other survivors brought me peace. There was no pressure to speak or feign cheer. A part of me ached, found myself secretly willing healing into those quietly working around me, and in turn I began directing some of that well-wishing toward myself. I wondered what it meant, that these students, who must have had plenty of homework, still showed up for two hours to make tiny sculptures. What was that longing, what brought them here, what needed nourishing. And where were the perpetrators who put us here?

This ultimately unshakeable desire to connect with others

I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living.

I worry Stanford will see this as a bashing, a reputation tainting, and will now release a statement asking me to stop naming their staff members after poisonous seeds. But before jumping to a position of defense, I hope they listen, because in an odd way, this is a love letter. My unending attempts to reconcile and reconstruct the world I grew up in. I write in hopes that schools will see how much power they have to help or hurt a victim. Listen to survivors when they come to you. Offer help when they don’t. Do not write polite emails about how you did the best you can, about how actually that was not your job. Just help them. If I accuse Stanford of failing to support victims, I hope they prove me wrong by saying they care about victims and then show everyone how they do.

All resistance is a love letter

History shows that if you were in the minority, if no one believed you, it didn’t mean you were wrong. Rather, it meant society was slow to catch up to you. And if those in the minority did not buckle, did not give up their truths, the world would shift below their feet.

3/25 Palestine

I began to belong more to my present than my past. I was no longer trying to get somewhere, only asking myself, Are you improving? Sometimes the answer was not today. Sometimes I was regressing. But the voice in my head was now gentler. Whatever the answer, I was patient and understanding.

3/25 We must be gentle with ourselves

If you’re wondering if I’ve forgiven him, I can only say hate is a heavy thing to carry, takes up too much space inside the self. It’s true that I’ll never stop hoping that he learns. If we don’t learn, what is life for? If I have forgiven him, it’s not because I’m holy. It’s because I need to clear a space inside myself where hard feelings can be put to rest.

Hate "takes up too much space inside the self"

the winking court reporter.

Be the winking court reporter: someone's unexpected glimpse of humanity and kindness

You have pretty dimples! And huge feet! Her grandma’s feet had been bound. Four-inch feet, and now mine, size 9½. Every generation, we get a little more free.

Teach your daughters to take up space and your sons to make space for girls. Teach your sons to PAY ATTENTION and be the Swede.

For years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence. The fear of knowing what happened if we spoke. Society gave us one thousand reasons; don’t speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you’ll face blowback, if it threatens your safety.

3/25 I internalized the violence of my rape. Swallowed it whole. It lives within me still.

Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life.

Rest assured, if you fail to fix the topic of your talk, I will follow you to every school you go to and give a follow up presentation.

I love her.