Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

believe we are all multidimensional beings, and in court, it felt harmful being flattened, characterized, mislabeled, and vilified, so I will not do the same to them.

The point is not their individual significance, but their commonality, all the people enabling a broken system.

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.

It is terror swallowed inside silence.

It is utter confusion paired with knowing.

Shame could not breathe here, would be shooed away.

had a foothold in two different worlds; one where nothing happened, one where I may have been raped.

My home is a place where everything grows and all spills are forgiven, where anyone is welcome at any time of day.

Sitting in the driveway, I didn’t know this little yes would reopen my body, would rub the cuts raw, would pry my legs open for the public.

intensity silenced me, I could not bear what the room had become.

On the outside, life had seamlessly carried

I did not like her fragility, how quietly she spoke and seemed to know nothing.

At twenty-two I was beginning to wonder if adulthood was just a series of endless losses.

Loving someone is a painful thing.

To deny my messiness would be to deny my humanity.

They didn’t feel like gifts when they were thrown at me or whispered so only I could hear.

wanted to remain unrecognizable to him.

The day I’d show up in court would be the day I surrendered my safety.

This was my evidence that while my mind had been shriveling in anxiety, my heart had been busy, thankful to have been given a chance.

I saw the part of me that insisted on surviving.

needed to bring her to the scene where she was found beneath the trees.

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 had to believe her, because she was living proof. Then she said, Good and bad things come from the universe holding hands. Wait for the good to come.

had to hold on to my story, figure out how to make myself heard. If I didn’t break out, I’d become a statistic. Another red figure in a grid.

In high school, death had become a classmate, a constant presence, returning to collect us from our short lives.

You have to stay here.

Trauma provides a special way of moving through time; years fall away in an instant, we can summon terrorizing feelings as if they are happening in the present.

separated inside their warm reality of conversation and coffee.

Pain, when examined closely, became clarity.

One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive.

ride as a passenger inside my own body,

For so long I believed I needed permission to return to my life, waiting for validation.

During trial I had shut down to make it through. Now came the release, my body helpless against the anguish passing through in waves.

She understood how it felt when someone wanted you broken. Kicking and screaming is not a sign you have lost your mind. It’s a sign that you have stepped onto your own side. You are learning, finally, how to fight back. Rage had arrived to burn the timidness away.

My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

kept looking outside, the world endlessly black, waiting for colors to shift.

If you get through this night, you are promised to survive all the days ahead.

Assault buries the self. We lose sight of how and when we are allowed to occupy space.

Healing was possible in that empty space.

But I also understood that moving through was a way of moving on, that I needed to go backward before I could go forward again.

I trusted that when I gave my body love, soft touch, stretching, sunlight, strength, and sex, what was lost would be regrown in new form.

Erasure is a form of oppression, the refusal to see.

Victims are not fractions; we are whole.

She had returned to my darkest place to light the way forward.

The truth holds weight.

Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. 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. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.