Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

I didn’t know that money could make the cell doors swing open. I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.

Why was he excellent, excellent, wonderful, wonderful?

I decided right then it was not true, none of it was real, because I, Chanel, was sitting at the office, and the body being publicly taken apart did not belong to me. I suppose this was when Emily Doe was born, me but not me at all, and suddenly I hated her, I did not want this, her nakedness, her pain. It was Emily, all of this was Emily.

You were either treated as an extreme case on the verge of death, or you were expected to carry on; nothing in between. So we settled for perpetual numbness.

I knew I would do what I had always done: detach, keep going.

Mostly I feared what would happen when I experienced the assault through their eyes; their sadness would scare me.

But resilience required rest. For the next eight months I was going to fall back. The most important thing to remember was that to be at the rear, to be slower, did not mean you were not a leader.

They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability.

I knew I did not deserve help, because this was not real trauma. He was a kid, not a criminal. Accomplished, not dangerous. He was the one who lost everything. I was just the nobody it happened to.

In rape cases it’s strange to me when people say, Well why didn’t you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn’t ask, Well why didn’t you fight him? Why didn’t you tell him no? He’s already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What would give you reason to think he’d stop if you told him to? And in this case, with my being unconscious, why were there still so many questions?

Their behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change. When did it become our job to do all the preventing and managing? And if houses existed where many young girls were getting hurt, shouldn’t we hold the guys in these houses to a higher standard, instead of reprimanding the girls? Why was passing out considered more reprehensible than fingering the passed-out person?

If I wanted to be a good victim, I’d have to clean up my language. So many new standards I’d need to uphold.

Loving someone is a painful thing.

Somehow the victim never wins.

We all have different ways of coping, self-medicating, ways of surviving the rough patches. To deny my messiness would be to deny my humanity. I don’t believe there is such a thing as an immaculate past or a perfect victim.

Rape required inflicting harm on somebody.

I learned it was expensive to be assaulted.

When I wrote, when I drew, the world slowed, and I forgot everything that existed outside it.

But the compliments didn’t feel like compliments when my body language communicated I didn’t want to be looked at, didn’t want to be spoken to.

why is it my job to care if you’re lonely?

Safety was always an illusion.

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

Why weren’t my boundaries inherent?

My name no longer mine, a secret I’d now have to trust everyone in the room to keep.

I could not describe that feeling. I don’t know that many survivors can. I would argue that I was still in the process of waking up.

He smiled, but I believe a smile has to appear for more than a beat to be considered a real smile, and his dropped too quickly. Still I smiled warmly back, teaching him how to hold one.

but I believed it to be the quiet beginning of my strength.

Healing needed privacy, needed patience, needed nurturing.

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.

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.

If kids getting killed by trains became normalized, anything could.

No amount of preparation could protect me from the erasure of self, the unbecoming.

He made me his real-life ventriloquist doll, put his hands inside me and made me speak.

My character was just as much on trial as his character; my behavior, my composure, my likability, were also being evaluated.

The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. 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. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That’s the terrifying part.

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

I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire.

Where’s the line between caution and paranoia?

We live in a time where it has become difficult to distinguish between the President’s words and that of a nineteen-year-old assailant.

My advice is, if he’s worried about his reputation, don’t rape anyone.

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

We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.

Why were we the ones gathered in silence on a rainy night, touching clay, while they carried on with their lives?

People grow up, victims grow around; we strengthen around that place of hurt, become older and fuller, but the vulnerable core is never gone.

What they were really saying is, victims can’t write. Victims aren’t smart, capable, or independent. They need external help to articulate their thoughts, needs, and demands. They are too emotional to compose anything coherent.

Expressed was the wrong word.

The word we need is: acknowledged, taken into account, taken seriously.

Awful feelings may remain the same, but my capacity to handle them has grown.