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survivors can lock eyes and get it without having to explain. 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.
felt like a frumpy queen, the blanket dragging behind me like a velvet cape, flanked by my attendants.
They tended to me like the birds in Cinderella, the tape measures and ribbons in their beaks, flitting around taking measurements for her gown.
could not undo what was done, but they could record it, photograph every millimeter of it, seal it into bags, force someone to look.
was not used to recalling mundane things so precisely.
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?
Whatever alarms arose in my body were silenced, the horror made distant. My eyes became wet, I would cry in private, but I knew I would do what I had always done: detach, keep going.
she talked I realized surviving the assault had only been the first challenge.
It seemed once you submitted to walking through fraternity doors, all laws and regulation ceased. They were not asked to adhere to the same rules, yet there were countless guidelines women had to follow: cover your drink, stick close to others, don’t wear short skirts. 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
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After the assault, I felt this need to be touched, but wanted nothing to do with invade, inject, insert, inside, only wanted the intimacy of being wrapped up safely in something.
draw when I’m upset, when I’m bored, when I’m sad. My parents let me draw directly on my walls,
He backed away, stood transfixed across the room, staring at me, scared of me, I was scared of me too. My words bled freely with nothing to clot them
I did nothing wrong. I am strong. I have a voice. I told the truth.
As I pored over the pages, the feelings began leaking in. To read each line was to be in a room slowly filling with water. It filled and filled until there was a space just big enough to keep breathing, a sliver of air between water and ceiling.
the goal was to heal, move on, this was not the way to proceed. Healing needed privacy, needed patience, needed nurturing. Healing required planting seeds in the soft, dark underground.
began calling all the things I’d hoped to do sugar-cube ideas. The court case was a pot of hot water that quickly dissolved all semblance of a regular life.
My whole life had warped below the weight of the assault, and if you took that damage and multiplied it by each red figure, the magnitude was staggering.
What a relief to feel so small, to go unnoticed in this wordless world.
wondered how it happened that I was now spending more time with my rapist than my friends.
How easy it was to pretend.
Memory is often perceived as the victim’s weakness, but I believe memory is a victim’s greatest strength. 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.
I had unlocked the secret of the game; this was not a quest for justice but a test of endurance.
During trial I had shut down to make it through. Now came the release, my body helpless against the anguish passing through in waves.
Now I wondered if I had handled it too gracefully, my composure a signal that what he’d done was of little consequence. When I’d advocated for him to take classes and be in therapy, she mistook it as a nurturing passivity, gentle absolution.
My rage had been punctured, had released the despair. 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.
They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction.
Victims are all around you.
Whatever past you came from, you don’t have to go back.
The goal should never be to insult, it should only be to teach, to expose larger issues so that we may learn something.
Your future is earned, little by little, through hard work and action. If you don’t act accordingly, that dream dissolves.
Schools are not equipped to conduct full trials, but they have the power to create safe environments, and inflict limited punishment by removing the perpetrator from campus. It is absolutely true and undeniable that everyone deserves due process, especially when consequences are severe.
Erasure is a form of oppression, the refusal to see.
Victims are not fractions; we are whole.
This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled.
Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.
I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes.
Victims exist in a society that tells us our purpose is to be an inspiring story. But sometimes the best we can do is tell you we’re still here, and that should be enough.
History is where you will find people who have been through what you’re experiencing. Not only been there but survived it. Not only survived it but changed it. Whose struggles informed them. History shows you what people have endured before you.
Expressed was the wrong word. We the victims are tired of expression, I expressed a lot in his courtroom. The word we need is: acknowledged, taken into account, taken seriously.
From grief, confidence has grown, remembering what I’ve endured. From anger, stemmed purpose.
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.
This book does not have a happy ending. The happy part is there is no ending, because I’ll always find a way to keep going.
Almost five years had passed since the assault, and I was finally going to meet the Swedes.
To the Swedes. You’ve taught us that we all bear responsibility to speak up, wrestle down, make safe, give hope, take action. We do not have to wait for something wrong to happen to be a Swede. Being the Swede begins with respecting bodily autonomy, the language we choose, the understanding that consent can never be assumed or overridden. We must protect the vulnerable and hold each other accountable. May the world be full of more Carls and Peters.
