Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

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.

I watched the clear water stream over my skin, useless; everything I needed to clean was internal.

The victim in me vanished as I became the older sister.

I was upright, unshakable, I was the adult showing her that the other strangers in this room were kind, you could talk to them.

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.

Up until then I’d envisioned a limitless future. Now the lights went out, and two narrow corridors lit up. You can walk down the one where you attempt to forget and move on. Or you walk down the corridor that leads back to him. There is no right choice; both are long and difficult and take indefinite amounts of time. I was still running my hands along the walls looking for a third door, to a corridor where this never happened, where I could continue the life I had planned.

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

How quickly victims must begin fighting, converting feelings into logic, navigating the legal system, the intrusion of strangers, the relentless judgment.

He knew things I did not: Spanish, rugby, math, confidence.

At twenty-two I was beginning to wonder if adulthood was just a series of endless losses. What benefits were there to growing up? How do you feel all these heavy things for the rest of your life?

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. Yet now I felt I was being upheld to an impossible standard of purity, worried that failing to meet it would justify Brock raping me. His attorney would simplify, generalize, and mislabel my history.

I was cast a minor role in their summer, and my presence may have barely registered in their memory reels. But I can’t imagine those days without them, would never forget how it felt to be included.

Always she, always she. I never heard the voice asking why he pulled over, why he believed I’d get in, what he might do if I did. How much was I expected to take, to absorb and ignore, while they yelled and clicked their tongues so freely, with no fear of being confronted. Was I stubborn for wanting to walk, was I asking too much? The thick tire was now pockmarked with thumbtacks and nails. I felt the tire becoming misshapen, lopsided, deflating. It would not function like this.

At three in the morning, we stared at the news on TV, heard mass murder. The word seven was displayed in tall, white letters at the bottom of the screen. It seemed wrong to group the dead. It was not seven; it was one and one and one and one and one and one and one. Each an entire life, each with a name.

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.

Day to day I was shy, but onstage I was different. When I stepped out, I became another person.

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.

But that October, the Swedes had introduced this new voice inside me. I had to teach myself to talk like them. To one day face my attacker and say, What the fuck are you doing.

He had not been aware of my one rule: I decide what I am capable of. Whenever I am underestimated, I think, you mistake my quietness for weakness. If you can’t imagine me on a stage, I’ll get on one.

There were many subtle moments like this where I paused to look the person in the eye in an attempt to say, If only you knew how much this meant to me. A small gesture, just remembering my name, or asking if I needed a little assistance, felt like warmth on my skin when I spent most of my time being numb.

My therapist once told me to hold your wounded self. When I finally left the crowd, I thought of her, felt she must be proud of me.

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.

This was not the time for self-pity, for dwelling, for second-guessing. Study it hard. Know the timeline. Go back to the carpet.

I realized this was it, rock bottom, I was touching the bottom. It could not get any worse. I was standing in a ratty bathroom with single-ply toilet paper in the middle of my rape trial. My dignity had diminished, my composure gone to shit. Everything I feared would happen happened, was happening. Now there was nothing to do but slowly crawl back out. When Myers opened the door, the compass in my body led me back to my seat.

They had carved out a warm place to collapse into, without having to ask or explain anything. I felt fear dissolving, the world a gentle place again.

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.

I sit in sadness, inhaling wet air, my eyes closed, my chest shaking. I tune out of the courtroom, the agony too big, my head lowered in apology. I’m so sorry. You were not crazy. For so long I believed I needed permission to return to my life, waiting for validation. I promised myself I would never question whether I deserved better. The answer would always be yes and yes and yes.

As I push through the door, everyone milling around the office begins backing along the walls, ducking into cubicles. I remember the first day I’d come here, my mom massaging my hand as I timidly answered questions. Now I turn to see Alaleh rushing toward me, arms open. Finally, I rest my face on her shoulder, the two of us standing in the middle of the room, holding each other, crying.

My grandma says she’d rehearsed a speech just in case it hadn’t gone the way we wanted, and I learned that everyone had been preparing to take care of me had it not gone as planned.

I write a list of everyone I’d encountered on this journey. People who came into my life and helped me, asking nothing in return. I do not know how to thank them, except to live out the life they gave back to me. I grab my notebook and draw twelve small faces, summoning them from memory. Those who were willing to bear witness. I remember the cards in my purse and pull them out.

Yet all along there had been eyes watching me, rooting for me, from their own bedrooms, cars, stairwells, and apartments, all of us shielded inside our pain, our fear, our anonymity. I was surrounded by survivors, I was part of a we. They had never been tricked into seeing me as a minor character, a mute body; I was the leader on the front line fighting, with an entire infantry behind me. They had been waiting for me to find justice. This victory would be celebrated quietly in rooms in towns in states I had never even been to.

As a woman, I’d tried asserting my opinion without coming off as self-serving or overcontrolling. So I repressed pissed-off victim.

When I’d advocated for him to take classes and be in therapy, she mistook it as a nurturing passivity, gentle absolution. What I meant was take note of his mental health, because in my experience, when men were upset, lonely, or neglected, we were killed.

Everyone had become a victim of this crime. Everyone had their story, had doors they secretly suffered behind. I needed to find a way to clear the skies.

This dreary world I had only known as my own, a miserable realm, now looked like a regular room. I told myself, Do you understand now, your loved ones want to go to bat for you, you only had to let them.

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. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving, cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you.

He got to be a person. Where was her redemption story? Nobody talked about the things she might go on to do. I had laid my suffering bare, but I lacked a key element. The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.

had grown used to being unseen, to never being fully known. It did not feel possible that I could be the protagonist. The more recognition I gained, the more I felt I was not supposed to be on the receiving end of so much generosity. Yet people kept pulling me up and up, until I heard from the highest house in our nation. The vice president was not lowering down to my level, he was lifting me up to bow with gratitude.

since I was seventeen, that was the job I wanted. The only difference was that I sat on a chair at home, writing the words that would get you to stay here, to see the value of you, the beauty of your life. So if you come on the worst day of your life, my hope is to catch you, to gently guide you back.

I imagined what I would be doing, who I would be; my nine-to-five, sunny days, a healthy body, holiday parties. Then I’d close the curtain, sitting back in my reality. Now, I see her vacant bed, and I understand why I went on this journey: It was the only way to get to her. Finally, I accepted what happened, aware of what it led to. I never touched the curtain again, knowing that one morning, a sixteen-year-old swung her legs out of bed and gently stepped back into her life.

I began to see the world through a softer filter. If somebody honked at me in traffic, I looked in my rearview mirror and thought, Maybe you have cried for me. In crowded lines at the grocery store, I wondered if the woman in front of me had written a letter, if she’d shared with me her hidden grief.

I believe you will get a tug on your sleeve, and something from deep deep inside will get back to you on what might make sense for you to pursue or try. . . . You know how you can dive under a wave that is going to crash on top of you? Writing can help me do that—to pull way back from turmoil and impending overwhelm, and find a bit of sanctuary in the process, the action of scribbling down memories, visions, musings . . .

Next to my credit score, place of employment, and reference from prior landlord, it was blank and blank and blank. I wanted to write good emotional intelligence, proficient at self-examination, been through a lot of shit that I cannot explain.

What exactly were you afraid of, one might wonder. You weren’t raped in a house, there was no invasion or break-in. But it’s the sleeping itself that got me, the unconscious, vulnerable state in which anything can happen. The night of my assault, I’d missed the chance to fight back. I tried to outsmart the system, sleeping with one eye open, one eye closed, drifting in and out. Times I have accidentally dozed off, I’ve woken up with alarms blaring in my chest, what did I miss. At five o’clock in the morning, when light became a promise, I’d drift off to the sound of newspapers being thrown, the first bus rattling, birds.

The phrase, sexual assault, is a little misleading, for it seemed to be less about sex, more about taking. Sexual assault is stealing. One-sided wants, the feeling of overriding the other. Real sex was meant to be exchange, the power shifting back and forth, responsive and fluid and playful. The pleasure of paying attention, actively engaging with your partner.

The body needs reinventing. To have a meaningful life, you have to use your body—you can’t experience anything without one—and so your body should be meaningful, too. I saw pigeons at the park, puffing out their chests and mounting each other. Even pigeons were having sex, understood that it was natural, not a shameful act. You’re in your midtwenties. How do you not celebrate your smooth forehead, nice collarbones, and your ripe, red heart. I have a loving man, every day, beside me. I should be celebrating him too, when he emerges steaming from the shower, rejoice! Sex should not only be tolerated, but joyous.

The centipede gets up and offers to go buy snacks. He goes out the door and hours pass. The spider is so hungry, wondering what happened, and opens the door, only to find the centipede sitting on the doormat, still putting on his shoes. I imagine myself the centipede, struggling to tie each of my hundred tiny shoes, it takes me longer to get going than most.

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.

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