Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

When I was little I wanted to grow up and become a mascot, so I’d have the freedom to dance without being seen.

I understood their gloved hands were keeping me from falling into an abyss. Whatever was crawling into the corridors of my insides would be dragged out by the ankles. They were a force, barricading me, even making me laugh. They could not undo what was done, but they could record it, photograph every millimeter of it, seal it into bags, force someone to look.

Shame could not breathe here, would be shooed away. So I made my body soft and gave it over to them, while my mind bobbed in the light stream of conversation.

When you tell your parents, there is fuss. I did not want fuss.

I could not relate to this more. Not about rape but about my unplanned pregnancy at 23. Once Mom and Dad know, there will be fuss. So true.

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.

Drinking is not inherently immoral: a night of heavy drinking calls for Advil and water. But being drunk and raped seemed to call for condemnation.

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

Man, this one hurts. The painful truth in this case. The rapist had already shown that he was full of "potential". An average girl living her average life was pushed under the "potential bus". Shame on that judge.

Nobody earns the right to rape. It is still rape when he is a good swimmer.

The assault is never personal, the blaming is.

I received an email from a sixteen-year-old who said that for the first time in two years she could finally get out of bed in the morning. That’s the image I am left with, the now-empty bed.

Sex is this feeling unpeeled. I thought about the language of sex; I liked the term lovemaking, bodies churning and creating sweat and heat, until love is actually made, bing bing bing, appears like glistening pink lights that float and drift above the bed as you lie back, skin glimmering.

We scrutinized the victim’s actions, instead of examining the behavioral patterns of sexual predators.

If students can be swiftly expelled for plagiarism or dealing drugs, the same punishment should be inflicted if there’s enough evidence to suggest they pose a threat to others. Oh but his reputation! That’s really where he suffers. My advice is, if he’s worried about his reputation, don’t rape anyone.

Or accept this new reputation, kid. This is the life you have chosen when you do things contrary to the reputation you wanted for your life. It's just the outward appearance of inside character. It usually isn't wrong.

It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place.

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. I encourage you to sit in that garden, but when you do, close your eyes, and I’ll tell you about the real garden, the sacred place. Ninety feet away from where you sit there is a spot, where Brock’s knees hit the dirt, where the Swedes tackled him to the ground, yelling, What the fuck are you doing? Do you think this is okay? Put their words on a plaque. Mark that spot, because in my mind I’ve erected a monument. The place to be remembered is not where I was assaulted, but where he fell, where I was saved, where two men declared stop, no more, not here, not now, not ever.

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.