In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

I grew up idolizing the flawed people of my history. The cheaters, the drunks, the mean men and their women. They were my first heroes, and they lived their hard lives surrounded by the unspeakable beauty of the land that I call home.

Nothing he ordered us to do was ever optional, and I wouldn’t have the audacity to refuse his commands for a long time to come. I understood that I did not own the word no. What does no mean? What do we accomplish when we speak it? It is a refusal: I do not accept this dubious gift. Self-protection: You will not violate my sovereignty. Denial: I am not these things that you name me. Children learn the word at a young age, as they test the limits their parents set for them and the boundaries the physical world imposes upon them. As frustrating as it is to accommodate the child’s no, that word is essential. No functions in a way that please don’t never has, in a way that tears and cries never will. It took me many years to learn the word no. I do not remember ever saying that word to my parents in defiance: You cannot make me do this. Or in resistance: I will no longer be subjected to . . .

I hid myself deep so that on the surface, people would see quiet and good girl. I thought I could control their understanding of me, keep my inner torment a secret—it seemed like another sin to be so angry—but I did not realize how much my sense of self was controlled by all that hiding.

I had to unlearn the most important lesson I had learned as a child, the most important rule of survival—to be quiet.

In a landscape littered with disappointment, immediate gratification seems to make sense.

You keep stubbornly trying, waiting for dictators to become benevolent kings.

Like so many women before me and since, I learned that you go back, you stick it out, you love the man until he is saved by your sacrifice. It’s the kind of thing you can always see going so badly in someone else’s life, but not in your own.

I didn’t have the emotional resources to always care about what was wrong or right or fair—I just wanted things to be bearable.

I knew then that I would never get him back, that maybe he was never there to lose in the first place. I had been dreaming of the man I knew he could be, that I just knew he wanted to be and surely would choose to be someday. For the first time, I was struck with the understanding that as hard as I had tried to make sense of the whole mess, it was time to give that up.

You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.

I was happy to give up on pop culture altogether, and James introduced me to another culture that made much more sense at the time—a counterculture that itself rejected the entire world I felt so rejected and battered by.

I raised my hand and asked him whether we would receive points for the practice test, and he said no. In typical fifteen-year-old fashion, I asked with a smirk, Why would I do it, then? He stopped in his tracks and stared straight at me to respond, To learn.

I had always thought of my good grades in school as being for others—to please my teachers, to please my parents. It was one of the few ways I received positive attention, when I did: She’s a smart little thing.

I cheated on James shortly after we started dating. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to cheat on him—it was just that one of his friends made advances, and it didn’t occur to me that I should say no, that I could say no.

We fight the demons that embedded themselves into the fabric of our consciousness, not knowing why we always feel like we’re in a fight. We walk through the world as if we are part of it, but our anguish constantly reminds us that the world neither loves nor wants things that are broken.

They made their choice. They have to live with it.

You have every right to your anger. Nobody will ever take that away from you. But it is hurting only you.

the hero of the story is always the storyteller. The storyteller is the one with power.