Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir

by Jeannie Vanasco

You nodded, and I wonder if I explained my observation, or if my observation was insightful enough to imply its metaphoric meaning, as in: let’s notice when things are right.

Every time I think about him, I feel pissed off and sad. I understand now why nostalgia, for hundreds of years, was considered a chronic mental illness. I want to hate him, but I can’t.

Do you know what your brother told me earlier that night? He told me that I wasn’t as pretty as you and the other guys made me out to be. You want to know the fucked-up thing I thought after you did what you did? At least I’m pretty enough to assault.

A line that can sound cruel or complimentary: She tries really hard.

Suddenly I realize: all along I judged the assault’s severity based on Mark’s body—which part he used. I never judged the severity based on my body—which part he violated. I rarely believe the Suddenly I realize line in stories. But it’s true: until Adam’s question, my vagina seemed almost irrelevant.

If a rape victim’s friends don’t believe her, then why would she bother with authorities?

Kant argued that retributive harshness was a good thing—because it expresses respect for the perpetrator by holding him responsible for his act. If we hold criminals responsible and then offer ways to make reparations and reenter society, we strengthen our commitment to human dignity.

A grown woman, now—or growing still—who has survived so much and still has so much to survive.

I’m mad at what Mark did, yet I want him to be okay. It’s hard to feel contempt when for five years he was one of my closest friends.

NO, YOU DID NOT FEEL SIMILARLY No, no, no, he can’t understand that totally. He did not feel similarly.

This impulse to find metaphors, it’s because I want to describe feelings that don’t have words. Or maybe there is a word for this—for missing the friend who sexually assaulted you. The German language has a word for everything, it seems like. Is there a word for the fear of hearing one’s own voice?

I think of Aristotle’s belief that friends provide us with self-knowledge that might otherwise be hard to grasp. We deceive ourselves of our motives, even when we don’t mean to.

We have to keep making art. If we stop, then the other side wins.

yet a lot of people blame the victims for not reporting sexual assault, as if it’s entirely their responsibility to rid the world of rapists.

I’m comfortable being broken.

A grown woman, now—or growing still—who has survived so much and still has so much to survive.