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It can seem perplexing from the outside, this pull that many women experience to make things better for those who have hurt us. The impulse to smooth things over to keep ourselves safe, as well as the constant messages many of us have received in our lives to “make things nice” no matter what harm has been done, can be so deeply rooted that it often results in behaviour that can later appear nonsensical to an outside eye. (The betrayal of oneself that results from this “making things nice” with an attacker can also make one bleed on a subterranean level.)
At some point in the interview I talk about why I think we tell stories. I say that I think it is necessary to create stories to make sense of our bewildering lives, to create a narrative around them, to have something to grasp onto in the chaos.
What, then, are we to do with the uncomfortable fact that people who have been traumatized do not often have a handle on the whole truth or are covering up some surrounding details of an assault out of shame or embarrassment? Are we trying to wedge the unruly reality of responses to sexual assault to fit into a rigid idea of truth in our criminal justice system? Is there any way to make room to accommodate the truth of the nature of this crime and the impact it has on people? What if lying is a sometimes unavoidable byproduct of what happens when someone experiences this kind of trauma? And
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Elaine Craig, in her book Putting Trials on Trial: Sexual Assault and the Failure of the Legal Profession, quotes a woman who, after a year-long trial that resulted in the conviction of her attacker, said, “The bulk of my rape trauma is not the result of the sexual assault itself but of the brutality of the legal system. This trauma is difficult to understand for those who have not lived it.”
I wrote: “There’s no one right way to do any of this. In your own time, on your own terms, is a notion I cling to, when it comes to talking about experiences of powerlessness.”
“I hope that the ways in which women are degraded, both obvious and subtle, begin to seem like a thing of the past. For that to happen, I think we need to look at what scares us the most. We need to look at ourselves. What have we been willing to accept, out of fear, helplessness, a sense that things can’t be changed? What else are we turning a blind eye to, in all aspects of our lives? What else have we accepted that, somewhere within us, we know is deeply unacceptable? And what, now, will we do about it?”
“How much did you bleed?” asks the soap-opera-hot doctor who lives two doors down from my house.
Why doesn’t the knowledge that his need to keep moving comes from panicked love alleviate how devastated I feel? My mother was always running from place to place; from the stove, to the phone, to work, to the laundry, to a fight with one of my siblings, to a party, to the vacuum. She was always so busy. And then she died.
Without having consciously had the thought before the words came out of my mouth, I turned to my partner and said, “There is something wrong with my body. I need to find out what it is.” My mother knew there was something wrong with her body. She went to her doctor and told him about all kinds of symptoms that concerned her. Over several visits, he never really listened to her. He thought she was a hypochondriac. She died four years later, at the age of fifty-three. She had colon cancer, a very treatable cancer if detected early.
A nurse comes into my room on the first night in the high-risk ward. She is chatty and high-pitched and from Bulgaria. She puts a large rubber mat under me. I look at her questioningly. She shrugs and says, “It’s so strange with placenta previas. Always with previas, it happens in the middle of the night! You hear the alarm go off, you come into the room, and the woman is just sitting there and the entire bed is soaked in blood! It’s dripping all over the floor! Goodnight!” She gives me a cheery smile at the door. I turn to look at David, who has set up a camping mat on the floor. My eyes are
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I realized that Horror Show C-section Diabetes Lady was getting all her questions deflected to email so as not to put any ideas beyond natural dimly lit knitting births into anyone else’s pretty little head.
So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t. Why is it so hard for us to believe our own stories or begin to process them without corroborating witnesses appearing from the shadows of the past, or without people stepping forward with open arms when echoes of those stories present themselves again in the present?
When I first had my own children, I found myself treating any professional obligation that took me away from them as a stage parent or an authoritarian producer, even if it was something I myself had chosen to do. I suppose the idea of missing their childhoods to be on a film set, after I had lost my own, has been unbearable to me.
I think, “If only I hadn’t dropped out of school, I’d know if that was Mars. If only I had a proper education, or in the absence of that, a dedication to learning that was more rigorous, more disciplined, I could have learned more about science rather than be so intimidated by it. I could have…” At some point in this self-flagellating monologue, I must soften my inner voice and let myself off the hook, because I fall asleep, Amy still nursing.
As I spoon ice cream into my mouth, I watch the ocean of Tory blue that covered much of the virtual map of my country shrink into a blue puddle.
Before I go to pick up Eve from preschool, I go for a swim at the local community centre. I’ve never been athletic but I’ve been taking swimming lessons lately, and, for the first time, I’ve felt myself substantially improve at something physical. I have felt my body change, from one of a basically inactive person to that of a person who moves. My arms have muscles. My legs feel strong.
When you have a brain injury, you have a unique opportunity to witness how much processing your brain is normally able to do with unnoticed effort. So many small decisions, observations, and conclusions are reached in a twenty-second period. It is a marvellous thing, the brain, when it works. Having it not work well anymore gives you a sense of awe at what it does normally, and causes you to wonder why everyone isn’t very tired all the time after the mountain of cognitive work that every interaction and activity requires.
I know now that I will become weaker at what I avoid, that what I run towards will strengthen in me. I know to listen to my body, but not so much that I convince myself I can’t do things or that I can’t push myself; not so much that I can use the concept of listening to my body as a weapon against my vitality.
One day, I hope to be a skilled enough writer to actually deserve editorial notes as beautifully written as the ones I received on this book. They gently guided me with the questions I was afraid to ask myself, and so I found myself, often, running towards dangers I hadn’t even identified were there. Nicole was also the first person, over a decade ago, who ever asked me if I’d considered writing a book. It unearthed a lifelong desire in me that I had almost buried.
Jaimie Donovan convinced me to switch gears and prioritize finishing this book on a walk in November 2019. Sometimes a walk with a good friend can be life-changing.
Dr. Michael (Micky) Collins and Anne Mucha and the team at the UPMC concussion clinic gave me my brain and my life back.
I have heard stories of many crew people on film sets (grips, electrics, drivers, wardrobe assistants, et cetera) who at various moments stood up for children and risked their own jobs in doing so. I have witnessed it myself more than once. Thank you for these courageous acts. Even if you didn’t succeed, the fact that you tried is remembered.
