I Know Where You Live

by Gregg Olsen

“It was a slap,” I say defensively. “I didn’t hit you.”

JUST a slap????

And, Mom, if I ever get married, which I hope I never do, I’m not wearing your ugly fucking dress either.”

My family should have opened a mini-storage. Compartmentalizing things has always been our superpower.

“I think that’s what they do, Mark,” I tell him. “A hospital is a good place for that kind of thing.”

To be a survivor is a made-up convention designed to make us live within the confines of the law.

The truth is surviving childhood trauma isn’t the same thing as living.”

Would he love me if he knew what happened to me? Would he love me if he knew what I was thinking just then?

When bad things happened, she had a way of pushing them aside with a distraction meant to make things better. Don’t look here. Look here. When you think happy thoughts, you become happy. The Power of Positive Thinking is her second bible. Norman Vincent Peale is her Pope. What a sack of bullshit.

“Having nothing can be a source of imagination or the rope around your neck. You get to choose. And frankly, girls, you have a lot more choices than I ever had.”

Like my family ignores everything.

“Nothing is right about this,” her mother, Kara Lee, said. “He served only ten years and she’s served a lifetime sentence, then a death sentence. Her life was a mess. And his? Well, he’s started over. We tried a hundred times to start over. Nothing worked.”

“She would not have been this kind of person if he hadn’t done those things to her. She trusted no one. Not even us. She killed herself because it was the only way to find peace.”

I know what it is like to be without the ability to truly believe or trust another person. I have been without it almost all my life.

Knowing what someone had done changes how you see them.

It isn’t Prada that the devil wears but a smile that belies the truth of his intent.

“Monsters take all forms.”

“What happened is always going to be part of my story. It was only after he died that I didn’t have to worry about it catching up with me, tearing at me. It was like what he did, the shame he brought to me, had become permanently dormant. There, but not threatening to rear up.”

“You’re not a child now.” Her tone was firm. Not cold but matter-of-fact. “You choose to be powerless now, Violet. It’s really that simple.”

“I agree with Ellie. You are a grown woman, Violet. That you are here speaks to your courage and your desire to find a way forward after what happened to you. You know, how not to make it define every moment that passes. Consider yourself lucky. I didn’t understand that until I was fifty-three.”

you get to choose now. Who you are. What’s important to you. And what silence does.”

“A good man doesn’t molest little girls, and men like your husband are incapable of changing.”

What in the world does closure really mean? I know it’s meant to bring someone solace or comfort after a tragedy, but it’s a milestone that eludes me and many other survivors of sexual abuse.

I’m not interested in a battery-powered sex life. I just want to be held and loved.

Divide and conquer has been my approach. I like my parents better when they aren’t pretending to be happy together.

In fact, we were allies in that regard. Mom was annoying.

I’m never going to have children of my own. In fact, I’m getting my tubes tied when I’m twenty-one.

Maddy is my best friend because she just lets me be me. She doesn’t suck me dry like a vampire.

And just as it did back then, telling her would leave a mark.

My sister’s scar. And that’s not mine to reveal.

I find myself latching on to the word “lifesaver.” That’s what I want to be. To save some girls from having to wonder if their abuser is around the corner, waiting for one more time. To give them their lives back.

so damn hard being replaced.

I waited for the other shoe to drop. My mother thought that hurtful words could be weakened by a compliment given beforehand.

I think about how, for the longest time, I had wondered if I’d been wrong about what happened to me.

Sometimes men get a little grabby when they drink too much. It doesn’t mean a thing.

That doesn't make it okay!!! WTF????

That one made me believe that I wasn’t a good person for not forgiving and forgetting something that hadn’t been his fault.

My parents were distracted by a toxic and failing marriage.

Mom had a way of disarming me, even when I’d promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn’t succumb. I’m not some dog on the floor waiting for a belly rub.

Rather than say that she was sorry, she deflected her responsibility—something she’d tell her students repeatedly was the worst possible thing anyone could ever do.

“Look what you made me do, Lily. You girls know how to push my buttons.”

Ughhh this is so triggering!!!!

For every member of that sad group of abuse survivors she meets with in Tacoma—all of them have been fucked over by silence.

My coworker, my friend, is a moron.

“Only a victim knows the lasting damage of what these men do. People will mouth words saying that they care, and on some level, they might. Who wouldn’t agree that molestation or rape is among the vilest things one human can do to another? In the end, the only ones who really know are those who have experienced it.”

Mom will tell me to make sure I watch what I eat so I don’t get the dreaded “freshman fifteen.” Mom refuses to deal with anything above her limited emotional pay grade. She doesn’t have the temerity for confrontation.

Why give me another example of her not standing her ground? She had only one job to do—keep Papa from coming and ruining everything.