How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

I am not writing this to blame the men who have touched me when I was not aware enough to consent. Instead, I hope to place them, like pushpins, on a board of encounters that society has framed as acceptable. I do not know what I was like in these states, what I said, how I slurred. For much of my life, the idea of conflict scared me so much that I would do almost anything to avoid causing a scene. My priority was my pride, not my body. I do not know what I would rather believe: if these men thought I wanted it, if they knew I wasn’t there to consent, if they suspected at all and buried those concerns, if they didn’t care.

If I stretched out my memory of my life like a ribbon and held it up to the light, whole years would be threadbare: worn patches, rips, holes. In a way, this makes me feel relieved.

Almost every system we exist in is cruel, and it is our job to hold ourselves accountable to a moral center separate from the arbitrary ganglion of laws that, so often, get things wrong.