Before We Were Innocent

by Ella Berman

People in your life will want to shame you, to keep you in your old habits and dysfunctions because you’re easier to predict that way. They’ll want to keep you trapped on autopilot, an eternal victim of your own trauma, because you’re easier to control that way. But I want to tell you that we deserve so much more.

“Ev was so much more than an angel. She was a teenage girl.”

as if punishing us and locking us up would keep their own daughters from drinking and partying and from believing they were owed the world.

“But that was because we were so shockingly depraved, don’t you know?” “Well, here’s to being a depraved heathen,” I say, a smile creeping across my lips too, and I can tell that I’ve finally shocked Joni by the way she chokes a little on her coffee.

“May they

know us, may they loathe us, may they fear us.”