Becoming Unbecoming

Blaming the victim is an act of refuge and self-deception. It allows the blamer to sit in judgment, imagining some mystical justice that means bad things happen only to bad people, thus ensuring their own safety.

You're a survivor," they tell me. I understand it's meant kindly -- to be empowering -- but surviving has been -- what a waste of my valuable time surviving has been! Hours, days, years, decades! So much time struggling. Precious energy spent, managing the damage so that I can live my life. In a different landscape I might have put that time and energy to better use. ... I don't want to seem ungrateful, I'm glad to be alive, to have a life; but I wonder who I would have been, had I not been interrupted so rudely?

But you know, there is nothing to be afraid of in the dark... That doesn't also exist in the light.

I have to wonder why so much courage is expected of girls and women in this world. So much daily bravery in the world, and yet...how would we know? It goes unsaid. Imagine the volume, were we to hear the sound of all those voices at once. We have to listen for them. Otherwise we are united only by silence.

I may indeed be brave, but maybe that's missing the point.

There was another slut in my school, I heard some boys shout it at her in the corridor. I never got to talk to her about it, but I thought she was beautiful.

What a waste of my valuable time surviving has been!