I almost got gang-raped when I was 22. The setting was a bus, and the conductor had tricked me into thinking the last stop would suit me better than the one I had in mind. I didn’t know that he, the remaining handful of passengers, and the driver, were all in this together. I have written about this here, and I have neither the energy nor the desire to revisit it.
Of course, my saying that I don’t want to revisit it does nothing. I revisit it every day. I cannot hear a specific accent on TV and films without recoiling. I cannot attend any event without knowing exactly where the exits are, and how and when and with whom I am getting home. I have lived by myself many times, and I have traveled to heaps of places by myself too, but I am always careful, always watchful of people around me, and when I return home or to the hotel, I check behind every curtain, every door, and stay on the phone with someone, always, always, always. Because it just takes one time for your world to shift completely, and it doesn’t matter what you are wearing, what you look like, what you say or do or eat or drink or inhale.
Yesterday morning, I woke up to yet another story of unimaginable violence against a young woman. I have stopped reading the specifics of such cases. For the sake of my own sanity and functionality, I cannot stomach them because they play in a continuous loop inside my head. Is my attitude escapist? Am I being a coward? Am I running away without confronting the news? Am I dishonoring the human being to whom this was done?
For the longest time, I thought so too. So, I read, and read, and processed. No more. If my reading of fiction and nonfiction, and subsequent teaching of creative writing has taught me anything it is this…there is no end to what we are capable of doing to each other. We can’t bring back the life lost, but we can tell their stories, all their stories, and not just the one of how they were pulled apart at the seams and ended.
And that’s why we need to keep telling our stories as well, all of them, the good, the bad, the hopeless, and the hopeful.
Last year, in my Writing Horror class, on the first day, I asked my students, what horror could they see themselves capable of perpetrating. Nearly everyone said, if their friends and family were in danger, or if they saw vulnerable people under attack. That’s probably true for all of us. But I also don’t think the answer is that simple or straightforward. I ask myself this question often, what is the worst I can imagine doing to another human being. I don’t know the answer.
