Tag: rape

“For months after my assault, I had to stop myself before saying (what seemed accurate at the time), ‘I was murdered in France last summer’” 

—-Susan J. Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self, xii

“I am not the same person who set off, singing, on that sunny Fourth of July in the French countryside. I left her in a rocky creek bed at the bottom of a ravine. I had to in order to survive.” 

—ibid, 21

ugh relate relate relate

“Although I had been primed, since childhood, for the experience of rape, when I was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground I initially had no idea what was happening. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I first experienced the assault as a highly unrealistic nightmare from which I tried to wake up.” 

—Susan J. Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self

“When the inconceivable happens, one starts to doubt even the most mundane, realistic perceptions. Perhaps I’m not really here, I thought, perhaps I did die in that ravine. The line between life and death, once so clear and sustaining, now seemed carelessly drawn and easily erased. For the first several months after my attack, I led a spectral existence, not quite sure whether I had died and the world went on without me, or whether I was alive in a totally alien world. […] I felt as though I’d somehow outlived myself.”
—ibid.: 8–9

Cassandra Among the Creeps

by Rebecca Solnit

Source: harpers.org

the kind of morning where I have listened to this ten times in a row

“I started starving myself, fucked up my bodily health
I didn’t wanna be attractive to nobody else
I didn’t want the appeal, wanted to stunt my own growth
But there’s a fucking reason behind every scar that I show…

My biggest problem was fear, and what being fearful could do
It made me run, it made me hide it made me scared of the truth
I’m not deranged anymore, I’m not the same anymore
I mean I’m sane but I’m insane but not the same as before”