“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
“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
Little Bristling Soul 