I haven’t told you this yet, but when I was six and my parents were shopping around for lessons, it was a tossup between ballet or karate. I mean, I’d watched The Karate Kid, and I was hooked. I wanted my own training montage of kicks against a blood-red sunset. Yes, please. I asked my fatherContinue reading “An Abuse of Power”
Tag Archives: trauma
Kitty
The winter I am six years old, I meet a cat. She will determine the shape of my life, but of course I don’t know this yet. She is standing atop a fence in three inches of snow. In my amazement, I drop the snowball in my mittened hands. My plans for a snowman areContinue reading “Kitty”
After the Assault
I begin to have panic attacks in the dance studio. I have been dancing for seven years, but now, suddenly, I can’t. I can’t go to auditions. I begin to skip the occasional class. In the studio, I can’t stand the sight of myself in the mirror. In my maroon leotard and pink tights, I lookContinue reading “After the Assault”
Shut into the Dark
In the early 1970s, Martin Seligman led experiments on learned helplessness. He tested whether you could abuse dogs to a point where they just gave up. The answer is of course you can. One group of dogs was given electric shocks they could easily end by pressing a lever. Another group was given shocks theyContinue reading “Shut into the Dark”
The Body Tells the Truth
I am sitting in social studies class a month or two into seventh grade. Suddenly, I cannot see Mrs. Johnson’s face. It is like someone has pressed a thumb over my vision and smudged the center of it. A smudged thumbprint where her face should be. I try to keep taking notes. I am aContinue reading “The Body Tells the Truth”
When Post-Traumatic Stress Begins
I wish I could tell you that was the end of it. I held an umbrella and felt strong, and suddenly I was better. There. All better now. A band-aid. A blessing. And I was all set to go. But that isn’t how trauma works. I am 12, and I don’t yet know that justContinue reading “When Post-Traumatic Stress Begins”
The Aftermath
The next memories I can place with any certainty are in the last month of sixth grade. I am with my best friends, Heidi and Christine, girls whose lives hold their own traumas. We have completed our end-of-year projects—my purple rocket with a Lego monkey inside the capsule, books we have written and will presentContinue reading “The Aftermath”
The First Assault
My father had been my ally in the family. True, he’d done some weird shit. When I was in preschool, my mother’s cat had turned up dead in the storage room where he kept his tools. He never explained how he hadn’t noticed her starving in there. When I was five, I told him IContinue reading “The First Assault”
Prelude to the Assaults
CONTAINS TRIGGERING CONTENT To begin a story is necessarily to omit. If I begin my story of assault at age 12 with my father’s attack, then I am omitting my mother’s physical abuse. I am leaving out the fact that my earliest memories are full of violence not from men, but from a woman. AContinue reading “Prelude to the Assaults”
Breaking Open the Story
CONTAINS TRIGGERING CONTENT Over the next few months, I am going to tell my story of assault and healing. Here. On this blog. I have survived nine assaults by men, the first at age 12 and the last at age 31. All of my attackers were friends or family whom I loved, trusted, and caredContinue reading “Breaking Open the Story”
The Trailer Park MFA 