CHAPTER THREE
Chapter 2
Unanswerable Questions
Maggie
I stand up from the metal fold out chair and look around at the other dozen women seated in a circle around the room. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans as my eyes dart back and forth across their faces. My heart is beating so fast Im surprised they can’t hear it across the room. I take a deep breath and speak for the first time since I started coming to these meetings a month ago.
“Hi. My name is Maggie and I was…. raped.”
I whisper more than say that last word, but now its out there. I look around at the other women seated in the circle around me. None of them gasp out loud or make any kind of acknowledgment that my words have adversely affected them. Dr. Sasha, my psychiatrist, thought it would be a good way for me to see that life does go on. I have seen most of these women talk about what happened to them. Some are like me and just sit and listen. I told myself that I was going to speak today and I have, but as soon as I said that word. Rape. It’s like I didn’t have anymore to say. I look around and open my mouth to say more, but nothing comes out.
What else is there to say?
I sit back down and look at my hands. I feel like I did something wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything after all. Just when my anxiety is about to get the best of me I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I look up and the lady next to me is looking at me and smiling. She has this look of such utter understanding that it almost makes me want to cry. She gets it. I look around and I see that same understanding on all their faces.
They all get it.
I pause on a woman who looks to be in her late fifties, Marilyn. The first day she talked about how her father molested her and her sisters all throughout her childhood. She also heads the meeting and makes herself available as often as possible in case you need help, someone to talk to or just someone to sit with you.
“Honey the hardest part is saying that first sentence. Sometimes thats the most important thing you will ever say in here”
I look around and see more than half of the women nodding.
“You don’t have to say anything more than you need to honey. Sometimes we just need to say that one word. Later you will say more. That could be next meeting or twenty meetings from now. There are no expectations.”
Cassie, the blond girl about my age sitting next to her leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees as she speaks to me.
“It took me a year to say what you just said. To admit out loud that I was raped. It takes time to work up the courage to get past those feelings of shame and embarrassment. To look around and see that the women around you will never judge you for what someone else has done to you. ”
She has spoken quite a few times since I have started coming here so the fact that she came for so long without talking is a huge surprise. I guess because it feels like they all have a handle on this better than I do, but she’s right.
I’m embarrassed.
I’m ashamed.
I still feel dirty.
All these months later and I don’t want to admit to another person that I was weak. That I failed in protecting myself. Even though I know now how toxic and untrue those statements are. It doesn’t keep you from thinking it. Telling yourself that those things aren’t true and having a support system that reinforces how wrong those statements are helps. It helps you move past that embarrassment and the shame. To acceptance or at least get on the road to acceptance.
“Do you have any questions for any of us Maggie?”
I look over at Merilyn and I ask the only question I have been able to not find an answer for since it happened.
“Why me?”
Silence.
I look around at the other women in the room and some are shaking their heads. Others are just staring off lost in their own memories.
You can’t answer someone else’s question that you can’t answer for yourself first. Looking around I know that the answer to that one question is something that will haunt each of us. No matter how much we talk, how much we move past what happened or even how much time has passed. That question is unanswerable because no answer will ever be enough in explaining why someone ripped apart your soul and violated your body.
When you ask that question you expect a definitive answer.
There is no answer to why someone rapes.
There are reasons, but not answers.
Thats one of the hardest parts.
Knowing you will never really know why something happened to you. Only that it did and its your job to pick up the pieces of yourself that someone else carelessly shattered and left on the ground.
The most important question you need answered and it there is no answer.
What the fuck do you do with that?
**********
“Thats the last box”.
I look up and see dad walking into the kitchen folding up the last moving box. We have technically been in this house for about six months, but it seems like it took us way longer to unpack than it should have considering there are just two of us. After I got out of Hillcrest Dad brought me to Houston, Texas. He started making the arrangements a couple of months before I was released. He worked it out so that everything was moved and ready to go when I got out. I’ve been here, my new home, for almost eight weeks now and I’m still not used to how drastically different Houston is from where we used to live in Denver, Colorado.
When I say the difference is like night and day what I really mean is I went from living in a perpetual freezer to an oven, but I’m kind of loving it. An hour away from the beach and there are so many things to do. Plus shorts and tank top whether year round whats not to love? Well, I could do without the 100% humidity on a daily basis and the traffic is borderline psychotic, but hey so far its working.
So far so good.
The whole point of us moving here was so that I could continue seeing Dr. Sasha and get as far away from my past as I could. I was hospitalized and moved to Hilcrest which is about 15 minutes outside of Houston because of my Dad. He wanted me treated by someone he trusted and that someone was here. At the time I was too out of it to really understand what was happening, but now I know. He made this move so I can have stability in a place so far removed from where I used to live and who I used to be. It’s hard living in a place and healing when everywhere you look you see things and people that remind you of who you used to be or what happened to you. Here we both have a fresh start without the bad memories. I think my dad needed me to have a fresh start more than he did. We have always moved around a lot so we had only been in Colorado for a couple of years before everything happened. Before HE happened.
“What time is your appointment with Dr. Sasha?”
I pick up the sandwiches I made for lunch and take them over to the little table in the corner of the kitchen. It’s not a huge kitchen but its completely updated and the table sits right in-front of this huge window that overlooks the pool in the backyard. Defiantly more relaxing than staring out a bar covered window. We sit down and I pull out my pill box and get out my pills.
“Two o’clock. She said she had to meet with her husband and talk about the self defense class.”
“You sure this is something you want to do? You’re going to have to train hand to hand Mags. Close physical contact. Are you sure you can handle that?”
I look up from my medication and see my dad looking at the pills as well. I know he’s scared. Hell, I’m petrified, but learning how to defend myself is going to be a big step for me. I need it. I need some semblance of control over my own safety. I wasn’t prepared before and it broke me in more ways than one. So I tell him the only thing I can. The only thing that makes sense.
“I need this.”
He looks up at me then and I can see the fear. The fear that Im not ready, I’ll have a set-back or that next time he won’t find me in time. I know because I have all those same fears. The one thing I have learned above all else this past year is that if you let fear run your life then there isn’t much of a life for you to live. So you decide to either end it all tougher or push at the fear until you beat it back. I made the wrong decision. I wasn’t strong enough then to make the right one. That’s how I ended up in a mental institution. That’s why I thought I would be better off dead than alive.
Fear is an overwhelming monster that takes over your life. Fear of safety. Fear of darkness. Fear of being attacked. Fear of everything and anything. When it takes over it obliterates that part of you that hopes and dreams. It overshadows the world around you so all that you see is that dark cloud hanging above. When your world is smothered in fear and darkness. When pain is your constant companion.
You start to think there is only way out.
The only way to stop it is to end it.
For good.
Thats what I thought at least. If it hadn’t been for a persistent roommate who needed to use the bathroom in our dorm I would be dead right now. Once I was in the hospital they called my father and within the week I was committed to a mental institution. At the time I hated him for it. I refused to have any contact with him for weeks after they started letting me have visitors again.
That’s what he is afraid of.
Me disappearing inside myself again.
Pushing him away.
Not being able to bring me back again. I look in his eyes and I see it. That fucking fear that follows you, that grabs hold and won’t let go.
Reaching across the table I grip his hand in mine. He looks down at our hands and then back up at me. With more conviction than I feel I squeeze his hand and say it again so that he believes it.
“I need this.”
He looks at me for a long moment and I see that fear slowly start to ebb away. It won’t ever disappear, not after he came so close to losing me, but I can give him this. I can help lessen that fear. After a minute he lets out a big sigh and squeezes my hand before giving me a small smile.
“Whatever you need kiddo.”
*******
I’m sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Saha’s office, waiting for her to come down and get me when this the girl in the seat next to me drops her purse and everything falls out. Considering she looks like she is carrying around a purse that could pass for carry-on luggage it’s a lot of stuff.
“Do you need some help?”
I get down on the floor next to her and start picking stuff up and handing it to her. She looks up at me and smiles. She has red hair, pale skin and freckles covering her nose and cheeks. She has on this white tank top and skinny jeans tucked into some knee length leather boots. How someone can wear long pants, let alone with leather boots, in this weather is beyond me but damn this girl really can pull it off.
“Thanks. Sorry about that. You don’t have to help. I’m dropping this thing all the time.”
“No biggie. Here you go,” I say handing her back a hand full of colored pens, two tampons, a glow stick and a package of catnip. I’m so tempted to ask her why the hell she has glow sticks and catnip in her purse when I see her finish picking up a lunch container that looks like it has screws and nails in it, a wrapped up pickle and if I’m not mistaken she just shoved a bullet vibrator into her purse when she though nobody was looking. She looks up and catches my eye and blushes almost the same color as her strawberry red hair.
Yep.
Defiantly a vibrator.
I wonder if she is here to talk to Dr. Sasha too.
If not she might consider it.
“It’s really not what it looks like.”
Before I can stop myself I bust out laughing, the poor girl looks horrified and I really just can’t help myself. She flushes even more red, which I didn’t think was possible and slowly starts shaking her head back and forth before she starts laughing too.
I give her a smile and hold out my hand while we are both still crouched on the floor.
“Maggie.”
She smiles, but still has a look of utter embarrassment on her face as she reaches over and shakes my hand smiling.
“Charolette, but my friends call me Char. Nice to meet you Maggie. Thanks for helping me pick up all this… stuff.”
We pull our hands apart laughing when a shadow falls over us and I look up to see Dr. Sasha looking down at us smiling. I didn’t even notice her walk into the waiting room. She looks more amused at finding us both crouched on the floor introducing ourselves to each other.
“Maggie I’m ready for you.”
Me and Charolette get up and I’m just about to tell her to have a nice day when she pulls out her phone.
“Hey give me your number. Maybe we could get together and have coffee or something while I explain my purse and how I’m most defiantly not into any kind of cat fetish or anything.”
Before I know it I’m bust out laughing once again. This girl is unreal. Shaking my head I reach for her phone and put in my number. I have to say that I am more than curious as to how this girl stocks her purse and why. I hand it back to her and pick up my own purse off the floor getting ready to go upstairs with Dr. Sasha.
“Call or text anytime. I just moved here so it will be nice knowing someone here other than my dad.”
Charolette lets out a laugh and pockets her phone.
“I will defiantly text you. Nice meeting you Maggie and thanks for helping me. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. See you later.”
I turn around and head up the stairs with Dr. Sasha. She waits till we get to her office and sit down before she says anything. Which I’m thankful for. It wasn’t until I walked away that I realized that I gave out my personal information to a stranger without a seconds hesitation. And I laughed. I freaking laughed. I haven’t done that in… I don’t know how long. I didn’t feel awkward or afraid or wary. Which are things I carry with me on a daily basis.
“How did that feel?”
I look up from my seat on Dr. Sasha’s couch to see her sitting across from me just smiling.
“How did what feel?”
“How did it feel to have someone want to get to know you not because of what happened to you, but because they like who you are?”
I take a minute and just digest that moment with Charolette. After what happened when I was at Yale I knew I wouldn’t have any friends going back so for the past year its just been pretty much me, dad and the people I lived with at the mental hospital. I don’t even remember what its like to have a friend. Apart of me wants to just ignore it and say I don’t have time for friends right now. Im trying to figure out how to go about my life from day to day. Work through my issues. I should be focused on me not a social life, but it was nice. Having a laugh with someone. Meeting someone who didn’t already know the most intimate details of my life. Could I make a friend? Should I?
‘Its scary, but its also … nice?”
“Whats scary about it?”
“Being friends means you open yourself up. I’m not sure that’s something I’m prepared to do.”
“Why?”
“People disappoint you.”
She makes some notes in her notebook and looks back at me and I know she is about to hit me with one of those questions.
“Are you worried about her being a disappointment, not being a good friend, or are you more worried that you will be the disappointment?”
I sit there for a second full well knowing it’s the latter.
“Once people find out your deep dark secrets they look at you differently, act differently around you and more importantly they see you as broken. I don’t want that from anyone I meet, let alone someone who has the potential to be a friend. I don’t want to be the broken rape victim thats gets looked at with pity and sympathy. I just want to be me. I just want to be Maggie. Not Maggie the rape victim. I’m starting to think that won’t ever happen. Like there is no separation between being me and what happened to me. Lets be honest, how much fun is the depressed, anxiety ridden, and formally suicidal rape victim going to be?“
Dr. Sasha sits there for a second thinking about what I said. Then she leans forward and looks me in the eye.
“Maggie. What is more important to you, not having others see you as a victim or not seeing yourself as one?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She smiles and sits back in her chair and asks me a question I have asked myself a thousand times.
“I mean, when you look in the mirror what do you see? Maggie or a rape victim or something else entirely?”
I sit there and think about how to answer that. I have been trying for months now. Every time I look in the mirror and see a shell of the girl I used to be I ask myself the same question, who am I now? Deciding to be honest I answer with the only thing I have been able to come up with.
“I don’t know who I am or if I even really want the answer to that question.”
Dr. Sasha makes notes in her notebook and then looks back up at me. She appraises me for a minute before she speaks again.
“Maybe you aren’t the Maggie you where. Maybe you aren’t just a rape victim. Did you ever stop to think that maybe the girl who is sitting across from me is both of those and more? Your still you Maggie and yes, you were raped, among other horrible things, but you survived. The girl sitting before me is a survivor. A warrior. A fighter, even if she doesn’t know it. You don’t give yourself enough credit Maggie, but maybe one day, you will.”
With every word I got more and more choked up and by the end I could feel tears sliding down my cheeks. It wasn’t so much what she said, but how she said it. The truth I could hear in her words. Reaching up and wiping my face with the back of my hands I tried to stem the flow of tears, but the next thing I knew the tears multiplied and I was sobbing. Ugly, gasping sobs. I closed my eyes and covered my face.
I don’t know if it was voicing my own concerns about not knowing who I was. Trying to figure out how to even go about answering that question or if it was that moment of realization that I did survive.
I survived a lot.
I’m here.
I’m alive.
What more do I need from myself at this point?
I don’t feel strong or capable. I don’t feel like I could take on the world. I don’t feel overwhelming joy at the prospect of being stronger than I thought. I feel relief. Because for the first time in a very long time, I feel something warm and good inside of me. Something that makes me want more than the numbness. Something more than the routine of life. For the first time in such a long time, I wanted… more.
For so long I have just been trying to get through, get along, keep going. I never stopped and asked myself what I wanted. Hearing her call me a survivor, warrior and fighter. It made me want those things. It made me want to feel like I was all those things. God. For the first time I wanted something for me. That terrified me, because I didn’t want to lose that feeling. I wanted to keep wanting. I wanted to keep feeling. I knew this moment wouldn’t last, but the important thing was that I wanted it to.
After what seemed like forever I stopped sobbing. Dr. Sasha found me some tissues and I cleaned myself up. After getting me some water she sat back across from me.
“Sometimes it’s not what we want to hear that gets to us Maggie, sometimes its realizing that you want to be more.”
She kept it light after that.
We set up therapy for the next month and just as we were wrapping up she brought up the self-defense course I want to take at her husbands gym.
“I talked to Mike and he has one trainer available who can teach you. He has taught private self defense classes for other women who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault so he is familiar with triggers and the need to take things slow. He would need to schedule sessions in the early morning before work. Around 5 am would that work?”
I sit there and realize that I didn’t hear her say anything after the word “he”. “He” is going to train me? I though it was a woman?
“Wasn’t Pam going to teach me?”
“She was, but she broke her arm when she went hiking with her husband last week. Max will be your trainer. He is very trustworthy and has worked with victims of assault before. I know you have reservations about men which is completely understandable, but I already talked to your father and both he and Mike will be there during your sessions. If you want them in the room they can be or they can just hang out in Mike’s office while you work with Max, If you don’t think your ready that’s completely fine. It’s up to you.”
She says all of this very patiently and I know she means it. If I told her I wasn’t ready she would tell me that it’s okay and cancel the class, but I know I need this. My dad will be there and Mike will be there. Im terrified that is a huge mistake, but I need to try. For me. I want to try.
“Okay. Lets see how it goes,” I say with way more conviction than I feel. I mean I just came to a realization that I wanted something more out of life and now this curve ball? Fuck give me a break here.
She smiles and nods her head.
“Sure. There is just one more thing. In order for Max to put together a training plan he requested to know more information about what happened to you. I’m not going to tell him anything you don’t want me to tell him, but would it be ok if he knew that your were a victim of violent crime?”
Not only does she want me to be in close proximity to a man I don’t know, she wants me to touch him and have him know about my history. Is she trying to send me into nuclear meltdown mode? Seriously, like was her plan for therapy today to send me back to the fucking looney bin?
I close my eyes and do the deep breathing techniques I learned in yoga. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Focus on my breathing. When my heart isn’t pounding out of my chest and my breathing is almost normal I sit there with my eyes closed and think about it.
I would rather this guy, Max, know something about me so that he doesn’t hit one of my triggers the first time we meet. I do not want him knowing anything about me personally if I’m honest, but this is something I want and sharing a general assessment of what happened to me isn’t sharing my story. I take another deep breath and say the one thing I know I’m going to regret.
“Okay. When should I be there?”
“Mike set something up so that Max will have free time to meet you and your father tomorrow afternoon around two o’clock. It will be a quick meet and greet and you guys will work together a little just to see how things go on a trial class. Sound good?”
I nod my head and then the timer goes off on her phone indicating that our session is over. Turning it off she looks at me and smiles.
“You made a lot of progress today, Maggie. I’m proud of you. I hope you are proud of yourself as well. For homework I want you to focus on that. Write me out three things that you are proud of yourself for and we will talk about it Friday during our afternoon session. How does that sound?”
Again I nod and we both get up. After waving good-bye and going downstairs I realize that my life is defiantly about to change, whether I’m ready for it or not.
I walk outside and see dad in his truck waiting across the parking lot. I make my way over and climb in thinking about all the changes that are happening or could be happening. Am I ready for this?
Dad waits till I buckle my seatbelt before looking over at me and putting the truck in gear.
“Ready kiddo?”
Looking over at him I answer his question and mine.
“Yeah… I think I am.”