Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

by Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (retail) (epub)

  . . .

  ME: You know, I really appreciate this. You could have just ignored me. So the fact that you texted me, and that you texted that you’d been in a self-editing loop, I realized, Oh, maybe he will talk to me about what happened.

  HIM: I had actually been sitting in a Gmail panic, trying to think up something to say, for like a couple hours.

  ME: I hope this is somewhat helpful for you to talk about.

  HIM: I think that it is, actually. More than I thought it would be. I wasn’t sure how angry you were with me, or I didn’t know what position you were coming from.

  ME: One of my concerns was that I didn’t want to upset you too much. There’s a weird power thing going on. I didn’t want to be hurtful.

  HIM: I think we both have a tendency of doing that. Multiple iterations of projecting the other person’s feelings.

  ME: I hope you know that I don’t hate you, or anything like that. I just didn’t think our friendship could survive it.

  HIM: I felt the same way.

  ME: So I hope it’s helpful for you to know that I believe you’re a good guy.

  HIM: That’s nice of you to say, all things considered.

  ME: Well, I was worried that if you Googled me and figured out that I was a writer, you wouldn’t talk to me. I mean, I wouldn’t talk to me. I wouldn’t trust a writer.

  HIM: I have to say, I read your book in one sitting and then I couldn’t sleep. I just sort of sat with my thoughts for the next eight hours. You know, it’s just tough to be—my contribution to your story is mental illness.

  ME: Well, you understand—

  HIM: It’s just tough. I’m not blaming you for that or saying that’s unfair.

  ME: What I mean is, what happened was, sure, hurtful, but I already was having a hard time.

  HIM: I don’t blame myself for you having mental illness. It’s just tough to be part of it.

  ME: If it helps you to know, I’ve already written about forty or fifty pages of fond memories of us. That wasn’t hard to do, actually. I really want to write about us, about our friendship.

  HIM: If you feel strongly about it, I think you should.

  ME: Is it okay for us to talk? Would you be okay talking again?

  HIM: Yeah, I mean, the hard part is over, or the hardest part.

  ME: You have no idea how happy this makes me. I want to understand the larger question of how it’s possible to be a good person who—

  HIM: Does terrible things.

  ME: Well, and it was one thing, and I think that’s what was kind of heartbreaking for me. It was this one night. And otherwise, though, we were such good friends. You know how I would get so depressed in high school. It just meant a lot to have someone close.

  HIM: We were coming from very similar places. We were both incredibly depressed. At various times.

  I HOPE IT’S HELPFUL FOR YOU

  I annoy myself: I really appreciate this and I hope this is somewhat helpful for you to talk about and I didn’t want to be hurtful and I hope you know that I don’t hate you and I hope it’s helpful for you to know that I believe you’re a good guy and If it helps you to know and (this is the second time I’ve said this) It was this one night. I didn’t realize I did this so much.

  I’m too embarrassed to share this transcript with anyone, which is why I should share it.

  . . .

  HIM: I remember being suicidal at age twelve, which is probably not healthy. I think I’ve had severe untreated depression most of my adult life.

  ME: Did you see someone ever?

  HIM: I briefly had a therapist. I think that was after I dropped out of college for a couple months, and there were a couple of stretches when I was on various antidepressants, but mostly it’s been untreated. And it’s not as severe as it used to be. It’s the kind of thing where—I don’t want to get too dark.

  ME: I can totally do dark. You know I can do dark.

  HIM: Right. I mean, I never—I always assumed I would kill myself. That was my underlying assumption, that at some point I would kill myself. And as I got older, that just became what I was definitely going to do, and then if I was going to stick around, I needed to have some sort of a life. That’s sort of when I thought about going back to school. So here I am. Not dead.

  ME: That’s good. I’m glad.

  RAPE AS AN ASIDE

  I reread the early drafts of Hannah’s essay, and I’m embarrassed by my written comments: How the ending—which is about 2016 being the loneliest year she’s ever known—feels too rushed. How the timeline—of rape, hospitalizations, and trip to Israel—is confusing: You’re asking the reader to jump around too much. I wrote compliments as well—because the essay is beautiful.

  Be hard on me, she said in my office. I want to make this really good.

  Later that day, after an afternoon of student meetings, I brought one of her classmates to the evening graduate class I taught because the student seemed suicidal and the counseling center was closed. I wanted her to consider the hospital, but she couldn’t decide whether it was necessary.

  Months prior, she’d been raped.

  In my university office, on a shelf above my desk, sits a blue vintage typewriter, a gift from two former students. They shipped it to Baltimore from a FedEx in Portland, Oregon. Before I even opened the box and read the three-page letter, I started crying from gratitude.

  Both of those students had been raped.

  One of them came to me the day after her rape. The rapist’s fraternity brothers had watched him rape her.

  I reported the rape to campus authorities, but the student didn’t pursue charges. She didn’t want her boyfriend to blame her.

  Nearby hangs a scarf that a different student knit for me.

  She also had been raped in a fraternity house. The next morning, she left the house with bruises on her legs. She wrote about the rape in an essay.

  She must have been drugged, she explained, because she didn’t even have a full glass of wine.

  But rape was not the main point of her essay. The rape was an aside.

  Rape as an aside.

  What stories do the men tell themselves? Is rape an aside for most of them?

  My editor calls, and I share those questions with her.

  I feel like every time I talk about this project, she says, with a girlfriend or even an acquaintance, they tell me they’ve been assaulted or raped. Most women know someone who has been raped—usually many someones. It makes me wonder: Do most guys know a guy who has raped someone? If not, who is doing the raping? We know it’s not just strangers and guys who end up in jail. It really bothers me that we’re at the same parties. Many of us have the same group of friends, yet the women are the only ones walking away, knowing about the rapes that occur. How’s that possible?

  I think about Jake inviting Mark and me to the same party two years after the assault. Maybe, instead of thinking that Mark and I had resolved things, Jake had simply forgotten about the assault.

  Amber would forget about that night.

  Years and years after Mark assaulted me, Amber called. I hadn’t spoken with her in at least five years, ever since I declined her wedding invitation. She’d hired my first boyfriend as the photographer. (I’m sorry, I told her. I just can’t be near him. And she told me, You’re being unreasonable.)

  She asked if I was still in touch with anyone. I said no.

  Not even Mark? she asked.

  Do you remember what he did to me? I said.

  What are you talking about?

  That night, I told her, when I came to you crying. After he assaulted me.

  When was this? she asked.

  More than ten years ago, I said. At the house he shared with Jake and Jake’s uncle.

  She turned quiet.

  I’m sorry, she said.

  I wanted to ask: Sorry that you forgot? Or sorry that you still can’t remember?

  For years, I tried to forget that night. But the more I tried to forget, the more I reme
mbered. I can still see Mark standing above me in the dark basement, slowly undressing me. I can still hear his lie: It’s just a dream.

  The clichéd ending writers are told to avoid.

  . . .

  HIM: No imminent plans to kill myself here.

  ME: Okay, good. It’s strange being a professor now. I mean, it’s hard—because I know my students have so much going on, and sometimes they tell me their other professors don’t understand, or they think these kids are making things up. One of my students, she recently killed herself. I was supposed to see her this past week, actually.

  HE’S NOT OFF THE HOOK

  I tell my therapist, Adam, that I can’t stop thinking about Hannah.

  If you had held on to that idea when Hannah was still alive, Adam says, that she wasn’t okay or wasn’t over it—though she said that she was—would it have been different?

  It’s not that it would have changed what happened, I tell him, but it says something about my carelessness at the time. To not have seen my student’s depression. I feel ignorant.

  This isn’t meant to sting, Adam says, but it’s inevitably going to sting a bit, but I just want to see if I can open your mind to a different angle. I think there are times when you reflect on—let’s use your first boyfriend, how you’ve told me that he came from a broken home and he’d threaten to kill himself and somehow it felt like your responsibility to stay with him. I don’t know, there are probably a number of examples in your life where you feel drawn to that thinking. It doesn’t feel like it inside of you—even though I’m not inside of you, I know that it doesn’t feel like it—but it’s kind of like a grandiosity. It has more of a feeling of compassion, like a need to help. And maybe you think, Fuck you, I’m not grandiose. But it doesn’t feel like that. The idea is that you become a linchpin to somebody else’s survival.

  That doesn’t sting, I tell him. I think it’s accurate.

  The grandiosity that I see in you sometimes manifests in helping others, not in helping yourself. It’s an alternate universe; when you’re doing things for you, it never happens. When you feel like you need to do something for others, that’s usually when the grandiosity kicks in. Yours is usually wrapped up in guilt or a sense of duty.

  What about the situation with Mark? I ask Adam. The only person who can really forgive him in this instance is me—because I’m the one he hurt. He can only get resolution from hearing from me and talking to me and feeling like he can help me. Is that grandiosity?

  A little, Adam says. Because actually, it’s not up to you. If he wants to get himself off the hook, he has to do that himself. For you to think that if you grant him forgiveness—and it’s not lip service, let’s say you have to do some earnest and deep work to try to actually forgive him—to think that if you’re doing that, then he’s off the hook? He’s not. I can tell you that right now. He may appreciate that forgiveness, and you may feel more free. But he’s not off the hook—because he’s got to live with his psyche. Whatever he works on or doesn’t work on, that’s up to him. So you’re not doing that for him.

  . . .

  ME: I didn’t want this to be upsetting for you. That’s why when I texted you, I said that I was very happy to hear from you. Because again, I can’t say it enough, I do think you’re a good person.

  HIM: I’m sorry to keep not giving you a response to that, but compliments are still hard for me.

  ME: I feel bad, taking up your Friday night.

  HIM: I don’t have plans.

  ME: Do you live alone?

  HIM: I live alone. I have a little studio apartment.

  ME: Are you still in touch with a lot of people from high school?

  HIM: Probably the only person I talk to from high school in the last three or four years is Carlos. We were close for a while. We’re not as close as we used to be. He lives just two miles from me.

  ME: I fell out of touch with pretty much everybody. And then I deleted Facebook.

  HIM: I didn’t like who I was, and so I didn’t want to be in touch with anyone who knew me that way. Even more than just people grow apart in their twenties, I chose not to hang on to those friendships.

  ME: Amber reached out to me some years ago. We chatted. We hadn’t talked for a while, and that was on me. It’s hard if you haven’t talked to someone for a while. How do you explain, Well, I fell out of touch because I just got out of the psych ward?

  HIM: And that’s a tough one.

  ME: Yeah. Though Amber was cool. She’d be understanding.

  HIM: I haven’t talked to her in so long.

  ME: She had asked if I had talked to you in a while. I said, No, I think stuff got too awkward, and she asked why. And I said, Do you remember? And she didn’t remember. That was hard. Sometimes these things that are traumatic for you, when other people don’t remember, it’s strange.

  HIM: Yeah, I can see that.

  ME: But yeah, so you haven’t talked to her in a while.

  HIM: No, it’s been years and years. Like I said, I sort of lost touch with everybody.

  ME: I worried that everybody thought—and this is probably a self-involved thing to think, because probably no one was thinking about me—but I worried that everybody thought I’d gotten snobby after I left Ohio. But really, well, you read the book. I was having such a hard time. It was easier to just avoid people.

  HIM: Which I can totally understand.

  ME: So yeah, I just lost touch with everybody. Well, it really means a lot. I hope it was helpful, for you to know I don’t hate you.

  HIM: Yeah, I mean, that’s good.

  ME: Really, I just felt awkward about it all. And sad.

  HIM: It’s a stupid way for a friendship to end. It’s totally understandable, but regrettable is a more accurate way to put it.

  ME: Someone asked me earlier, What are you doing later today, and I said, Oh, just catching up with a friend. And that’s how it came out. Not a former friend or anything like that. Just, a friend.

  HIM: A friend I used to know.

  ME: Yeah, so.

  HIM: It’s actually really good to talk to you. I mean, it is, it is nice to catch up. I was terrified of how this conversation was going to go. And I’m glad that it’s gone this way.

  ME: And I’m glad that you’re open to this. Not just because I’m writing about this. I mean, I was talking to my editor. I told her that this is what I want to do. And I told her that I want to protect your identity. I would run it by you, and if you want me to change things, I will.

  HIM: I kind of feel like you have the right. So I don’t want to limit what you’re trying to do.

  ME: Let me tell you, not many people would tell a writer that.

  HIM: I mean, it’s things that happened.

  MORTIFIED ISN’T STRONG ENOUGH

  Hearing myself thank Mark for talking to me about sexually assaulting me, I don’t know how to describe the feeling it induces. Mortified isn’t strong enough.

  I laugh when transcribing him saying, And I’m glad that it’s gone this way.

  Of course he was glad the conversation went the way it did. I repeatedly told him he’s such a good person. And why did I need to convince myself of this? Or him of this? Does it go back to needing to believe I was never wrong to trust him? Or do I simply want my friend back?

  Or is it a bunch of reasons I’ll never understand?

  And why did I offer to run this manuscript by him? Maybe he’ll forget I ever offered. How many times have I offered now?

  Though it sounds like he won’t ask: I don’t want to limit what you’re trying to do.

  If he wants to read the manuscript before it’s published, he’ll need to ask me. I like the idea of making him ask. And then I like the idea of telling him no. But I wonder if I’d be capable of refusing to show him the manuscript. I think I’d feel too guilty because I already offered.

  I reread the opening pages, the If He Says No and If He Says Yes sections. I sounded angry. Where did that anger go? Was I pretending to
be angry—because angry is how I’m expected to feel?

  I ask Chris, Have I ever expressed anger about Mark?

  Just pain, Chris says. Hurt.

  . . .

  ME: Honestly, really, you’re a good person. I mean that. I know you’re not good at compliments. So if you want to ignore awkwardly, that’s fine.

  HIM: Thank you.

  ME: When I talked to my partner, Chris, I said, I really hope Mark says yes. And Chris said, He probably will because he feels bad.

  HIM: That Chris guy sounds smart. He might be a keeper.

  ME: He is. I feel very lucky. I feel very lucky.

  HIM: Well, I’m happy for you.

  ME: Thanks. I can let you go.

  AN ACCUSE

  Last night’s nightmare: I play myself in a high school play. I perform in the wings, dramatically studying for a physics exam. I turn textbook pages furiously and highlight them in angry swooping gestures. I bury my face in my hands. After the applause, I ask my art teacher: No one could see me, could they? He says, No, but the crowd loved it. Next, I am running through the high school. My newspaper advisor stops me, asks, On your way to identify me? He smirks. I run.

  I wake up sweating next to Flannery and Bishop. I am guessing they refused to give Chris enough room in bed again. Sure enough, he’s in his office, asleep on his futon.

  I go into my office, sit on my daybed, hold my manuscript, stand, sit at my desk. What am I doing? I visit my hometown’s police department website. I request the investigation records about my newspaper advisor. I used to have them, but I threw away my copy years ago. What if I’m misremembering what I told the detectives? I need to get this right.

  I spend the rest of the morning and afternoon writing.

  Chris and I take my mom out for dinner. She asks how the book is going, though she does not press me on what it’s about. I tell her it’s going okay. I suggest we skip seeing a movie that night. Though we never planned to see a movie. It’s just something to say.