Rise

by Paige VanZant

  But it’s the look on my father’s face the next morning that cuts through me the most. He sits slumped in the waiting area of the juvenile detention center, but when he sees me being escorted toward him by a policewoman, he leaps up from the chair and literally growls like a beast. Even the cop winces. He doesn’t even have words. It’s just a glare like a hatchet. After a session of paperwork being shuffled around, I’m handed back my purse. I can still smell the tequila on my shirt; by the look on Dad’s face, he can, too. His scowl is so pronounced he almost looks disfigured, and even though he hasn’t said a word, his thoughts blare at me.

  We get out to the parking lot and my father lunges at me. I know he’s not thinking rationally right now, and I don’t blame him. He’s fuming cuss words and threats, saying he’s going to beat the sense into me if he has to, chases me around the lot like a hound, weaving through the rows of cars until I finally stop, winded, and throw myself into his arms, sobbing with such intensity that I lose my voice. Through raspy cries I try to tell him how and why it happened, that I left the party to keep myself safe, that I had no intention of getting into the car when I did, that I would never drink and drive, that it was all because of Seth.

  But he doesn’t say a word to me in the car on the way home—or for the three weeks that follow. He basically drives me home as if transporting a sick horse to a more quarantined stable. I am told—via email—that I’m not to leave my room for ten days straight. Mom brings me my meals and my phone is taken from me. After ten days, I’m informed that I’m grounded for six additional months, during which I am allowed out only for school and—to my surprise—to train at the gym. I guess my parents want me to have something productive in my life, something far removed from idiots like Seth. Mom stays out of it, mostly because Dad tells her to leave me alone. But I can tell she wants to talk to me, to hear things from me.

  Using the force of my whole body, I pour all my anger out at the gym. I draw up the rage and release into the movements. I batter myself and the equipment around me. I have nowhere else to go. I have nowhere else to be. It almost feels like I have one job and one job only—be incensed. At the world. At myself. At Seth for being such a relentless psychopath. At my dad, for not understanding. And at my mom, for not standing up for me. Since I’m also not allowed to hang out with Alexa, I am alone with my fury. I am alone with the history of my pain. When I’m not in school I sit in my room and stew in all kinds of existential realizations. I trace my path. My choices. The consequences. I want to punch myself in the face.

  At my hearing, I try to sit in the courtroom with as much dignity as I can muster. Mom has picked out a pair of sensible trousers and a button-down shirt for me to wear, and my hair is gathered up into a neat ponytail. On the drive over to the courthouse none of us speak. At the trial, she and Dad sit behind me—she is teary eyed, and he is grumbling. Thank God Alexa is there, too. I feel relieved when I see that the judge is a woman, and even more so when I see the compassion in her eyes. Instead of judgment, I feel her empathy, this sense that she knows I got wrongfully caught up in a mistake. She seems less intent on punishing me than helping me. The solemnity of the courtroom softens when she speaks, and suddenly I feel grateful to be in the hands of a caring, powerful woman. She can tell right away from my testimony that I am nowhere near an alcoholic. She also knows, thanks to other court files in which my name has come up, that Seth has given me significant trouble in the past. And in a moment of what can be described only as an intuitive understanding, the judge gives me my sentence: it’s not even a DUI, but rather a “wet reckless,” which means all I have to do is sixty hours of community service, ten counseling sessions, pay a fine, and suffer a temporary suspension of my license—that’s it. Since I’m still a juvenile, if I serve my sentence in full, all charges will be dropped. I don’t feel good about having fucked up so royally, but I suppose it’s here at the bottom where I really start to learn.

  Dr. Morgan’s office feels less like an office and more like a lounge. It’s a room that inspires trust. The couch—laden with shaggy white cushions—is soft and deep, the kind that seems more apt for cuddling or napping than for delving deep into the recesses of the psyche. There’s a vase with a fake white orchid in full bloom on the little coffee table between us, and she’s got vanilla-scented candles on her desk that look as though they’ve never been lit but nonetheless perfume the room with a cozy, feminine warmth. Several boxes of Kleenex are placed strategically throughout the room, along with a small waste bin that sits at the foot of the couch. Dr. Morgan is serious but kind eyed, simultaneously poised and relaxed. She crosses and uncrosses her legs each time she asks a new question, and writes her notes with a pencil that always looks impossibly sharp. She sits at her desk with an almost methodical assuredness, as if from that position, she is imbued with the power to help improve lives. I am comfortable here with her and even curious about her. Hundreds of books line the shelf behind her: books about the mind, about relationships, about intimacy. My eyes land on one whose title includes the word “trauma.”

  I feel too nervous and timid to start talking, but since I must be there—by law—I decide to at least give her, and myself, a chance.

  “We’re not here to talk about what happened,” she starts.

  “We’re not?”

  “No, Paige—we’re here to talk about you.” And with that I understand that she understands, and I slowly allow myself to melt into her wisdom and care. I tell her about the person who I was before ninth grade, crying nostalgically, as if that person was buried, but buried alive and still fighting somewhere inside me. I tell her about how some of what I thought would be the best things in my life turned out to be the worst, and about how it felt to be hated, ignored, and mistreated, about the shame of never being good enough. I know the next thing I should tell her is about what happened that Halloween.

  But then I stop talking altogether, my tongue suddenly heavy and thick in my own mouth. I’ve told this story before. I have uttered these words previously. But I stay quiet in the presence of Dr. Morgan, someone who I know understands, probably more than anyone else in the world, the gravity of what happened to me on that night. I stare at her fake orchid in silence, the truth pounding inside me.

  “Paige?” she says. “Is there something more you want to say?” Dr. M. places her pencil on the table and removes her glasses. But the pain is too much now, and it feels like I might drop dead if I say even one more word. “This is a safe space, Paige. You can say anything you need to say. Even if you think it’s stupid or irrelevant or unnecessary.” It’s none of those things, I feel like yelling. IT’S FUCKING EVERYTHING. I want to scream into her face. I want to hurl the fucking orchid into the next room. I want to shred her notepad into tiny pieces. I want to tell her she doesn’t know anything about me. But Dr. Morgan must know what she’s doing. She gets up from her chair, comes over to the couch, and puts a hand on my arm. She waits for me. She doesn’t push. “Here we are, woman to woman, you are supported, and I am your support.” And with that I fall into her arms and release several years’ worth of cries onto that couch, and she keeps handing me Kleenex and just allows it all to unfold.

  Throughout the remainder of our sessions I gradually tell her the story of the rape. And as I talk, I start to see myself in the context of my own story: my weaknesses stand up one by one, like recovering addicts sharing for the first time at a meeting, declaring their errors. All the red flags I ignored now flash in bright neon, as does the realization of how I found comfort chasing chaos long after the rape. I tell her that even my parents still don’t know, that this secret has always lived in our house with us, but that they don’t have a clue. I admit to her that sometimes I google my old name just to see if Ivan’s video comes up. I tell her that I loved Alan but was afraid to be touched; and I tell her about all the mania with Seth, whose touch both electrified and terrified me. I tell her that sometimes I had wished Seth would kill me.

  I tell her every detail of e
very moment of every misery. Sometimes she stops to ask me a question—“How did that make you feel?” or “How does it feel to talk about that now?”

  And as we move through each pain, one at a time, looking at everything together, each one starts to hurt less and less. As if just by the act of observing, acknowledging, and discussing them we somehow relieve them of their impact on me. At one point in the sessions the focus shifts. We start to talk less and less about the past and Dr. M. asks me to bring more of my awareness to the present.

  “What do you love, Paige?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What makes you happy?”

  “Happy…” I say, chewing the word in my mind as if it were the first time I’d ever heard it. I stare blankly at the orchid for a few beats, impressed with its majestic bloom, its awkward, gaping beauty. “I’m happy when I’m strong.”

  Around this time, I come across these lyrics from a song called “Rise” by Danny Gokey:

  There’s a brokenness inside of you

  There’s a wound that still reminds you

  Of the fear, shame, and rejection

  You have seen it, you have seen it

  You know it’s time to get up

  But your heart’s paralyzed, you’re so stuck

  You’re past the point of trying again

  You’re defeated, you’re defeated

  But something inside you can’t deny

  You hear the call of your creator

  I made you for more, unlocked the door

  I wanna restore your glory

  So rise

  Breaking the dark, piercing the night

  You’re made to shine

  An army of hope

  Bringing the world

  A radiant light

  A radiant light

  You were made to rise, rise

  Lift your head and look around you

  See the dreams you lost, they have found you

  And the heart that once was beating

  Is coming back to life

  Coming back to life

  So I zero in on the sweet spot—the balance between my counseling sessions with Dr. M. and my training sessions at the gym. I may as well, seeing as my parents don’t allow me to go anywhere else. Dr. M. encourages me to keep training, to put my pain into my practice. Just like the judge at my trial, Dr. M. knows I am not a rebel or a troublemaker. She sees me. She knows what happened. And she’s the one who helps me draw a line from weak to woke. She says training will empower me, and having clear goals will lead my way. I trust her not only because she is smart and experienced, but also because what she says resonates intensely with me. I start training every day. It becomes my place of refuge. My body becomes leaner, stronger, more flexible. More able. I’m like a two-way radio, taking what I need from those sometimes-heavy but always therapeutic counseling sessions and releasing their gravitas onto the bag or onto an opponent. With Dr. M. I explore the times when I was beat down, and then I pound the life out of those ashen memories at the gym.

  I inhale the power.

  I exhale the bullshit.

  One strike at a time.

  One day at the gym I’m paired up to spar with a girl who has been training for about as long as I have. I’ve seen her around before. She’s definitely bigger than me; she’s agile and with the kind of musculature that makes her look like she was hand-chiseled by God. We face off, hands up at our faces, ready. She takes quick, hard jabs at me, but I duck fast enough every time to elude her strikes, my torso weaving in and out of her grasp. I surprise myself. I’m not thinking about what’s going to happen next. I’m in a flow state. She starts to get winded, her breath goes heavy, her eyes start to squint. And for a moment not a single thing in the world exists outside of this mat, outside of my fists; and with a strength born from a past place, I pull my elbow back and unleash an uppercut so fierce, a spurt of blood comes gushing from the girl’s now-broken nose. She falls to the mat and I stand there with my mouth open in shock, sweet victory coursing through every single one of my cells. I stare at my hands and a deep awe overtakes me. Something elemental suddenly becomes clear:

  I will always fight back.

  Sadly, Ken Shamrock’s gym has to move overseas. I’m sad to see him go. The Lion’s Den is like a second home. I’ll miss him and his whole family. The gym is very much a family-oriented business—his wife and kids are always there. They’ve invited me fishing and camping and it feels like being with them has been just as healing as the training. The question is, where will I train?

  When I walk into a local gym in Reno and start sparring, some of the coaches stop what they’re doing and turn to watch me fight. Some of them whisper. I can’t tell whether they’re impressed or surprised—probably a little of both. I don’t particularly connect with anyone there, which is fine. There is no perfect gym. I have to take what I can get. Without a true mentor like Ken, I have to fend for myself. I don’t rely on anything other than my intuition and my dad’s advice to be my guide. When I train, I answer to myself. I am my own coach. And with that role comes the great responsibility to push myself even harder than I think I can deliver.

  Through my new gym I’m asked to participate in an amateur fight. This is interesting. I’ve never been in a fight before. This would be my first official fight, which right away triggers the competitor in me, that once brazen kid who has been locked out and shut down. I can feel her again and she’s hungry. She’s not looking merely to survive the fight—this girl wants to win. She wants to go guns blazing, full-throttle, all in. So I accept the challenge and walk onto the mat for my first real fight with a surge of everything that’s been quieted in me now blasting energetically at full volume.

  When I walk into the cage for the first time, I try to breathe calmly and focus on shaking out my arms and rotating my wrists—but I’m totally blown away by the first-time-ever-ness of the whole thing. What a crazy concept: this designated space to fuck one another up, this weird little area where bodies relate solely on the basis of mutual destruction. It’s more than a cage: it’s a creative platform for all-out physical and mental human interaction. I’m home! It’s so clean and empty at first, the energy perfectly still, but the potential is surging from both corners.

  I face my opponent. The ref instructs us to touch gloves. My opponent stares me down, the fight unofficially kicking off with our eyes. For a flash of a moment I think about what this means, to stand here in front of another human armed only with the desire to kick her ass. I think about the goal—survival at all costs—and my heart starts to gallop. The bell rings and the cage instantly transforms into a stage and a human chess board, where our bodies and brains go to war. The energy swirls into a magnificent chaos, a primal human tangle manifested now in us.

  But within just forty-three seconds, I choke my opponent out and win by submission, triumph pulsing in me, the feeling of redemption thick in my blood. And it is during this singular moment, fresh with earned victory, that I start to understand who I really am. The adrenaline takes over, euphoria flooding me. I laugh. I cry. I jump up. I grab my own head like a monkey. I run around the cage, fueled solely on the joy and disbelief of my win—a turning point happening in real time. I can taste it. And then, without even thinking, I unfurl both wrists and boldly hold up both my middle fingers at the crowd. It’s not the crowd that I’m flipping off but it’s the haters, those people who’ve tried to push me down.

  I’m up.

  My light is back on.

  My weakness is turning to power.

  I’m starting to rise.

  The coaches at my gym start paying even more attention to me now. I’m not just “the token chick” anymore—I’m one of the strongest fighters around. I hear my name sometimes, people are talking about me—and not in a bad way. I feel like the coaches are starting to see real potential in me. They know I’m a rookie, but they see something in me, a fire starting to burn.

  “We got a call this morning from a UWF promoter,”
one of them says one afternoon. “They want to know if you’ll take a pro fight,” he says, matter-of-factly.

  “A professional fight?” I ask. I’m excited and already can’t wait to tell my dad. He will freak.

  “You can’t do it,” the coach quips, resolute, as if he came to this earth knowing what is best for me.

  I look at him dumbfounded. “What do you mean? Why not? How could I NOT do it?!”