Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

by Aspen Matis

  I washed my hands and returned to the mirror over my bed and opened a new box of contacts. I so desperately wanted to be able to change, to just finally do it—touch my eye and be seen. I was fed up with being the girl who had to wear glasses. I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.

  Squatting on my bed—after twelve years of trying and missing, in about two minutes total—I put my own contacts in for the first time. Second try on the right eye, first try on the left. I blinked in the contact, my apartment where I now lived alone and my story coming into focus.

  After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.

  I looked straight—a mirror was there. I was shocked by the face I saw. I was looking at my image for the first time since I was a child in third grade, seeing my face without glass and wire adorning it. I felt lovely, seeing my beauty—the beauty Jacob had always told me I had. I had always wanted to see it too, now I vividly could. It was my own. And looking into that mirror at my exposed eyes, I could see with clarity why I loved Jacob so much: as a child, I’d felt that he believed in the brightness of me and saw the way to dreams—he helped me see that I was able to make my own dreams real, too. It was the most exciting thing, those maps we’d made.

  It was suddenly Technicolor clear: the only thing holding me from giving myself vision this entire time had actually simply been me.

  I saw how in the fall and winter of my childhood, I’d walked through the golden aspens. And then I simply committed and gave myself my own eyes.

  I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.

  I was astounded to find an invitation from Colorado College—the school I’d dropped out of six years before, after I’d been raped on campus. As I read their words, I became unsteady with heat. I’d long ago reconciled myself to the fact of their abandonment. I never imagined I would get a message from them that had the potential to finally prove the past six years of my social shame wrong—after all this time, what I hoped was the promise that they finally believed me, they knew the truth. Colorado College was inviting me to return—to speak publicly about the rape they had denied.

  Now the school that had silenced me not only acknowledged my rape—they wanted to pay $1,000 plus airfare and two nights in a fancy hotel, for me to come back and speak on campus to current students about what had happened there.

  In my tiny Greenwich Village bedroom, I considered their offer and its origin—what had caused it. My upcoming hardcover was listed in catalogs they must have seen. Were they star-chasers only interested because a New York publisher had validated me? I deeply hoped my old school wanted me back to apologize and acknowledge their mistake. Cross-legged on crisp white bedsheets, I painted my nails red. I felt emboldened. My pain might finally be validated. I would do it, I wrote back. Yes.

  A week later my grandma Belle mailed me a clipping from the Colorado Springs Gazette. The college called me a “New York Times correspondent”—a mistake. I was embarrassed. I had published only one essay in the Times, no reportage. The college didn’t mention I’d been raped there. Instead, they ambiguously said, “a horrific trauma.” Instead of a dropout, I was now a successful “alumna” enhancing the prestige of their institution—not myself: a girl who had been raped on campus, who fled.

  They were obscuring me again.

  I asked for corrections of the misinformation—explaining that I was not a graduate, and the shocking vague “trauma,” was actually sexual assault. I’d spent the years searching for the right words to talk about what had happened; I’d found how tremendously important it was to find the integrity of words matching my truth. I told them I felt misrepresented by the incorrect information. They said they’d fix their mistakes. Posters with the original mistakes were printed and up all over campus, but online they changed “alumna” to “former CC student” and New York Times “correspondent” to “contributor”—but they left “a horrific trauma.” Still no rape.

  Back at my old college, I stood before one hundred people at the podium in a classroom lecture hall where I used to sit in the back row. The last time I was there I wore heavy glasses, a backpack and sneakers, but now in flowing red silk and my grandma’s golden locket and heels—and contact lenses—I felt larger and vivid, ready to be seen. I looked forward. I said it four times: Rape rape rape, rape. That’s what it was.

  Halfway through speaking, I looked up in the room and saw my grandmother Belle. Visiting her in my childhood summers was why I chose that college to begin with. Ever since I was five, I would send her crayon drawings of the Colorado mountains where she lived. At ninety-one now, tiny but still sprightly, she’d surprised me by showing up.

  I spoke without interruption for a half hour. They listened. I read to them from my memoir what happened on my second night here at college; I cried for a breath—with my shoulders back, eyes open brightly. When I exhaled, I looked out into the audience to see a woman—she looked like a teacher—was crying. I felt loved and I felt heard.

  During the Q and A session, I answered everything all the female co-eds, and boys, and men and women in the audience asked me. I wished the hurt eighteen-year-old I used to be could have seen me back here, at twenty-four, reading—speaking unapologetically.

  I was finally having the rape openly acknowledged and discussed at the place where it had first been silenced, it was surreal. The invitation—this talk—made me feel like I was transcending, I was rising like a night star.

  The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire. I felt the potential of this euphoric insight.

  Toward the end, my grandma raised her hand. The mediator called on her. “I want everyone to know my granddaughter is also a great artist,” she announced. The room laughed. She smiled at me with pride.

  I’d crossed a border—

  Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I’d been, I was no longer her.

  In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party who brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.

  The next day, a girl who must have been in the audience found me on Facebook and wrote that she was also raped at our school. She still hadn’t told anybody. She wrote that now she would.

  The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.

  INTERNATIONAL RESOURCES

  UNITED STATES

  RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1 (800) 656-4673

  www.rainn.org

  CANADA

  Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres

  www.casac.ca

  ENGLAND AND WALES

  Rape Crisis England & Wales Hotline: 0808 802 9999

  www.rapecrisis.org.uk

  SCOTLAND

  Rape Crisis Scotland Hotline: 0808 801 0302

  www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk

  NEW ZEALAND

  Victim Support Hotline: 0800-842-846

  www.victimsupport.org.nz/get-help/your-help-lines

  AUSTRALIA

  National Counselling Helpline: 1800 737 732

  www.1800respect.org.au

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE BOOK

  I have limitless gratitude for Susan Shapiro, the most passionate, generous professor and friend a young writer could e
ver meet. Sue, this book would not exist without you. (Sue! I don’t know what I’d be doing in New York City without you.)

  Thank you to Andrew Blauner, my attentive, kind, and tireless literary agent. I adore, admire, and respect you. Thank you, Matthew Snyder, my intrepid film agent at CAA.

  Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, for discerning which of my memories were necessary to share, and which were repetitive or dull. Thank you for helping me find the puzzle pieces that fit well together, for making time for this story, for building this book with me. This memoir might still be 1,208 pages without you and Corrina.

  I am endlessly grateful.

  This book is the creation of an amazing unflagging pack at HarperCollins—thank you all! I’m especially grateful to my editor Matt Harper, for wise letters rich with wisdoms, the clarity you offer; Dani Valladares, brilliant editor, for teaching me—no matter how lovely, there is nothing poetic about unnecessary scenes. Thank you for making infinite revisions finite, truncating my stresses. What a lucky girl I am to get to learn with you how to write a book; Lisa Sharkey—our benevolent director, sage and guide. My assiduous publicist Joseph Papa. I’m also thankful to my publisher Liate Stehlik, Lynn Grady, Tavia Kowalchuk, Mandy Kain, production editor Shelby Peak (you are truly wonderful), and everyone else at HarperCollins who helped to make my story into a book. Thank you Sara Partridge, for helping this book find its home at HarperCollins.

  NEWTON

  Mr. Jampol, my eleventh-grade English teacher. Mr. Reinstein, Ms. Marder, Ms. Leslie. Yolande Abramian, my first teacher of beauty. All my childhood friends.

  COLORADO COLLEGE

  Sarah Eckstat, maid of honor at my wedding, beautiful tumbleweed, and kindred dreamer. Annie Evankow, the sweetest girl. Mary Katherine Southern, I saw galaxies in your freckles. Heather Horton. RAINN.

  THE WOODS

  The Saufleys, the Andersons, Firefly and Firewalker: for the tree house in the woods and tasty tacos and pulled pork barbecue, and your kindness to strangers in the woods like me. The Dinsmores, for a lawn on which to pitch my tent, and your forest lore. Chuck and Tigger. Daniel. A thousand angels unseen and unacknowledged.

  The PCTA, for building and maintaining the Pacific Crest Trail.

  Strangers who gave me beer and peaches, and all trail angels and fellow hikers who helped me make it to Canada.

  Wilderness Press, for the Data Book. Karen Berger and Daniel R. Smith, for The Pacific Crest Trail: A Hiker’s Companion, which was invaluable to me, both as I walked and as I wrote.

  Michael David Smith, Mystic, lost boy. My friend Mystic passed away at only thirty-three. He was the sweetest. I met Justin through him. I’ll never forget his stories of footpaths through forests that led above stuck towns to ancient mountains the soft blue color of ice. “It’s a fairy tale,” he said to me of the place where the Appalachian Trail ends, the summit of Mount Katahdin. “You get higher and higher. Everything gets beautiful.”

  What Justin wrote on Mystic’s Facebook wall:

  Mystic, the man who sat on pancakes to win an eating challenge. my dad finding your ipod. occupying my couch to shoot occupy. no sleeves, but high, high gaiters. hitchhiking 100’s of miles for a little love. throwing a glass off a porch and walking away like it was no big deal. the mirrors you carried. days hiking with you were some of the best of my life.

  burning a stick of incense in your memory. rip, brother.

  NEW YORK CITY

  Cameron Watkins, the kindest woman I know. Thank you for taking me into your overfull home when I had nowhere, for handing me the critical scrap of paper—“It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.” You didn’t allow me to give up. You had copied the statement from Anais Nin’s diary, which you happened to be reading. Edison Apple, for showing me how freedom is more exciting than it is frightening. Amanda Messenger, my model for diligence. We have committed, and so the universe conspires to assist us. We have each other, and so New York is kind. Ellie Anderson, philosopher-muse, my lady love.

  David Brand, who finds my secret stories like a magician, the first person I can say absolutely anything to. Thank you. Suzannah Lessard, for teaching me that it is in the real idiosyncratic truth of the facts that profundity exists—that the reality is always more interesting than however writers might unconsciously simplify it, explaining truth away. Royal Young, who interviewed me and then transcribed my answers for me to consider, when writing the truth alone seemed impossible. Bryan Hurt, for answering the phone when I called for help and then reading my entire manuscript last-minute, in two days, and assuring me, “This is not a book that needs help.” For inviting me back to Colorado College—that return has empowered me. Bonnie Nadzam, you are a magnifying glass and a map, a brilliant storyteller.

  Luis Jaramillo, for admitting me to The New School. Laura Cronk, for always letting me talk for forty-five minutes, even when you only really have five. Leonard and Louise Riggio of the Riggio Foundation, for my fellowship. I am forever indebted. And my fellow writing students.

  Thank you Andrea, my neighbor, who—when I was prepared to leave New York City—helped me remember why I’d come. She said I’d planted a budding life here and should stay. Thank god, thank god, thank god—thank you.

  ART WORLDS

  John Cameron Mitchell, for plays and movies that make me teary, for your friendship, for giving me a rent-free, gorgeous Caribbean hideaway to write this book in. Thank you. Artists like you make me grateful to call my neighborhood home. B. J. Novak, for showing me your view. Suzanne Heathcote, witty and wise playwright, bright light in L.A. Christine Sneed, I loved our long correspondence. Thank you for your friendship and your enchanting books and stories. Karen Brown, your writing inspires me. Dylan Hale Lewis, for giving generously to RAINN in my honor.

  Fellow writers: Charles Wilson, Sarah Herrington, Danielle Gelfand, Isabelle Forbes, Desiree Prieto—wonderful friends.

  Daniel Jones, for publishing “A Hiker’s Guide to Healing” in the New York Times when I was twenty-two, and still only dreaming. Jill Rothenburg, for the freedom of structure. Shelly Oria, my writing life SWEET mentor; it was thrilling getting to hear a SWEET actor read my life’s biggest story. You opened the world—fellowships and residencies, awakening me to a community. Thank you for guiding me through the book-composing wilds. Lena Dunham, you brought me to the set of Girls and listened to my stories, and told yours. Thank you for your endless generosity. Your support has affirmed and fueled me more than I can thank you for. I feel so, so fortunate for that day, and for your kindness. I treasure it within me. It was the first time I felt noticed by an artist I admired. Nicholas Kristof, for tweeting my Times essay and for your own important work. Cheryl Strayed, for sharing this story, and your own stories, which helped pave my way to creating this book; for your wise art. Greil Marcus, this book began as a folk song in the Old Weird America, written for you. Sigrid Nunez, who once told my New School class that there is no German word for innocent and no Hebrew word for fiction. John Reed, who taught me: “Cut your problems.” Annie Dillard, whom I’ve never met, whose book The Writing Life liberated me from all the pages I wrote to get to the place that was actually the beginning. Now I delete freely. Rob Spillman, for opening the door to the great Tin House for me. I adore the Tin House family: Elissa Shappel, Lance Cleland, and others I’ve worked with and talked to. Willing Davidson at The New Yorker, for your encouragement. Allen Houston, Greta Gerwig. Salman Rushdie, for always writing me back. Dayne Pillow, who published my stories first—this was the beginning—thank you.

  Kerri Kleiner, Mark Lipson, Zara Lipson, Farhad Parsa, Jane Nussbaum, David Lockwood, Tom Benedik. Marielle Henault. Leigh Newman.

  All my English teachers and teachers of language, official and unofficial.

  I wrote this book in the cafés and hotel lounges of New York. I have to thank: Caffe Reggio, Stumptown, the Mondrian, the Marlton, the Third Rail, McNally Jackson, HousingWorks, French Roast, Whynot Bistro, and Jack’s, and abov
e all Joe Coffee at Gay Street and Waverly—my office. The most magical paths grow from Joe.

  In Berkeley, the Elmwood Café.

  THE HOME

  Mike King, who worked on the California Construction Corps and built the trail I walked. For your tenderness. When your kindness surprised me and I asked you, “How are you always so sweet?” you answered, “You should always be treated this way.” On your days off from fighting fires, you showed me the beauty of the northern California coast.

  Justin Matis, who believed in this book. Thank you for accompanying me to the place that made magic possible. You scavenged the streets of New York for materials to build the bed we shared.

  The Matis Family: Howard Matis, Mary Matis—fellow writer. Kenneth Matis, Bea Matis, Irving Matis. Newfound timeless family, for taking me in and never letting me go. Small but great. I love you all, for always.

  In the time since Dash left us, I have intermittently lived with his lovely parents, in his post-fire rebuilt Berkeley home, without him.

  Mary and Howard—after Justin left to walk from Mexico to Canada again, you welcomed me back into your sunny home in the Berkeley hills, and made it ours again. Your love is truly remarkable. We missed Justin together, mourned his silence, and bonded wonderfully in our love.

  The Parker Family

  Mom, you’re generous, a great mother, the kind who’s always there, who acts always out of love. I know you’ve always wanted only the best for me. Your marriage with Dad is fiery still, what I aspire to find. Thank you for teaching me how to be a partner, for showing me that it’s possible to build a life around love.

  Also—thank you for buying me my ticket back to the trail. It pained you, and you didn’t have to. Many other mothers wouldn’t have.