Not Even One More Story
The Shattering
What does it look like, this brokenness?
Escaping.
The inability to be the person you used to be.
Heart pain.
Change.
I love Alannis Morisette. When the Jagged Little Pill album came out, I bought it. Her music, lyrics, and voice touched me.
But I was a different person then. My stronger places were firmly held together with precisely the right amount of lacquer and gold cleverly and strategically disguised as passion and ferocity
While visiting my friend in Wisconsin, we went to see the musical “Jagged Little Pill.” I hadn’t looked it up before getting the ticket, but since I loved the album had no second thoughts about attending.
I was enjoying the show…until I wasn’t.
There was a high school party, which included drinking. Cue the scene where two friends on stage are talking about half-naked photos taken of a young girl, passed out. In shock and anger about what happened, they go visit the girl and thus begin the conversation with her about being raped. As the scene progressed, I could feel my anxiety building.
Everything in me fought to stay, but the sharp rusty nails in the chair drove deeper into my skin with each word.
She talked about the pictures and tried to dismiss them.
I felt my heart rate increase.
She traveled along the explanatory path from “I fell asleep” to “I woke up and Andrew was on top of me.”
My stomach began to turn.
“That’s rape,” her friend said.
The words rang in my ears.
“Call the police, tell his parents, tell your mom,” they implored
“Who’s going to believe me? I was drunk. He’s from a well-known family. There's literally a statue of his grandpa in the town square.”
I began to shake.
Run.
I worked my way through the darkness, out of the theater, and almost blindly found myself all but running down the long hall to the women’s room, where I shut the stall door, and burst into silent sobs, my hands over my face.
I couldn’t go back in. We weren’t even through the first Act, but I could not make myself re-enter that theater. Even hearing the words reverberate in the lobby was too much.
I knew I couldn’t participate even by sitting in that audience because I am so fucking broken I can’t hear another story, even if it was a script brought to life by actors on a stage.
This is the new me.
I asked the security woman if I could come back in if I left, and she, apologetically, said no. My friends were in here, and I couldn’t just wait outside for the next hour and a half. There I was, standing at the door, I’m sure looking like a trapped animal. She asked if I was okay and if there was anything she could do for me.
“Is there a bar or someplace near here I can go? Any place that’s not here?”
“Hold on one minute ma’am,” she said, as she walked toward another woman, and I watched her, motioning toward me.
She came back. Pointing, she said “Go that way, around the corner. You’ll see a woman in a gray shirt. She will help you “
When I got around the corner, the young woman, barely older than my granddaughter looked at me with compassion.
“She said you need a quiet place?”
Fighting back the tears “Yes, please.”
“There’s a chair over here you can sit in.”
I sat down, relieved to be away from what was happening in that darkness. It was still possible to hear the sounds of the music, but here I was safe from the words. For the next hour and a half, I sat there, listening to the muted conversations of the security staff and volunteers who politely ignored the distraught woman sitting in the chair by the wall, grateful for the stillness of her own space, wondering if her broken places will ever be put back together again.
You can learn more about the author, her experiences, and the concept of being “broken in the stronger places” by reading her About Me. Please be aware that Jagged Little Pill is a difficult show to watch if you have trauma from sexual assault or rape or if, like me, you also have vicarious trauma due to years of working with survivors.
