How to Talk to a Victim
The beeping was like a stab in my ears — beep (stab) beep (stab) beep (stab) — and I could feel the buzzers but they made my hands numb at the same time, the buzzing matching the buzzing in my fingers, buzzbeepstab, buzzbeepstab, buzzbeepstab STOP.
“What are you feeling now?”
No buzz. No beep. No stab. There was only my breathing, and the bubbling of the fountain in the room meant to be soothing but mostly just distracting. It was slightly muffled by the headphones over my ears. It struck me as odd that such cushy headphones could deliver such edged sounds, sharpened audio waves that could tear ear drums.
How was I feeling? I didn’t know.
“A little sad, I guess. I’m trying to focus on a specific incident.”
“Is there anything physical you’re feeling?
“A little nauseated. My chest kind of hurts.”
How could I explain the way the noises were assaulting my ears?
“Good. Good. You’re doing good. Let’s keep going.”
Buzzbeepstab.
Focus. I had to focus. Between the beeps I heard the bubbles. My eyes were closed. Remember.
A single eye, blue, between the crack of the door and the frame, and I was awake in bed, lying perfectly still. Pretend to be asleep. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend. Buzzbeepstab.
There were hands on my stomach. My eyes were squeezed shut; be asleep, be asleep. Hands moving to my blooming breasts. Roll over. I’m asleep. I’m asleep.
Buzzbeepstab.
Arms now wrapped around me, hands moving lower, lower. No. Nonono. The bubbling fountain — I was getting sick. I really was nauseated, my chest was squeezing, my ribs were trying to choke my lungs and burst my heart. Then nothing.
Hands moving lower. Hands moving lower. A skip in time, hands moving lower — no, nonono. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. What happened in the skip? Why can’t I remember?
They tell you to call them a survivor. They tell you not to let trauma define them.
They tell you to listen, but not push. Sympathize, but not coddle.
Or perhaps you call them a victim, because maybe calling them a survivor trivializes their experience. Perhaps they want the trauma to define them, at least for a little bit. Perhaps they want to know that it’s okay to be depressed, it’s okay to want to die, it’s okay to hate the world. At least, at first. Maybe you have to push, because otherwise they can’t push the words out themselves, can’t bring their mouth to frame the words, “I was raped.” or “I was molested.” Perhaps they need to be coddled, because the only form of love they now know isn’t love at all; it’s warped with violence, and they need to retreat back to a mother’s love, back to when everything would be okay in her arms.
They tell you to give them back control. Because they have been deprived of it, like kids in poverty deprived of food, starving and dying, wondering if anyone will notice. They tell you that it is a wound which can only heal at its own pace.
They do not tell you that the wound may never heal. They do not tell you that control can be so overwhelming that when faced with it, sometimes they can only freeze. They do not tell you that maybe they don’t want to be talked to at all, maybe they don’t want anyone to know, maybe just admitting to the scars is admitting they can never fade away. Maybe they are not a survivor. Maybe they are a shell of a person that used to be there, a person who was pushed out the moment the invader pushed in, a person that escaped and floated away to the stars, because it was better to float into the sky than float above and watch.
They do not tell you that maybe their skin will never look the same.
Stop.
“What’s going on now?”
Silence. Choke.
“Uh…well…”
My voice squeaked. Cracked. Failed.
“Uh…I guess I’m still nauseated and I just hurt. And I’m trying to remember the details, and I can’t remember very well.”
“Are there any feelings associated with this memory?”
“I guess shame. Like feeling like there was something about me that made him think I wanted it.”
“Right. Right.”
She wrote something down.
“Okay. Good. Keep going.”
Buzzbeepstab.
Breathe. Don’t throw up.
The fountain was bubbling, like the acid in my stomach, forming a bile deep in the back of my throat. I tried to focus on the details.
The weight of him sitting on my bed, the way I couldn’t help but sink into the hole he formed on my tiny twin, even my furniture working against me. Another skip in time. Hands on my stomach, the breasts that were only nipples, lower, lower. Didn’t want it. Didn’t want it.
He watched me from the door. I was asleep. I was asleep. I wanted to be asleep.
Buzzbeepstab.
More nausea.
Where was I?
The fountain was bubbling and there were hands on my stomach. The headphones were cushy like my bed had once been. My hands were buzzed numb and I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I didn’t want his hands. I swear it. I stopped feeling my body, I swear.
I floated above myself and him; I watched his moving hands. I was asleep. I swear. Pretend.
I’m going to throw up, my eyes are squeezed shut, I’m here and there and there’s bubbling fountains and a man’s breathing, there’s numb hands and moving hands.
“You’re doing good.”
No, I wasn’t. I was sick; I was grotesque. Moving hands and blue eyes, I was watching me and he was watching me, and I saw what he saw, and it must have been my fault. I wanted to be asleep.
I was rigid in the leather chair, my eyes were shut so tight that the tightness stretched into my skull, it squeezed my brain as I struggled to remember. The skip in time. The moving hands. I remembered. I remembered. Did I really want to remember?
I hate those hands, I hate these headphones, I hate these buzzers, I hate this fountain. Buzzbeepstab. Buzzbeepstab.
BuzzbeepstabbuzzbeepstabbuzzbeepstabBUZZBEEPSTAB.
His hands moved lower and I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t breathe couldn’t move couldn’t be asleep, couldn’t fight couldn’t lie couldn’t control the body, his hands moved lower and time skipped, time skipped, time skipped, and I didn’t want to remember; the fountain is bubbling up water from the deeps, bringing bubbles of air to the surface to free them, the beeping has burst my ear drums and my fingers have been buzzed off, my heart and lungs have died of strangulation. Stop. Stop. STOP.
There are classes about dealing with victims.
These sorts of classes will begin with statistics. They will tell you that one in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, or maybe it was one in four, and it doesn’t matter anyway because these sorts of things are underreported. They tell you that for men, it is one in six, and for transgenders, one in two. And they will tell you that you can help, because there is a movement. Because you can become an advocate.
But you’ll sit in the class, and you’ll know that you can’t help. You’ll know that you can try, but that in the end, you will probably fail. You are not a doctor. You cannot make scars disappear. You will look around the classroom, and pinpoint all the victims, because many of them are there, and many of them are not there because they think they can help, but because they want to know why, why it happened to them, why they feel this way, why it never goes away.
We are all masochists.
In some perverse way, you will think that knowing will somehow heal you. You will think that by helping, you can make it better for someone else, because it was never better for you. You will neglect to remember when you were the someone else, when you were the someone who was advocated for, when you thought to yourself that these people could never understand.
And you will look around and see that some of your classmates are not victims. They really do not understand. They do not sit as if they are afraid of their own body, they do not try to make themselves smaller, they do not squeak when they speak as if when people do not hear them, they will be able to disappear.
You will quit the class, because it will never help you heal, because you cannot be a part of the movement, you cannot believe in it because it should not have to exist, because knowing that it should not have to exist makes you boil with anger and you cannot sit with that in a classroom, you cannot help because you know that a victim has a right to wallow. They do not have to be a survivor, if they don’t want to be.
“How are you doing?”
Eyes open. I’m not here anymore. How do I come back? I am lost.
“I feel nauseated. I’ve just been reliving the one memory. It hurts.”
“Which one is it?”
“Just one of the times he was in my bedroom. There were a lot of times. It blends together.”
“What about this one draws you to it?”
“Just the shame, and because it happened so much. I feel like I’m gross.”
“Okay. Okay. Well, we are just about out of time.”
She writes down a final note, and reaches for the headphones and buzzers. I give them to her. I am still lost. Is this where I am now? Is this really my life?
“Well, you did a good job.” Silence.
“It is completely normal to have a physical response when you are reprocessing trauma. It happens to many patients.”
Silence.
Then, “Okay.”
“Do you want to do an exercise to calm you down before you leave?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Would you like to do a container or a happy place?”
“The container, please.”
“Okay.”
She sets up to guide the exercise. I wonder if she could draw me a map to the present with her words. I wonder if I can contain anything, if my practiced exercises would do anything at all. I wonder if I’ll ever go back to normal.
“Now, imagine a container.”
I close my eyes again. I imagine a treasure chest. It is wood paneled, with gold rings holding it together. There is a large padlock on the front. The wood is old and weathered. It is sturdy.
It is ironic that my treasure chest is full of trauma.
“Can you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now imagine putting away all these feelings to come back to later. They won’t go away; you’re just saving them to deal with later. Raise a hand when you’re finished. Take as long as you need.”
I did not worry that the feelings would go away. I saw myself writing them on little slips of paper. The descriptions were vague and inadequate to depict the suffocating horror that was drowning my existence. They fell slowly into my treasure chest, floating on the imaginary air, until they hit the bottom without so much as an echo.
I raised my hand.
“Now, put your container in a safe place. A place where you can come back to it later. Raise your hand when you’re finished.”
There was no safe place. The world was not safe. I saw myself tucking it under my bed, not because it was safe, but because it would be easily accessible on a night when I would lie in bed crying, falling asleep to wetness on my cheeks.
I raised my hand. I opened my eyes.
“Good. Good. Are you okay?”
“I guess. I still feel kind of sick.”
“Well, just remember that it’s normal. Just try to practice some self-care; reach out to some of the people you can lean on.”
Normal. I felt the bile rise in my throat.
They will tell you that your feelings are normal, but they are not. They will tell you to tell victims that this was all normal. They will tell you that you can heal. They neglect to say that this should not be normal. That it made it worse to know that this was normal, that you could be a survivor or a victim but it didn’t change how you got the name, it didn’t change that your normality was trauma, that one in three and one in six and one in two would think this is normal, and the world would say this is normal, and when they teach you to talk to a victim they will tell you to be careful about triggering them, careful about which words you choose, not realizing it does not matter at all.
You’ll go home angry that this was your life, you’ll go home and the container will have broken, you will not have found your way to the present, you will not have helped anyone, you will not be an advocate or a survivor, you will not be anything at all because you are only a shell anyway, you have floated away to chase shooting stars and explore the moon, to touch the sky and swim through clouds, because this was normal and you hated it, because floating into airless space was better than the earth below, because there was a part of you that was still victim, that was still trying to be smaller, still afraid of her body, and you’ll hear the fountain bubbling and see the eyes in the door and they’ll tell you that victims are strong.
You’ll go home and tell people you’re okay, because not wanting to talk about it is normal.
