Bonus #36: Not That Bad

Roxanne Gay. 2018.

Somehow, I missed the released of this book in 2018, even though I have enjoyed everything I have read by her.  I noticed Anita Hill referring to this book in her book Believing and when I saw that, I decided to read this one.

This is one of the most powerful books I have read in a long time.  It is only edited by Roxane Gay, so the only essay by her is the introduction I think.  But the premise and the execution of this collection is nothing short of brilliant.  I have read countless books, essays, and accounts of sexual assault, both fiction and non-fiction, since the last time I was assaulted as a teenager.  I generally don't like graphic depictions, preferring narratives that focus on the emotional and psychological impact of trauma rather than the details of what happened to someone's body, but this book, which is very graphic in its depictions, is an exception.  It is an exception because of the theme, because each of the authors was told or told themselves that what happened to them was "not that bad," that they should be grateful it wasn't worse, that what happened to other people was worse, that they weren't fill-in-the-blank-that-would-have-made-it-actually-that-bad.  You can't really appreciate someone telling someone else that what happened to them "wasn't that bad" if you don't know what happened to them.

This collection is diverse, not only in terms of including survivor voices that are virtually always missing from the narrative, but also in what happened to their bodies that was deemed "not that bad."  No one narrator has to speak for everyone here because the richness and uniqueness of each account reminds us that no two experiences are the same while also reminding us that we are not alone or unusual.  I was moved over and over while reading these accounts of pain, betrayal, and survival.  Rather than say more, I want to just include some of my favorite quotes from the book here for those of you who might not be able to get through the whole book because of its intensity.  

"I want to fold time.  I want to .... take her by the hand and ask her to join me in the bathroom ... I want to pull her around the corner, hurry down the hall in the opposite direction, and make for the exit.  We'll leave together, I'll walk her back to the dorm, and we'll have a talk. I'll save her, somehow, from what's going to happen next, even though, sweet girl, I know it's not your fault.  None of this was ever your fault.  Do you hear me? Not. Your. Fault. But from here, back in the future, I can only watch."--Jill Christman.

"I kook for them everywhere, women like me.  And they find me, too.... We sit next to each other on the bus.  We recognize each other, or we don't.  My beautiful friend in graduate school says to me, 'I sit down, and just lose time.' 'I know,' I say." --Claire Schwartz

"My brother once called me a hard person.  I think he meant that I am a person who does not forgive.  This is true.  I find it difficult to forgive people who have done harm to me. I am this way out of necessity, because if I do not remember the harm done to me, then no one will, and the boy that I was will have no one to look out for him.  If I do not remember and do not hold people accountable for that boy's pain, then no one will remember it, and no one will remember that it was not acceptable for him to be treated that way.  If I forgive all of the things done to me, done to the boy that I was, then I will betray everything I promised that boy when we endured those things.  The only way through all of it ws to promise that I would remember it and that at some point, I would make it known what happened there."  Brandon Taylor 

"I told my parents when I got home. Not everything.  We learn not to tell everything.  We know telling everything will make them see the bad in us.  How it is our fault.  How we contributed. We fear repercussions, albeit lighter than the ones we will administer to ourselves; slut, bad, ugly, weak, whore, trash, shame, hate.  We tell just enough, if we tell at all." --xTx

"When I first started to tell people what happened to me, I told anyone who showed the tiniest bit of interest, and I told as much as they could bear to hear (which was always a vanishingly small proportion of what actually happened, and it was never enough.) I was young, and it was new to me to talk about it, and for a moment I became almost drunk with the power of speaking it aloud, deliriously revealing the worst things to people with whom I wouldn't trust my bus far these days.  
"I don't tell anyone now--not the details, anyway, not what actually happened....I haven't told them. I'm not going to tell you.
"It did not help me to tell.  I felt a momentary burst of clarity, like walking out into a cold night and feeling that icy slab of air hit my face, and then I felt gutted, every single time." --Zoe Medeiros

"I never want to stop anyone else from telling.  For many people, all of the terrible responses are even more of a reason to be open, to be radically honest, to reveal the places that they have been hurt the most deeply.  It helps a lot of survivors to talk about it whenever and however we want.  I will always listen.  I want us all to listen.  The more of us who come out as survivors, the harder it gets to ignore that there is too much to have to survive, the harder it gets to pretend like this doesn't happen or it only happens to certain kinds of people.
"But that doesn't mean you have to give your whole story to anyone who asks.  Not telling my story doesn't mean it didn't happen.  I don't have to be open about my experiences, about all of them or even any of them, to be a real survivor.  I am a real survivor because I survived, even if some days it feels like I didn't survive at all.
"Other people do not get to tell me what my experience means, or where they would like to place me in their pantheons of suffering.  There is great danger in letting those around you determine what your experiences mean to you, and I have found that one of the best ways to combat that is to keep my story for myself.
"You can keep it to yourself today and tell tomorrow, and you can tell everyone you know and then never talk about it again.  You don't owe anything to anyone.  Your story is not the currency you exchange for love, for understanding, for getting what you need.  You are allowed to get what you need without justifying why you need it, regardless of what you choose to reveal and what you keep private. No one is entitled to that part of you and you have no responsibility -- none-- to make your experience easier or more palatable by constructing a narrative other people find acceptable.
"I need the accommodation because I said I need it.  I do not do that thing because I have said that I do not do it. No one gets to rake over the details or my life and determine if they think what happened to me was bad enough for me to have earned my scars, my limitations, my superpowers.
"Broken people understand this better.  One of my friends told me a few years ago that she didn't have anyone close to her that had a healthy, functional relationship with their parents because she couldn't relate to people like that.  It's not a deliberate exclusion.  People with cracked foundations will understand better why sometimes you do crazy shit to shore up your own.
"It's not that I don't want to love unharmed people; I just don't understand them."--Zoe Medeiros

"Therapists forget that we have to live in the house while it is being remodeled." --I can't now find where this quote came from now, though...

"There is this impossible paradox when you are victimized by sexual assault.  You want to--you have to-- convince yourself that it wasn't 'that bad' in order to have any hope of healing.  If it really is as bad as you feel like it is, how will you ever get out from under it? How will you ever get 'better'?
"On the other hand, you need to convince others it was "bad enough" to get the help and support you need to do that healing .  To get out from under it.  To get an appointment at the clinic. To get friends to come over with Styrofoam food containers when you can't feed yourself.
"You tell yourself how bad it is and then you numb yourself to how bad it is.  You repeat as needed, for so many years." --Stacey May Fowles
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This is one of the best books out there about sexual violence.  Particularly if you are not a survivor, you should read this, but for survivors who have been told that we should get over it, that we should stop playing the victim, that it "wasn't that bad" this is a powerful, powerful collection that may bring you comfort if you are in the right space for it.

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