Philosopher's stone

Sometimes, after I tell people a little about what happened to me, I am met with the question, “Would you change it all if you could?” or the statement, “I bet you wouldn’t change anything because it made you strong and made you who you are today.” 

These are always difficult to respond to because of the nuance involved.  It is true that there are some things I wouldn’t change, because I have been able to take the love I felt or the lessons I learned and turn them into something amazing.  These are the ones steeped so thoroughly in the rugged, raw beauty of the human experience they bring tears of gratitude to my eyes daily.  These are the ones that let me say, “I have seen more love than hate, more good than evil, and more light than dark.”  They are the ones that let me say unequivocally and unreservedly, “I am one of the lucky ones.”

Yet it is also true that there are some things it is likely I would change because the damage they caused permeates my life to this day. The effects of these seep into every relationship, tainting them with murmurs of the past.  These are the ones that, like mold in a damp, dark corner, can be managed but not eliminated, the stains left on the wall may be masked with a fresh coat of paint but the rot inside continues.  These are the ones that isolate me with shame and mock me with my inherent worthlessness each time I am less than perfect.  They are the ones that, like radioactive waste, poison the land for years to come.

Though several events fit into the latter category, there is one I point to as the deepest, most unhealed wound I still have and unlike the one left by Jake’s death, I have yet to find a way to remediate the damage and create beauty out of the wreckage.   I was fourteen when it occurred, and it took me twenty-nine years to break the resultant silence.

I grew significantly taller between my thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays and also began to look just a little like a woman instead of a girl. It wasn’t necessarily obvious to the casual observer, but to those who saw me without clothes, it was clear that time in life was approaching, even if a bit slowly.  This made me more marketable to some, and less to others. In the end, it didn’t matter to the one selling me—the amount of money stayed the same even if the demographics of the clientele shifted a bit, but it did end up mattering a lot to me.

After the night I spent with him on my thirteenth birthday, we saw each other relatively frequently until the fall when the visits dropped off a bit.  The uncertainty left me on edge.  I was not unlike many girls of that age, distracted by boys and suffering when their affections were not returned or their relationship status was unclear.  The difference was that the object of my angst was a man in his fifties, not a teenager in my math class. 

I saw him in November, and then not again until February, shortly after my birthday—a little more than a year after our first night together. I was left at his door, like usual.  I knocked, like usual.  He answered, like usual.  I stepped inside, mentally prepared for our usual.

He led me to the bedroom and started to undress me. He stopped midway through and instead of his usual tempered, but fundamentally eager, approach to completing the task he grew cold and almost repulsed by me.  His touch, typically firm and directive became almost distant, as if he were handling something revolting.  He pulled back in disgust and looked at me as if he had never seen me before. His voice was cold, and he addressed me as Elizabeth, instead of Elle or Ellie like he always had before, as he told me to get dressed and leave.

My stomach dropped and I was covered in goosebumps.  Panic overtook me and I begged to stay, telling him that I was sorry, that I could fix whatever I had done wrong, and be what he wanted. He told me it was over and to get out.  Shaking and nauseous at this incredibly unexpected and devastating loss, I did as I was told and made my way to the door once dressed. I started to leave, the shame blanketing me so thoroughly I couldn’t even raise my head to meet his eyes for one final look, when suddenly he grabbed me by my hair and dragged me to the floor.

All rapes are violent, the nature of the act itself is inherently violent, but in my experience, some are more vicious than others, and this was one of the two most vicious ones I have ever experienced, in large part because of the emotional damage it inflicted.  The excruciating pain of being so thoroughly, and unexpectedly, violated by someone I loved has yet to leave me and I have simply learned to live with it.

When he was finished and I was dressed and ready to leave again, he took one last souvenir as he ripped out some hair near the nape of my neck, the part with the curl that he had liked for so long.  The hair there has never really quite been the same after that day.  Even now, almost thirty years later, in the place where it once was, there remain only short, thin strands that tangle and break easily.  I am reminded of that night, and of him, each time I brush my hair and feel the tiny, but ever-present knots. 

Compared to the rest of the things that happened in my life, this might seem like a drop in the bucket.  But it wasn’t.  It was one of the central traumas of my life and was likely the event that assured my decades-long silence about what was happening. The magnitude of pain and the shame were far too great to approach until this past year when little by little I was finally able to speak of that night and some of what led up to it.  Right or wrong, good or bad, it was, and still is, far more like a flash flood--sudden, unexpected, and ravaging everything in its path. 

I feel it daily, as I wait for this to be the day that someone I love unexpectedly decides they are done with me. 

I feel it each time I leave someone and wonder if they will want to see me again, how long it will be between meetings, and whether they will want me around the next time I see them. 

I feel it at the start of new relationships as I grieve their loss before they have even really begun so that I am prepared for the end, however painful it is, and whenever it might be. 

I feel it as I live constantly on edge, wondering if I am who someone wants or if I can be the person they need, and if I’m not or I can’t, whether they’ll give me a chance to try before I am discarded. 

I feel it each time the dam holding back the torrent of emotion threatens to break when someone I love is standing in its path and the best I can do, often without time for an explanation, is push them as far away as possible to try and prevent them from suffering the consequences of his actions, all the while knowing the act of pushing them away causes its own kind of pain for each of us. 

I feel it as it reminds me that I am worthless and unwanted and there is nothing I can do to change that.

I’ll never really know why he responded the way he did that day.  His death in 2021 precludes any possible explanation from his end, although I have my suspicions.  Thinking about it makes my face burn and my stomach churn, and writing about it has proved nearly impossible, but my guess is that my impending physical maturation, though still in its early stages, was beyond what he was capable of dealing with.   Perhaps it was rage over something about me he could not control.  Perhaps it was grief over the loss of our relationship because he knew we had reached the point where our paths could no longer cross.  Or perhaps he was simply an awful, violent person who does not deserve my efforts to cast him in a good, or at least neutral, light.    

In contrast to the loss of Jake, the loss I experienced and continue to experience because of this night, and that relationship, remains complicated and unresolved.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make something beautiful out of this the way I have done with others.  I don’t know if there will ever be lessons I learn that will make what he did to me worth it all. 

I also don’t know if finding, or spending time trying to create, a positive is necessarily required.  Our society puts an awful lot of pressure on people to turn anything and everything into gold while forgetting that alchemy isn’t real.   The philosopher’s stone does not exist, no amount of effort turns lead into a precious metal, and when you try, all you have done is waste your time and further your exposure to a toxic substance.  

Perhaps the best outcome of this is that those who love me will understand just a little more about me. And because of that, maybe during the times the pain of this threatens to overwhelm me, instead of pushing you away, we can hang on to each other and face it together, knowing its source and knowing it will pass that much faster if I’m not alone in the waters.

What I do know is that from now on, instead of trying to provide a neutral, non-committal response when asked if I would change everything, I might start to tell the truth.