I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
The Saddest Poem?Pablo Neruda
I’m sitting in my window and hear Take Back The Night marchers chanting outside. I should go join them, I know this, but I simply do not have the energy. The events of this week have drained me completely and the last thing I need right now is to have to talk to people. I need to cry, that’s what I need to do, but it won’t be possible. My mind won’t let me focus enough. It’s ridiculous, this untouchable pain that fills me and debilitates me. I write because I cannot cry. These words are my tears, flowing from my body as a last resort, they serve a purpose for the moment; they provide the release I need for now, alone and at home with my troubles. It’s been coming, I have known this for a while. Take away the vices and you’re bound to freak out. And this is what I’m doing right now, and I cannot move until I have finished. I dedicate this with love to the brave women everywhere who are seeking that justice be upheld and pressing charges against their rapists.
I read her article two weeks ago and I was disturbed. I listened to her story in person and was floored. How long has Georgetown been enabling rapists? If it wasn’t for the mood stabilizers I would be throwing things on her behalf, breaking all the windows in the coffee shop and stomping the glass into little pieces. I realize that she is the reason I am at the poetry reading tonight and not at home nesting in the downy comfort of my bed. Her courage wraps itself around me and draws me out of hiding. And I don’t even know it yet, but the passion that has gone into the work I dare share with the world is for her. I volunteer to read first because I know she is in the audience somewhere. Standing in front of a room full of people, I feel like I’m having a naked dream. The words I hold in my shaking hands are blurring because for some reason I am blacking out. I can hear myself reading but I’m not completely present. By some divine faculty I have siphoned from the recesses of my convoluted psyche the latest block to my energy flow, and it’s not a relief in any way shape or form. I can’t believe this, it’s been almost six years now and it continues to haunt me. I wonder if it’s something I can overcome, and maybe it’s not, and this isn’t what I want to hear because it’s not the life I want to live.
Words cannot describe what it feels like to be raped by someone. He might as well have penetrated my left ear and forced my brain to ooze out of my right one. That’s kind of what it felt like to be 16, wasted and crumpled in a heap at the bottom of a shower, watching a steady stream of blood flow out of my body and into the drain. And I cannot cry because I cannot move and I sit there until I have convinced myself that what he told me is true, that I wanted it and that I loved it. And as crazy as this sounds, I basically “forgot” about the whole ordeal for about two years. Like so many women who have to experience this, the words just didn’t exist. I need no legal document to ensure that I will not speak out. I’m guilty as charged in the court of my mind. No one could look me in the face and challenge my integrity, suggest to my loved ones that I am a liar, paint me out to be a “woman scorned.” I am unreachable, just try to prove me wrong. You would have better luck finding my pile of rotting brains on the beach in Mexico.
So time passes, brains regenerate to the best of their abilities, and life goes on as usual. Yeah, there’s the issue of the anxiety attacks, but the occasional near-death psychotic episode is the least of my worries. Not that I have scheduled time into my waking days for worrying, and for the most part, I don’t. And the nightmares are an exception, because I’m sleeping so it doesn’t count, except in the case of the rare and precious orgasm dream, which I take the liberty to categorize as reality, because damn, those are the best! And I deserve them, look forward to them, because as a sober person I am completely uninterested in sex. I don’t want to be touched in a sexual way and cringe when people try. And I am so tired of explaining myself repeatedly to every walking penis on this campus, and you know who you are just knock it off, we both know it’s bullshit, and the way you make me feel objectified renders everything else null and void because I know the violence that can result from seeing women as objects, the damage done to thousands of souls by this way of thinking. And all I can say is that the next love who comes into my life will have to prove himself to me despite the fact that he is a man, and when the timing is right and we make love for the first time I might as well consider it my first time, because for once in my life, I will be sober.
And I apologize to the men in my life because it’s partially my fault for pretending that this was exactly who I wanted to be, for misleading you, for kissing you even (and I’m sorry if I didn’t)?but at some level you had to know. I know that this isn’t a complete surprise.
At what point does one realize that she has arrived and can finally relax? I lose and regenerate limbs on a regular basis. I’m so tired. And this is what I imagine I would tell the charming young loverboy who raped me. And this is what I want to tell all the loverboys out there, that it’s not your dick that acts (as David would have liked me to believe), but your mind, and if you know you have the ability to rape someone, to create this kind of complication for a normal nice person who is trying to live a normal happy life, that is psychotic, and if you can read this shit and laugh as I am well aware that you may be capable of, we’ve reached a conundrum, now, haven’t we? Because if we are this far separated in your imagination there is little hope for reconciliation, and I’m sorry that you had a really hard time as a kid, and you are as complex and tormented as me, but I’m saving my tears for my girl with the bruise across her neck who sobs uncontrollably in my lap. I pray for every one of us but I conserve my real energy for my friends of all genders who have had to feel the terror I speak of. And I can tell you that it is so much more common than you know, all the secrets, the ones that get told and the ones that never do.
And I’m not ashamed anymore and I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.
And to the marked soul walking around this campus with the knowledge that you “got away”?I hate to have to be the one to break it to you, but you did not. This lie will eat at your soul for the rest of your life. And when you can stand it no more, the repression, denial and self-loathing, start by apologizing to her; my guess is that she will be more understanding than you would ever expect. Why? People get apologies; objects do not. And if I were to run into the guy who did this to me and he sat me down and apologized, told me he realized that he had made a terrible mistake, I would listen and my guess is that I would finally be able to move on. So consider it.
The author is a senior in the College.
