Thinking || Dear You

Dear you,

It’s a sad kind of wonderful sisterhood to speak to someone like you. I discovered that I can tell you my story, safe in the knowledge that you understand the small parts.

As you know, everyone “understands” the big parts. Rape is bad so to know that we are survivors is sufficient to elicit the Rabbit-in-headlights “ok…wow…” – the Trying-Not-To-React-To-The-Unfathomably-Awful sad eyes or sympathetic head tilt. I’ve had it. I reckon you have too. It’s bad, so, Christ we must be super strong eh?

But the small parts are the worst parts because they are the parts we didn’t anticipate. You know the ones I mean. The after effects. The bits we can’t easily explain because they’re not obviously linked. It’s astonishing to be able to say that aloud – you know. You know and I know.

You know and I know. She probably knows because this is horrifically common. We are a ‘we’ and we can encounter a ‘she’ who is secretly our sister through no choice of her own, we might not even know she’s our sister. It’s terrifyingly everyday. But I was alone in the wilderness. Superficial statistics told me that I am not alone and yet there I was, in the solitude of having experienced the breach of my body. The singular disintegration of control, the moment of coming apart. ‘One in four’ or ‘one in five’ make it seem like we are the many, but if you are the One, then the Three or Four are blissfully oblivious so how do you find the other Ones? Is there a One club? A society of the broken?

So thank you for sharing. Thank you for being a twin to my suffering. Another One to my One.