I’m remembering the day a Loved One disclosed to me their assault. The details that stuck with me: the sound of children and birds as we looked out the windows open on a mild day; the sound of the rocking chair; the moments chosen to look over, the moments chosen to look out; the sensation of carefully picking words, as you would carefully shift your weight in the woods, not wanting to startle a deer; the feel and smell of a sweet breeze with an undertone of spring leaf rot.
I’m remembering their eyes as their body physically started as if pricked, realizing what was being discussed. As we hugged goodbye I could practically feel the urgent need for their skin to flee to safety, away, away.
I’m remembering leaving the city the day we knew charges would be laid. Anywhere in the city was too close, the heart pounded too hard, the air was too closed in.
Remembering my rage when I learned the originally remorseful Guilty One pressed for the preliminary hearing, wanting to see where the case was weak, where they could poke holes in testimony.
Remembering my thoughts veering off to enjoy architectural details of the Old City Hall, the fear of my screamy heart at the thought of even seeing the Guilty One, even at a distance. The old creaks in the floorboards. I remember two days in a victim’s waiting room during that hearing. Because I could be called on to testify about the disclosure, I couldn’t be in the courtroom to support, to feel it all, to hold their pain.
Remembering the months of a slide into what’s-the-pointedness. The tears and bitterness and the pound-pound-pa-pound of the heart, as I heard that the case was thrown out because of delays. Standing in the hot California sun in the parking lot of a fairytale vineyard chateau, clutching two bottles of my-life-is-changed wine, while the words invaded my vacation.
The guilt of pressing the matter forward through the system; my guilt to hold, even while I know that, in this case, it was the right thing to do. Still, I see the impact on my Loved One, worn as clearly as a hermit crab wears its shell.
With all of the recent public exposures and disclosure, I’m thrown back to all these days. I want a lap as large as a lake to hold the survivors, to rock them and there-there them. I’m tossed on this sea. And I feel so vulnerable. All this rawness, yet all I did was receive a disclosure.
What am I to imagine is the pain of the victims and survivors of assault?