I’ve spent so much time wishing that what happened never happened.
But it did. And the question I try to focus on is,What now?
Now that I’m older, and better, and have done so much healing, I do try to think about the bigger picture. I pay attention to politics, and I vote for candidates who care about safeguarding women. I taught self-defense classes in Texas, and I’ll teach them again here once my kids get a little older and I have more time. I always make sure in my job to treat victims of assault with special compassion and tenderness.
And I’ve started volunteering with a nonprofit group that asks survivors of rape and assault to go into schools, prisons, and colleges, and tell their stories. To girls—but, equally as important, to boys.
It’s terrifying.
I go once a month without fail, and I have to stop on the drive home every single time to throw up by the side of the road.
But I do it anyway.
I do it because I believe that human connection is the only thing that will save us. I do it because I believe we learn empathy when we listen to other people’s stories and feel their pain with them. I do it because I know for certain that our world has an empathy problem with women, and this is one brave thing I can do to help fix it.
Honestly, I tell myself, if I could share my story with DeStasio, I can share it with anyone.
I hope those kids hear me. I hope they come away resolved to be better people. To be more careful with one another. To try like hell to use their pain tohelpothers rather than harm them.
Maybe they get it, and maybe they don’t. All I can do is try.
But when I get home, Owen is always there, waiting for me. He makes sure he has dinner ready—something warm and soothing and buttery. On those nights, I play with our kids and kiss their chubby little bellies until bedtime, and then he takes them up to their little attic bedroom with pom-pom curtains and tucks them in. When he comes back down, he brings me a blanket and a mug of tea, and we sit on the sofa and talk about the day. He tries his best to make me laugh. Sometimes he gives me a foot rub with lemon-scented lotion. Sometimes we watch bad TV.
He can’t fix it, but he tries to make it better.
And then, when it’s our bedtime at last, he falls asleep in my arms, and I fall asleep in his.
Unless I can’t get to sleep right away.
Then, just like I’ve done for so long, I close my eyes and imagine making chocolate chip cookies. I measure out the chips. I crack the eggs. I watch it all churn in the mixer. It’s the same as it always was. Except now it’s different.
Now, it’s not just me baking cookies alone. Now, I always imagine my sixteen-year-old self there, too—right beside me.
When the cookies are ready, we pull them out, sit side by side on the sofa, and eat them—still warm and gooey—and drink glasses of ice cold milk. Sometimes I put my arm around her. Sometimes I say compassionate, understanding, encouraging things. Sometimes I lean in and promise her with all the conviction I possess that what happened to her won’t destroy her life. That in the end, she will heal, and find a new way to be okay.
She never believes me, but I say it anyway.
I know these moments don’t really happen. I know I can’t truly step back in time and mother my long-lost self. I know the teenage me and the current me can’t actually hang out like that, eating cookies and rolling our eyes at the world like besties.
It’s pure fiction. Of course. I’m just telling myself stories.
But that’s the life-changing thing about stories.
We believe them anyway.
BUT, HOLD ON—did I ever forgive Heath Thompson?
Not exactly.
I forgavemyself,at last. Even though I’d done nothing to require forgiveness.
I didn’t really forgive Heath Thompson.
With him, in the end, I guess you could say I chose revenge.
I don’t know if you read about it in the papers, but he wound up going to jail for a long time.
And not for what you’d expect, either.
