north to okc
Even the blades of grass exist in dire uniformity at 400 Bizzell Street in College Station, Texas. To walk along Bizzell from its start at George Bush Drive to its end at College Avenue is to walk in synchronicity with 44,000 other students, accidentally in step, never veering off the path. That’s how it is at Texas A&M. You don’t veer off the path into the direly uniform grass, and I know this because I did it, eliciting reprimand from one of the school’s Cadets.
Texas A&M University. Aggieland. Home of the Core, Reveille, and the George H.W. Bush Library.
I accidentally landed there in the same way I have accidentally landed anywhere, and I spent the last few years of the 90s in stark contrast to those around me. It wasn’t a jarring shift. I’d spent the previous ten years as a black sheep in rural southeast Texas, after all; but still, it was a shift of great remarkability.
As one does when accidentally landing in new territory, I found a small pocket to slip nicely into. This pocket housed a tiny herd of black sheep who, like me, had goals to accomplish, but didn’t need the attention that being out of uniform garnered. We were there for education, for experience. We were a group of individuals, cohesive and united by our purpose but separated by our eccentricities.
In keeping with my character, I immediately secured a job at a local coffee shop just northwest of campus. We served lunch plates with chicken salad tucked into cabbage leaves alongside squares of congealed salad, which is little more than fruit stirred into jello and topped with sugary cream cheese. We made terrible cappuccinos and clear, glass mugs of coffee with flavors like hazelnut and viennese cinnamon and snickerdoodle. It was a place with doilies and tiny ladies with silver hair carefully coiffed at the salon each week.
It was polished, pristine - qualities forever out of my reach, but I loved it for that. One day, the manager showed up to announce her departure and new ownership. As long as I could bring chicken salad plates to the silver haired ladies and eavesdrop on the tenured professors, I knew I’d be unfazed by the change. Over the next few years, the new owner and I would spend hundreds of hours drinking terrible box wine in her jungle book backyard.
Going against my character, I also met someone with whom, despite my best efforts not to, I formed a serious relationship. He was pre-med and the first person who ever called himself an atheist to me. Having been in a silent spiritual battle for most of my life, I was fascinated and peppered him with questions. He loved good beer, good books, and Tori Amos, and we’d devote evenings to studying with tea glasses full of jug wine. We spent two years like this, enjoying the occasional road trip to New Orleans, before he moved to San Antonio to start medical school.
Our relationship continued easily from a distance for another year and a half until one day, in the middle of a shift, it occurred to me that continuing would mean one of us compromising our dream. Standing next to a box of doilies, I called him and ended it. When life feels impossible, I either make bread or clean. Placing the phone in my apron pocket, I began to alphabetize the flavored coffee beans.
**********
My final year at Texas A&M, I lived alone in an upstairs apartment just over a mile from campus. An introvert who requires a certain amount of solitude, I loved this arrangement. The pocket that housed us eccentrics was empty now, anyway. My life was simple. I was busy in the way that college seniors who work full time are busy, but it was simple.
The day before Thanksgiving, I had my knee put back together. My kneecap had been out of place for four months, and I was ready to walk properly again. Of course, it would be eight months before that could happen, but, those incisions were the first step toward healing.
Time blurs time, which is to say that it could’ve been a week after surgery, or it could have been three, when I was to start filling in the gaps between physical therapy appointments with PT homework. Everyday, I’d crutch home from campus, scatter my books around me, and meticulously complete each exercise while reading. I’d been rehearsing for these master multitasking moments my entire life. Efficiency was - and is - my most refined skill, so it never felt absurd to divide my attention between two things that should have needed it fully.
Scenery changes are invigorating - particularly when your life is a series of repetitions and especially when your movement is a series of repetitions. The floor of my living room had grown mundane, even whilst surrounded by books, so, on occasion, I’d crutch down stairs and across the lawn to the apartment complex gym. It was a small, heavily-windowed space, with room enough to hold a power rack, treadmill, stationary bike, and a handful of residents. Being small, myself, I could tuck into a corner and quietly complete my rehab exercises.
Eventually, I’d grow tired of the tiny, windowed gym and resume my living room efficiency practice amongst textbooks and study notes.
One afternoon, I crutched up the stairs, dumped the contents of my backpack into the living room floor, and sat down amidst the mess. I lifted myself back out of the pile, put on my shoes, and crutched over to the tiny gym. This would be my sliding doors moment.
“Did I hear you say you’re from Alaska?” I’d ask.
I had finished my PT and was peddling the stationary bike with my one good leg. He was on the power rack talking with a friend. His eyes, devastatingly blue, pierced mine as his grin widened. His smile enveloped me as he said, “I am. Where are you from?” “Alaska,” I say, smiling back.
**********
Even the blades of grass exist in dire uniformity at 400 Bizzell Street in College Station, Texas. I felt the stifle the first time I walked onto campus three and a half years ago, a sense relieved only by my herd of black sheep friends. With the herd thinned to only me, the monochromatic nature was suffocating, evoking a need to veer off path for a leisurely breath. Alaska felt it, too.
He and I were instant - united by unrelenting eyes and a love of mountains. It was out of character for me to leap blindly into love. It was out of character for me to even give in to love without infinite rumination. It was out of character for me to do any of it so quickly, but the entirety of my experience with Alaska was wholly and undeniably out of character for me. I don’t want to say that I couldn’t help it because that seems vitreous. Anemic. Weak.
The truth is all of those things, though: I couldn’t help it, and eventually I’d find myself feeling vitreous. Anemic. Weak.
We were good to start. We would go to the tiny gym together. We would study together. We would road trip together. He would teach me to rock climb and I would take him to the track. We’d have winding conversations about moving to a place that allowed us to live our outdoor dreams without hindrance, falling asleep only to continue the chatter over morning coffee. I loved him with all of me - an unfamiliar state that left me shaky, left me unsteady.
I ignored myself.
I ignored myself, lending the world to become only us. There was no awareness of how it had become only us, two people tethered by eyes and mountains relying only on each other for company. For pleasure. For being blades of grass, askew. It just happened that way in the same way all unhealthy relationships develop, and I couldn’t stop it. He wouldn’t have let me, anyway.
**********
I skipped my college graduation, opting for a week in Hawaii, instead. My best friend and I spent seven days roaming the beaches, wandering through the rainforest, and dancing the evenings away. In the mornings, I’d wake first and spend the sunrise scribbling into a notebook between long gazes at the ocean. A sense of peace, of security settled in. This feeling had been missing for so long that I had trouble identifying it. I didn’t need to identify it, though. I just needed to be in it.
We landed back on the main land about a week before Christmas. Feeling spectacularly both tense and relieved, I left my front door open for Alaska. The islands had removed a layer, exposing the tiniest sliver of light, though I wasn’t able to find my way with it, yet. A few days later, he and I would drive west to see his family for Christmas Eve, before heading southeast to see mine. We rang in the millennium the way everyone else did, soaked in cheap champagne, donning glittery 2000 glasses.
The slide back into precariousness happened the same way love or sleep happens - slow and subtle until it isn’t, leaving you smack in the middle of it. Maybe it was the cheap champagne. Likely it was the extended and impregnable feeling of insecurity, of helplessness. I don’t remember much beyond New Year’s Day. His eyes, devastatingly blue, had once again blinded me. His grin, wide and consuming, had smothered me. My ability to do anything more than what was necessary for survival had been shattered.
On January 27, 2001, my phone rang. “Hey, can I come see you this weekend?” the voice on the other end asked. “Of course,” I say. “You don’t have to ask. Just show up.”
It was my best friend. We had served snickerdoodle coffee and chicken salad plates to silver-haired ladies and busy, tenured professors for a year, together, before she moved back to Oklahoma by way of a short-lived stint in Florida. During her brief time in College Station, she, too, had spent time in our boss’ jungle book yard drinking terrible box wine, which is to say that she and the restaurant owner, also, had a friendship.
Our boss had called her about me.
It was dark out when I heard a knock at the door. Alaska was three hours away visiting his grandfather for the weekend, so I knew who would be on the other side of it. My volatile upbringing taught me that a fake smile is the first step in steadying turbulent air, so I can only surmise that I was wearing one as I slid the chain away and turned the doorknob. My friend scanned me before settling on my eyes. My imprisoned, dull eyes. “Is he raping you?”
Understanding what this was, I crumbled into a heap, talking through the tears.
With shaky composure, I told her of his emotional control, his charming manipulation, his physical restraint, his uninhibited demand for sex. His rape when I wouldn’t concede.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to pack your things and move you to Oklahoma. We will work to get the dolphins out of the zoo, there, and get real jobs until we’re done. But first, things have to end with him. I’ll call him and let him know,” she said, sternly, lovingly.
“That sounds okay. I want to call him, though. I need some power in this. I was never weak before him, and I don’t want to stay weak after him.” I picked up the phone and told him that it was over - all of it was over - and that he was never to contact me again.
Alaska screamed through the phone. For all of his abusive behavior, he had never once raised his voice. He threatened to drive to College Station, and understanding his new screams likely weren’t hollow, I lashed back that if he showed up, I wasn’t letting him in.
She, too, is on the phone. She is calling a guy who worked for me in the restaurant, asking for help. He’s a stout guy, intimidating in stature, teddy-bearish in nature. A few minutes later, she’s letting him into the apartment. The three of us find laughter amongst the chaos, listening to 90s hip hop, stuffing what we could into trash bags.
It’s nearly 2am when we are silenced by a banging, thunderous and accompanied by a loud, drawn out version of my name. “I’m not letting you in,” I say, with conviction, with some semblance of control. He refuses to leave. I refuse to waver.
Suddenly, silence.
It’s not over, and I know this. I just don’t know what’s next. I’m calculating his plan, as though I can think like him. As though I can think the way a person of perceived power thinks. As though I can think like a rapist.
I’m calculating his plan when I hear a stirring from the other side of my living room. I walk to the french doors that lead to my balcony. When I pull back the blinds, I see him hoisting his agile, rock climber’s body over the railing. José steps in front of me.
José is the intimidating teddy bear who now towered over both of us like a grizzly. I grab my phone and dial 9. I hesitated on the two 1s that follow in hopes that Alaska would leave. José opens the sliding door, giving pause to Alaska. I watched him weigh his two options and exhaled when he opted to climb back over the railing and scale the brick building downward to the grass.
Nearing sunrise, the three of us crawled into my bed, closing our eyes to the turmoil, even if only for a few hours.
Upon waking, we crammed everything that would fit into my car and drove north.
I didn’t tell him I was leaving.
**********
The dread evaporated the way Alaska had evaporated: swiftly and corporeally. This is not to say that I only had to change locations to feel free. No, geography wasn’t the issue. I had just left an abusive relationship, after all. It’s simply that the dread of knowing what each day, what each night would bring was gone.
I had healing to do, but I couldn’t see it. I weighed eighty-two pounds. I could no longer listen to music. I created work to fill the spaces outside of my corporate job and animal rights campaign efforts. His devastatingly blue eyes remained persistently behind my eyelids, forcing me to watch a time lapse of the previous year every time I slipped into bed.
Still, I couldn’t see it.
You’ll remember that this was two decades ago, in the days of landlines and rolodexes. My friend walked into my room and offered me a sticky note with a phone number on it. “This is my therapist. I think you should call him.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I turned to meet her gaze. I was a floating head attached to a frail body. My skin was dull, my eyes dark, my once shiny hair, now brittle. I took it from her.
I’d like to tell you that I sat in his office, telling him everything while vowing to return weekly until I could exist as a whole human in the world again, but I can’t. I did, however, call him that day. I did go to his office, and I did sit down.
Following the receptionist down the hallway felt endless. We walk in step with one another, as though we were a two-woman Core of Cadets, until she stops and gently taps on a closed door. The counselor steps out and extends his hand. I can’t bring myself to look at his face, so I watch my hand meet his and will myself to shake it with authority. She closes the door behind her as he gestures for me to sit. I’ve yet to speak, so he tells me about himself. This, I’ve come to learn, is a tactic. It’s a strategy that therapists use to help the patient feel safe.
If we know them, we can trust them.
It’s not defective logic. We are more likely to trust what we know. My issue isn’t trust, though. I am, by nature, a trusting person. My issue is shame. I stayed in trauma as a child because it was my only option. I stayed in this trauma because I didn’t know how to get out, and for that I felt shame.
As he was talking to me, so was I. I was having a quiet conversation with myself. A pep talk. A self-demand, really. You’re here, so you might as well say things and stop being a floating head. His voice paused and I heard mine take over. “I’m here because I dated someone for a year, and he would pin me to things, sometimes, and at night…” I started migrating my eyes toward his face. “And at night he would force sex and I thought counseling would help but I can’t tell you because you look like who you look like.” With sweaty palms, I grabbed my things and walked down the endless hallway, through the glass doors, and back into breathable air.
My therapist looked like Steve Buscemi.
**********
Writer’s note: It took nine years and a friend’s tragedy for me to tell this story. It took another four for me to say the word “rape.” It took another two for me to say the word “rape” in reference to what happened to me. I’m forever grateful that I’ve never felt less than. I’m forever grateful to have never struggled with loving myself or liking myself or knowing my value. I’m forever grateful that he didn’t fully break me, because in stories like mine, that is often what happens. Broken pieces of woman with excruciating hope to be made whole again. Shattered identities. Fleeting faith in themselves. These weren’t my battles. No, I battled my own stubbornness, my own razor sharp edges, my own tragic ability to compartmentalize. Only in finally, slowly, subtly telling my story to one woman at a time did I learn how different our similarities can be.
I’m writing this writer’s note the same way I wrote the entire story, which is to say I’m writing it to the world as though I might actually share it. I’m writing it just in case I do, because it’s important to tell all of it. It’s important to tell the story as it unfolded, but it’s equally important to talk about the lingering effects. I mentioned that my therapist looked exactly like Steve Buscemi, who looks exactly like a sexual predator to me. I should have looked for another, but I didn’t know how, and I was too afraid of what I’d find, anyway.
I waited. I waited until enough time had passed for me to turn on the radio again, for my body to not reject food again, for my eyes to, once again, comfortably look into someone else’s. I waited longer than I needed to for the same reason I stayed longer than I should have: I didn’t know how to not. I could waste my wishes wishing that I’d navigated that era differently, but that’s a purposeless expenditure of time. Instead, I have the conversation that was muted twenty years ago with other women who have also endured their own silence for too long.
