Un-Silent
A person’s face(s) shouting in gray with a dark background.
By. Katherine Turner
Content Warning: Sexual Assualt
A few months ago, not long before the country started shutting down in response to COVID-19, my husband, kids and I were are attending a birthday party for a family friend. At the time, I was approaching the release date for my debut novel and all our friends were asking how things were going and if I was still on track to meet my intended publication date.
One of those friends—who also happens to be my husband’s immediate superior at work—settled in and started firing off a long list of questions related to my writing career. As it usually does in these types of situations, the conversation eventually turned to asking about other writing projects I have in the pipeline. After giving some background on my other fiction works, I mentioned that I was also working on my memoir.
“Your memoir?!” he asked, incredulous.
“Yup, my memoir. The first, anyway—there may be more than one.”
He laughed, heartily. “What are you, like sixty?!”
I was no longer a mid-thirties adult, excited that someone was taking an interest in her passion. Instead, I felt like I was crumbling, like an ancient stone wall hit with a battering ram. All my newly-found confidence disappeared.
I was seven years old, trying to convince my dad that my cousin had molested me as he accused me of lying, or begging my mom not to make me choose which parent I loved more as she ignored me and insisted I make a choice immediately, or screaming at my dad to come back as he shut out my voice and intentionally walked onto a busy highway.
I was eight years old, pleading with the social worker not to take my sister and me from our mom without us saying goodbye, then being told to stop crying and get over it. I was growing up in foster care to the chorus of “children should be seen and not heard” and being told to quiet down because I was too loud.
I was thirteen and begging my boyfriend and best friend to believe me that my boyfriend’s brothers had raped me as they turned their backs on me, calling me a slut and assaulting me.
I was instantly every insecurity I’d ever felt, in every moment of being silenced. I opened my mouth and my jaw flopped around like a fish for a moment with no sound coming out because I’d lost the voice I’d poured my heart, soul, and sanity into finding.
Why is it that society finds it so hard to believe that someone who hasn’t reached retirement age would have something of value to contribute, to convey? Don’t those of us who have lived through significant trauma have enough to contend with without being doubted or immediately dismissed?
As I struggled to speak, my instinct was to just shut my mouth, excuse myself either to the bathroom to give in to the tears fighting their way to the surface or to go refill my wine glass and drink until I didn’t care.
To just go back to being silent.
But, dammit, I’d fought so fucking hard to drag myself out of silence; I refused to go back.
“No,” I finally replied. “But I have lived through enough experiences to be.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Maybe more. Experiences no one should have.”
“Really?” he said again. “Like what?”
Bristling at his obvious disbelief, I took a deep breath and let it out. No sugar-coating, no softening of language to make him more comfortable.
“Like being sexually abused and not believed. Like watching my biological parents try to commit suicide. Begging on the streets for money and having to hide some of it from my biological mother so she didn’t spend it all on alcohol instead of feeding us. This is before I went into foster care when I was eight-and-a-half.” I paused and took a breath, determined to get the next line out, struggling as I still do. “And then being raped by my boyfriend’s two brothers when I was thirteen.”
His eyes rounded and he drew his head back. “Wow.” He shook his head slightly. “I had no idea. Huh.”
He looked away and took a slow sip of his drink as everything I said replayed in my mind and self-doubt immediately set in.
And then I started to panic.
Oh, shit. Did I really just say all that to my husband’s boss? What is he going to think? Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I opened my mouth to say something—anything—to “fix” what I’d just done only to realize there wasn’t anything I could do. What was done…was done. I couldn’t take it back—the words were already said. Besides, there was nothing to “fix,” I reminded myself; I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was simply slipping back into taking responsibility for things I’d had no control over, assuming the shame for wrongs perpetrated against me.
The things I lived through as a young child—the things done to me against my will—are not my fault or my responsibility to carry. I have no obligation to hide or soften the trauma I’ve experienced simply because it may bother someone else if I call it what it really is. Society had me convinced most of my life that I was simply too much and needed to be quiet, to keep those uncomfortable topics to myself. That if I absolutely had to talk about them, to use other words; words that are gentler, less alarming and upsetting for others.
Words like “difficult childhood” instead of “emotional and sexual abuse and neglect.”
Words like “spanking” instead of “physical abuse.”
Words like “nonconsensual sex” instead of “rape.”
Decades had passed me by as I pretended to be okay when I really wasn’t because it’s what everyone around me expected. Stifling the screaming inside because it was easier for everyone else if I was happy and well-adjusted and resilient and unaffected. Feeling shame every time the turbulence underneath slipped out.
But having a voice and using it isn’t something to ever be ashamed of.
Besides, I’ve already spent most of my life silent; I’m long overdue for being un-silent.
Katherine pictured smiling, wearing a cream sweater and glasses with short dark hair.
Katherine Turner is an author of contemporary fiction that focuses on characters learning to live in the wake of childhood trauma and abuse. She also blogs about mental health and compassion on her website, kturnerwrites.com.