If I could fold time, I would hold my younger self on that morning after the Savoy party. Gently, I’d tell her that life from this point on will be difficult, harder than she’d ever imagine. That just when she’s catching her breath at rock bottom, she’ll find there’s another hatch to fall through.
I’d warn her that in the days and weeks and months to come, she would tell herself anything to minimize her reality. She’d scold herself for hurting so much because at least she wasn’t permanently physically injured. At least she wasn’t killed. At least she wasn’t underage. At least it wasn’t a family member. At least she had supportive friends. At least she had money so she could leave her job, allow herself the luxury of time to recover that so few could afford. At least she wasn’t trapped in a relationship with her rapist. At least she didn’t get pregnant. At least she didn’t catch any infections. At least she was in the UK and wasn’t expected to pay for medical care. It would be years before she realized that, each time she concluded that it wasn’t that bad, she was only robbing herself.
I’d warn her that she would spend years cringing at how she set herself on fire to keep Kit Campbell warm. And although she wouldn’t wish what happened on anyone, it felled the first domino in a chain that would set her free. Otherwise, she’d have peered ahead into the life that was almost hers—the house, the kitchen remodel, the oval-cut engagement ring, the wedding in Norfolk, the children that were paler than her—and free-fallen into it.
I’d warn her that confiding in people about what happened to her would never stop feeling like the utmost form of misery. That every time she did speak of it, to a friend, a new partner, a medical professional, the relinquishing of control would never cease to be unbearable.
Night and day each had the companionship of Temazepam and Modafinil. I’d warn her that she’d spend the next half decade reliant on both, slipping one to send her to sleep, and the other in the morning to help her perform daily tasks through the grogginess.
And finally, I’d tell her of the trip to Korea with her mother. I’d tell her that it would take a few years, but that one day she and her mother will be in a place where they can try to understand each other better. That she’d use the last dregs of the settlement money to take Omma home. They’d go to the temple in her village, built atop a steep mountain as is the Buddhist way, to represent the struggle to reach enlightenment. Their legs would be weary after the climb. I’d tell her recovery would be like the temple: built between an enormous boulder and a cliff’s edge. The construction would be perilous, with the laying of every stone risking a drop into an abyss. Her trauma would be the boulder, an unforgiving hard ball within her. It can never be removed. It would never yield, erode, or soften. It would take time, and respect for the delicate ecosystem, but she would slowly build something intricate around this boulder. The architecture she assembled encased the boulder, protected it from rolling over the cliff’s edge. Every time she needed more building materials, she would have to descend the mountain and carry each brick up. It would break her back, turn her hands and feet hard with callouses, crush her spirit. But when the final tile slotted into place, the painstaking years on the brutal mountainside would be worthwhile in the way the far-reaching views of the landscape from the temple made her catch her breath. She would finally take in the sky and the sea, the colorful boats docked at the harbor below, the verdant rice paddies, and the tiny villages dotted in between the valleys.
The boulder and the cliff won’t be all she sees anymore.