I Could Tell You

This week, I'm sharing the essay I performed last weekend at Writers Read in NYC. Life is full of changes—this was one of mine.

For many years, if you asked me about the experience itself I could tell you the actions, the things that took place. The way he slammed me against a wall or punched me or bit me. I could describe each incident clinically, like something I had watched but hadn’t necessarily been involved in.

I could tell you about the two-room cottage in the mountains of California that we lived in. The way he taught me how to split wood and stoke the pot-belly stove. And also how when things turned bad, there was no escape.

I could tell you little things, too. Like how I was wearing my favorite gray ragg wool sweater the first time it happened. I could describe the texture of that garment, coarse and soft all at once, and the frayed threads on its cuffs. I could tell you after we broke up, I never wore it again.

I could tell you when I lived with him I took baths just so I could sit in the tub alone and inhale the scent of the homemade soap I’d bought that winter. “Sweet Plum” was the name handwritten on the label. I could tell you that a boy sitting next to me in the library commented on the smell. “It reminds me of a bowl of Fruity Pebbles cereal,” he said, and it made me smile because I felt so dirty inside.

I could describe the silver ring I wore then—the curves of the metal, the small red stone set just off center—and the way I stared at it after each time he hurt me because everything about that ring and what he said when he gave it to me felt like a lie I wanted to keep believing.

I could tell you about a plane ride home to visit my family. How when I looked out the window and saw the skyline of New York, I began to cry because I knew I was safe and wasn’t going to go back.

I could tell you when I came home, I was not the same person. That I had nightmares for months. That I threw away every single card or memento he ever gave me.

I could tell you that what I wanted most was to forget, forget it ever happened, and forget the girl it happened to.

I could tell you the things people said when I told them we had finally broken up:

“It’s about time.”

“Why would you ever have gone to live with him to begin with?”

“Why did you stay for so long?”

And I could tell you because of what they said, I didn’t tell them everything. But I could also tell you that just because words aren’t spoken, it doesn’t mean they aren’t felt. Words matter. And they mattered even more at 19.

“I could also tell you that just because words aren’t spoken, it doesn’t mean they aren’t felt. Words matter. And they mattered even more at 19.”

I could tell you that years later, I stopped in the middle of a therapy session, suddenly aware that for most of it, I had been mindlessly telling a story … A car ride. Him angry. Him punching me.

“I don’t know why I’m thinking about this. It happened so long ago,” I said to the therapist. But as I told the story, I began to see it from the perspective of who I am now—a mother, the wife of a good man who had always loved me kindly, and a woman who was more educated.

And I could also see myself as I had been then. A girl who had never been in love before. A girl who didn’t know what love was supposed to look like. A girl who was taught it was her role was to please and not to be pleased. A girl who thought it was better to keep quiet than to be a burden.

I could also see the moments I had lived before it turned bad. The one where he danced with me in the kitchen. The one where I read a book to him, his head in my lap, and he stared up at me smiling. And the one where he said, “I love you,” and I believed him.

And I could feel that girl still inside me. And I knew I could tell her what she’d been waiting all this time to hear. “It was never your fault. And you deserved so much more.”

Darcey Gohring is a freelance writer and editor. She is a writing instructor, specializing in memoir and personal essay. To learn more, visit darceygohring.com.  

This essay was performed as part of the live show for Writers Read. If this is the first time you are hearing about Writers Read, go to their website, writersread.org, to learn about the amazing work they do!