The kind woman on the advice hotline will urge you to go to the hospital to get checked out, but with the warning that if you tell them what happened, they’ll need to report it to the police.

The nurse in the emergency room will give you a look of heavy pity and put you in a room where you will wait to give your statement to the police.

The police will ask you a long, long list of questions, and you will second-guess every other answer, because it’s cold in your hospital gown, and your hands are shaking, and your head is swimming. They might also insinuate that you brought this on yourself by not being careful.

The man with the rape kit will repeatedly apologize about your discomfort as he takes samples from the most private parts of your body, and he’ll assure you that it’s almost over. You won’t get to go home for several hours.

The handsome young investigator wearing shiny, fancy shoes will say that you’ve done the right thing, and that they’re “going to help you get this guy.” You’ll need to meet with him a few times. The first time, you will rehash everything you already told the police. The second time, you will need to identify your assailant in a row of photos. If there’s a third time, he might ask you to make a recorded phone call to your assailant, to trick him into confessing. If the call goes well, the investigator will say you did an amazing job, and that you couldn’t have gotten better evidence. You will feel a surge of hope.

The gentle victim’s advocate assigned to you will ask many, many times how you are feeling and if you need anything. You will have no idea how to answer and probably just lie and tell her you’re fine. You will tell a lot of people that you’re fine.

If the DA feels especially passionate about your case, she might make wild promises about winning — about how it’ll likely all be over in a year, and you’ll be able to get a sense of closure and move on with your life. It will not be over in a year.

If your case is anything like mine, you will be transferred to a new DA three times over the course of three years. You will relive your assault several times each year — not just at the pre-trial hearing or whenever you re-tell the story to your new DA, but also every time you get an email with an update about the next hearing, which will be postponed over and over and over again. I cannot stress enough how often court dates are delayed. After the first two years, you will start to believe that you’ll be living the rest of your life in judicial purgatory.

Finally, finally, you’ll go to trial — or your assailant will plead guilty. Mine did. Your victim’s advocate will give you instructions for writing a Victim Impact Statement, which you can read in front of the judge before the sentencing. This is the Holy Grail of Closure everyone has been promising you. If you’re a writer, you will obsess over that statement for weeks. It will feel more important than anything you’ve ever written. You’ll want to give it some sort of structure — a narrative scaffolding to make sense of it all. At the last minute, in a fit of desperation, you will drink four glasses of whiskey and finally get it all out through a fit of tears. It won’t feel good. Nothing about this experience will feel good, but it will feel important and necessary and hopeful for the first time since you spoke with the investigator.

I was supposed to read my Victim Impact Statement today. The DA told me to arrive at 2 PM for the sentencing. I arrived at 1:45 with my heart in my throat. There was a lot of awkward shuffling as my victim’s advocate moved me from room to room, until the DA arrived to apologize: There had been some sort of miscommunication, and the sentencing had already happened without me earlier that morning. Over three years of misery had essentially culminated in a clerical error. For the last time, I lied and told them that it was okay — that I was “fine.” I am not.

I don’t say all of this to discourage people from reporting. According to RAINN, only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police, and only 28 of those 310 lead to a felony conviction. We need to talk about this. We need to tell people what happened to us. But no one in the assembly line of health care and legal authorities will properly warn you about what comes next — the years you will sacrifice to correct the damage someone inflicted on you in a matter of minutes or hours. So if you choose not to report, I understand. And if you want to report, but you’re scared, I want to make myself available as someone you can talk to.

Also, I have a favor to ask: Since I didn’t get to read my Impact Statement, would you read it for me? I’ve included it below. If this is helpful to anyone — even just one person — then maybe the last three years will have been worth something. Right now, life — and all the pain that comes with it — is feeling pretty meaningless.

***

IMPACT STATEMENT

The guidelines for this document state that I should list all of the significant ways this crime has affected me — psychological, social, emotional, or otherwise. I don’t think I can write that way. I can’t relay such an intimate form of damage in the clear language of the judicial system, but here’s what I can tell you.

Before May 19, 2019, I was a different person — friendlier, more outgoing, more confident, more alive. But then a Lyft driver I didn’t know handed me a bottle of vodka while I was lost in a haze of drunken tears, and I woke up in an unfamiliar place, without my pants, confused and terrified about what had happened to my body while my mind had been absent.

Since then, neither my body nor my mind function the same way they once did. I used to be a morning person. I liked getting up at 6:30 to see the sun and to exercise. Now, every morning comes with a familiar jolt of panic and the inescapable feeling of dread I experienced in Jose’s bedroom. I can barely get up for work on time, and I’ve gained thirty pounds from the inertia. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and occasional bouts of depression — but then again, who doesn’t these days?

I didn’t want to report this crime. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and move on with my life as swiftly as possible. Honestly, over three years later, I know that would have been the easier path. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how Jose didn’t seem to understand the gravity of his actions or the damage that he had done. And I worried, given that lack of understanding, about whether this could happen to another passenger who got into his car.

So that’s why we’re here. I am generally not an angry person, and from the beginning, my goal has never been punishment. It’s prevention — and perhaps, selfishly, closure. The word victim feels strange in my mouth. It comes with all sorts of connotations like innocence and helplessness, and doesn’t feel fully human. But I recognize Jose’s humanity, and we’re here because I want him to get the treatment he needs so that he never does anything like this again — and because I need to believe that someday, I’ll be able to wake up and not think of him or be fearful that he will somehow reenter my life. My deepest wish is for all of this to simply be over.

I’d like to close with something I wrote back in 2019, a few months after the incident:

We are all
Beautiful and ugly,
Kind and cruel.
We are the damages we carry
And the damages we do.

I thank this court for all of the time and hard work that goes into mitigating those damages.

Thoughts that run through your mind during a sunrise yoga session at a work retreat in the desert, as a self-proclaimed non-yoga-person who detests the oppressively dry landscape and struggles with crippling bouts of anxiety first thing in the morning:

I’d better get a spot in the back so my ass isn’t in anyone’s face.
I hope my deodorant isn’t doing that gross, crusty armpit-crease thing.
My deodorant is probably doing that gross, crusty armpit-crease thing.
Please don’t look at my armpits, Mr. Attractive Instructor Guy.
I need to pull the waist of my leggings up over my belly.
I need to shove my tits back into my sports bra.
I don’t think I’m doing this right.
I’m definitely not doing this right.

I’ve been away from home for nearly two weeks, having been on a stressful road trip from NorCal to SoCal and back for a dear friend’s wedding and then flying directly to Palm Springs to guide a couple of clients through drafting their book proposals over the course of four days. My introvert-battery is on empty, it’s hot as balls here, and none of my summer clothes fit properly over the 30 pounds I gained during the pandemic.

I keep catching glimpses of myself in the mirror and fretting over the roundness of my cheeks, the extra flesh under my chin, the girth of my limbs. We’ve been taking photos every day, and I look like a stranger to myself in every single one. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my own skin, but there hasn’t been a lot of time to think about it. There’s too much brainstorming and workshopping to do. So I keep smiling and doing my best impression of “calm, collected professional” while my brain silently pleads, “Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, don’t look at me.” Around our luxurious rental home, tiny lizards are taking refuge from the 100-degree heat under bushes and rocks, and I wish I could do the same.

But here I am on the concrete at 7 AM, trying to stretch and contort this wobbly, foreign body in such a way that will produce the sense of ease and joy and oneness-with-the-earth that the instructor’s smooth voice promises. I sneak peeks at him between poses. He’s handsome and charismatic, but not my type — tan, athletic, and probably very well-adjusted (what even is that?) I imagine he spends a lot of his free time meditating, rock-climbing, eating salads with lean protein, and being obnoxiously laid-back. I’ll bet he doesn’t wake up every day with the sensation of his chest imploding or take a medley of prescription drugs to sleep at night. He tells us to press our hands to the back of our necks, and I can feel the familiar, crunchy gravel of resentment under my fingertips. My boss makes a blissful sighing sound, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me — why I can’t just let go and enjoy this.

A few years ago, I’d have been sitting in a depressing cubicle under fluorescent lights, working 10- to 15-hour days and sweating about whether I could produce another New York Times bestselling campaign for Rupert Murdoch. My corporate career involved a lot of long, dismal evenings alone in a San Francisco office building for not enough pay. Today, I’m doing yoga in a lush yard surrounded by majestic mountains, with a private chef cooking us breakfast in the kitchen and a crystal-blue saltwater swimming pool to my left. Between wellness activities like this, I’m helping two intelligent, interesting authors convert their rough ideas into what I genuinely believe are going to be great books — alongside a brilliant, kind woman who is teaching me what it takes to run a small business and live a life driven by passion rather than pure capitalism. And all I can think about is how awful I must look doing the downward dog. If you’re hating me right now, don’t worry: I am, too.

To be fair, this just isn’t my world — or hasn’t been, historically. Beyond the inherent discomfort that this level of white luxury brings to someone who grew up in a 1-bathroom house with her 7-person family, my adult life has been full of buttoned-up conferences by day and boozy networking events by night, the cynical, no-bullshit camaraderie of New York publishing colleagues who have seen and read it all.

After marketing self-help books for 15+ years, you start to recognize that the product is basically the same every time. There’s really no such thing as new advice; the magic is all in the packaging, the fresh spin. You work yourself to exhaustion figuring out what that “spin” is over and over again, and shrug off the nagging worry about how much of your life you’re sacrificing on the altar of American productivity, usually with an old fashioned — or four. Or five. Your time is not your own, and neither is the real estate of your mind, but at least you can have a dark laugh about it with your co-workers.

Add to this the Trump presidency, a tremendously mishandled pandemic, racism, global warming, the rollback of reproductive rights, an oncoming recession, and all the personalized miseries life can bring to an individual, and cynicism becomes your armor, the only thing that feels safe. So when someone with bright eyes and glowing skin tries to tell you there’s a better way to live — that chasing your true passions can be worthwhile or that dreams really do come true — it’s basically all you can do not to roll your eyes. Meditation? No thanks, I’m too busy writing ad headlines. Clean living? I’ll have another whiskey, please. Yoga? Well, that brings us right back to today, doesn’t it?

I’ve bumbled my way through several poses and stretches at this point, trying to keep my facial expression calm while I adjust my ill-fitting outfit every three seconds and struggle with the whole “clear your mind” aspect of this exercise, when the instructor finally tells us to lie back on our mats and relax. Specifically, he says, “If you’ve had trouble keeping your thoughts quiet, that’s okay. Just let them go where they want, now.” It’s not particularly profound, just a simple statement of permission, and yet it’s exactly the thing that cracks me after three days of bristling against all of this “wellness” nonsense. I’m horrified to feel tears collecting under my closed eyelids and sliding down the bridge of my nose. It strikes me that I haven’t felt like I’ve had this kind of permission at any point over the last two weeks — or maybe ever.

And maybe that’s what all of this is about: permission to care for yourself, to believe that life can be different, to hope. It feels foreign and unnatural — dangerous, even. After a lifetime of chaining yourself to a desk, relying on professional accomplishment for your sense of worth, and slowly giving up on the traditional markers of success — marriage, family, a house, retirement… It’s hard to imagine that there could be anything else to live for. So you just sort of stop living. You choose to simply exist, instead. And you start to resent anyone who hints that you might be doing it wrong. They must be delusional. Because if they’re not, then you have to reckon with the notion that you’ve been wasting your life. That rather than protecting you, this cynical armor has actually just been weighing you down.

The yoga session ends, and I feel a little light-headed. I eat breakfast. I shower. I sit down to write this essay, and I think, I’m definitely not doing this right. But maybe I can.

Other than a good, hard cry in my partner’s arms on Friday evening, I am relatively calm, maybe because this trend of “less-ness” has become my new normal. I feel like I’ve been losing tiny pieces of myself for a long time — before the pandemic, even. It started on the afternoon of May 19, 2019…

I’m drunk and crying in the back of a shared Lyft, vaguely aware of the other people in the car, but mostly consumed with my own hurt feelings and foggy head. The other passengers are dropped off first. Eventually, we come to a stop in front of my house, but I’m still crying too hard to notice. The driver asks if I’m okay. I say no. He asks if I want another drink. I foolishly say yes. My memory fades in and out after that. The car moves again. Stops. I’m handed a tall bottle of vodka. I hate vodka. The car moves, stops again. I’m in a dingy room, sitting on a mattress on the floor, drinking the vodka mixed with some sickly sweet soda and talking with the driver about how awful Trump is. Then nothing. Blackness. For hours.

When I come to, it’s the middle of the night. My pants are missing, and I’m sore in places that shouldn’t be. The driver is on the mattress next to me, looking very self-satisfied. My head is pounding, and so is my heart. It’s beating against my chest like a terrified bird as I scramble to find my clothes and get dressed. In a trembling voice, I ask a litany of questions about what happened. Did we have sex? He answers yes, but that “it’s okay.” I want to die, but also I don’t, and I’m suddenly, soberly aware of how dangerous the situation is. I need to go. I start to call another Lyft, but he insists on driving me home, and I’m shaking and can’t think of what to say, too panicked to do anything but follow him back to the car.

I get home. I cry. I try to watch TV and pretend like nothing happened. It doesn’t work.

I won’t go into the grueling ordeal of reporting the incident — the police questioning, the invasive medical exam, the investigation, the moment I saw him again in court. That’s a story for another day — hopefully a better day, when my case is finally closed. In the nearly three years since that horrible night, I’ve been in and out of the DA’s office several times, reliving the experience again and again, feeling less and less all the time. And then there was the pandemic. And now journalists are using the phrase “World War III.”

Everything somehow seems unreal and too real at the same time, including me. I think about the woman I was before I got into that car, and she’s a stranger. I don’t know how to be her. I don’t know how to be someone who wasn’t raped, who doesn’t think about a dingy room and a mattress on the floor every time she gets into the shower. I can’t quite put words to them, but that woman from Before had things I no longer have. She was more, and I am less.

The only silver lining to this that I can think of is: All these parts I’m missing, the “less-ness,” must have left spaces to fill, right? When the doctor removes my reproductive organs today, I imagine my guts will shift into the place where my uterus once was. The shape of my insides will be different — better, even, since this procedure might help prevent future endometriosis complications. Maybe it’s the same with my identity. Maybe I can choose better things to put in my empty spaces, take on a different shape. Maybe I don’t have to be less forever.

By the time I’d decided to give my virginity to my first boyfriend, I was no longer in love with him. After a year of puppy-dog romance and then a year of crippling depression that left him incapable of seeing me for weeks at a time, the magic had died, but the thought of giving my virginity to anyone else seemed wrong. He was my first everything, and I was already twenty-one. I made the decision out of a sense of loyalty, of duty. It was a supposed-to-do, a should, like almost every other major decision of my life that wasn’t fueled by pure alcohol and selfish, animal need. I am a creature of dramatic absolutes.

We took a month-long break afterward, during which I dated around and developed feelings for other people, and then went back to him for another eight years to assuage my guilt — a decade in total, wasted on someone I could barely stand to look at by the end. He’d tried to sleep with my best friend, who lived with us at the time; but when I found out, I wasn’t truly hurt or angry — just relieved that I had a “good reason” to go, that claiming my freedom was finally another supposed-to-do, a must.

I’ve wasted huge swaths of my life that way — on stressful, miserable jobs and unhealthy relationships and time spent doing things I don’t really want to do because I’m afraid of being a disappointment, of being alone. I don’t want to be left, so I have a hard time leaving. Just tell me that I’m good, that I’m special and wanted, and I can endure almost anything — “as long as you love me,” like a trite pop song. But underneath all of that loyalty and longsuffering lies a deadly tumor of bitterness and resentment. I think my mom planted the seed of it somewhere deep in my chest when I was a small child, the day she threatened to leave me and my dad because of his drinking, or perhaps it was all those months she spent in Vietnam — the way she sobbed when she got back, the undeniable fact that her real home was on the other side of the world. I don’t blame her, though. I grew this cancer on my own, and at thirty-six, I worry it’s all that will be left of me someday.

Like my dad, I used to be a fun drunk — and still am, sometimes. In college, after an entire adolescence terrorized by fear of abandonment and Christian guilt, alcohol was a revelation. Two drinks, and the anxiety that handicaps so much of my personality evaporates. Three drinks, and the floodgates in my brain holding back all of my most loving, insightful, creative thoughts are unlocked, the best of who I am spilling out of my mouth in effusive, effortless words of passion. Four or five, and you’ll often find me literally dancing on bars and singing at the top of my lungs. I’ve made art and music and friends and lovers, all with a glass in my hand, and life has rarely looked more beautiful than it does through a dreamy, drunken haze.

But the cancer is too big, now. The baggage of all these bitter years, a life of should and must, of wasted time and youth and money and potential, of damage done by those who exploited my insecurity, whether intentionally or not… That’s what comes through the floodgates, now. There’s always a chance that I’ll scream rather than sing and cry rather than dance. I’ve damaged friendships and ruined evenings and wasted even more precious days paralyzed by shameful hangovers. I keep trying to run from her, but there’s no escaping the woman I’ve become. And if I don’t face her, forgive her, and convince her that I won’t abandon her — even if she starts making different decisions and living life for herself — then who will?