There’s a brief moment in an Epstein documentary when one of his victims talks about the bifurcating impact of the trauma she’s endured. She compares herself to a flower “slowly opening up” before encountering him, and of his abuse, to being violently uprooted. The grief in her voice is palpable. It haunted me. Haunts me.
I wrote I’m the Girl contemplating the shape of that kind of Before, the agony of it, of the lives you lose and the ghosts they become. You’re used to meeting a Courtney Summers protagonist in the bitter After. They know, like you, the world is cruel. Since the folly of believing in it has already come with a cost—maybe they’ve even paid the ultimate price—and because no one can hate them for that more than they hate themselves, it’s easy—easier—to rally around them. To love them.
I’m the Girl is not about that protagonist. It’s about a sixteen-year-old girl—and that’s so young, a child, really—who hasn’t stopped believing in the world yet, who hasn’t embraced the fact of its cruelty so she may more safely navigate it, who cannot accept or understand her body as an outlet for or an instrument of violence, even when all of this feels so undeniably right in front of her. And if she does suspect it—well. Could you ever bring yourself to admit that you meant so little, and that the world’s greatest plans for you were to hurt?
Do you remember the moment you knew the world was cruel? When you bore the shame of that realization? Because it’s not like it was some big secret, you fucking fool.
Right?
As I wrote, I considered the shape of that shame, the stranglehold of that shame, the outside voices of that shame.
The claws of shame can be so deeply unendurable, so beyond hope of any relief, sometimes it feels like the only recourse is to inflict it on others until you’re satisfied you aren’t the only one walking around wearing its marks:
She’s so stupid.
She should have known better.
She should have told someone.
Why did she let that happen.
How could she let him do that to her.
How could she do this to us?
After years of writing stories of survivors, I knew the undertaking of choosing to write Georgia, and how she encounters, experiences, and internalizes her abuse, the way I did. And I knew I had no business writing it if I couldn’t be for her a space the world wasn’t. (You’re not stupid/it’s not your fault/how could the world do this to you.) Because if anything my career has shown me—and at times, left me so heartbroken by—it’s how good we’ve all gotten at expecting certain forms of violence that we end up feeling less betrayed by its perpetrators than its victims. And I knew when I wrote I’m the Girl, there would be the question—though there should be no question—of who some readers would feel more betrayed by: its abusers, or its victim.
Georgia’s story isn’t all this book reveals.
Do you ever think of them, Before?
Do you think of Sadie, when Mattie’s body was discovered, and she knew what she knew and told no one? Do you think of Romy, as Kellan lined up shot after shot and told her to drink—and she did? Do you think about who they were, and what you would have thought of them in the moments before the world ripped them away from themselves and the book began?
You’ll know in September.
Lately:
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The line: “… There would be the question—though there should be no question—of who some readers would feel more betrayed by: its abusers, or its victim,” knocked the wind out of me. So expertly capturing the essence of society’s nature to victim blame, and especially when the victim doesn’t fit a narrative of what a “perfect” victim should look like.
Brilliant post and an amazing book.
ouch :)