HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.
When I close my eyes to sleep, and all is quiet, and all I can hear is the sound of my breathing in the dark, I see him. Two black eyes glinting in the night. One smile, too white and too wide, unmistakable above me. I open my eyes in a panic, fear crushing my chest, paralysing my limbs and he is still there, looming above me in the shadows. I reach desperately for my phone. Light blinds me. I blink a few times as the image of a dog pops up on the screen.
Read MoreAfter running around in the heat of a South Carolina sun all day, I didn’t think there was anything that could scare you. We wandered from pier to pier, picking up nearly every shell on the shores of Myrtle Beach and kicking over abandoned sand castles. After a long day of pink streamer bike rides and arcade bubble gum, it was time to rinse off the day and rinse the sand out of our Kool-Aid dyed hair.
Read MoreWhen I was eight years old, many decades ago now, I learned there were different kinds of dirty. We were new to the mountains, my family and I, renting a cabin at a small, rustic resort where the ghost town of Bakerville used to be, near Loveland Pass. Down the creek a ways, lived an old man we called Pops. At least we thought of him as old, with his pudgy frame, poorly shaved face, saggy skin, and well-worn clothes.
Read MoreThe further I get into the safety of a long-term relationship, the foggier my examples become. Each year is like another gloss of paint, obscuring. I am grateful for this obfuscation, however, a part of me wants to hold on to the memories, coloring them with new perspective as I grow in age and wisdom. This part of me wants to lose itself in the comfort of reliving the incidents, but altering the endings. This is what I would do, if it happened again. By rewriting your rape stories, you regain a façade of control.
Read MoreWhen I was five, I got a pair of Wonder Woman Underoos, stars on blue bottoms, a golden eagle on the camisole, which my dad called a wife-beater. I blasted around the yard, kicking Nazis, saving drippy Steve Trevor. The world had clean edges. I was a goddess, a force. Wham! Pow! Look out bad guys. My mom called me inside; I was just in my underwear, and what would the neighbors think.
Read MoreOn tiptoes, I stretched to replace the binder in the metal cubby. I was shocked to feel cold, clammy hands on my back, sliding into the waist band of my skirt. I spun around.
It was him again.
Read MoreI was a tall, skinny blond, a migrant from a sorority house in Texas, looking younger than my twenty-two years when I moved to Aspen, Colorado. The family of my long-time boyfriend had included me on their ski vacations for several holiday seasons, so when I dropped out of college in my senior year it was the only place I knew to go.
Read MoreI was not raped by someone you know. Just a few days after my fifteenth birthday I was raped by a boy who was scared of ghosts and hung a tin cross on his wall. When I was raped it felt like drowning. I could not breathe. My body twisted in ways I was not in control of, and in the fleeting moments when I realized and re-realized what was happening to me I gasped for air. I cried.
Read MoreGirl nervously follows Boy into the dimly lit bar, traveling in his wake to the leather stools. Red velvet drapes project an eerie, dark hue throughout the room. Faint jazz music plays from across the seating area; if it was any louder, it would be too difficult to hear Boy discussing his love of poetry and tattoos—the ink he gets in honor of family members.
Read MoreIt’s 1967 and I’m in my childhood home in Central California. There is a knock on the door. My mother, Pearl, looks at me and I know she can see the terror in my eyes. The next seconds will be the hardest thing. Standing on the porch is Dr. Gilbert, the family physician, and he is there to tell my parents that their sixteen year old daughter is pregnant.
Read MoreWe were both 11 years old.
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