A letter to ...Family‘You asked why I drank when I know what happens to girls who drink’: the letter you always wanted to write
It was after midnight when I finally plucked up the courage. “My ex,” I said, my voice rough. “He raped me.” There, I thought: it’s out in the open. I was disconcerted, though. The sense of relief that people talk about didn’t come. You just stood there. Staring.
So I explained that I’d been forcibly intoxicated. It was when I went to visit him at university. I’d been drinking, but when we got back, I’d sobered up considerably, until he reached for the bottle. I remembered the strangest details, like the colour of the tabletop it happened on, how it was tacky beneath my hands – he never was one for cleaning. I told you about the whole relationship, how he beat me and excused it as “kinky sex”. Still you stood there. I think you hugged me. We went to bed. I woke up and went to work. The usual mundane routine resumed. I felt as numb as ever.
Then we were in the kitchen. You asked – anguished – why I had kept seeing him, why I didn’t just leave. You asked why I drank when I know what happens to girls who drink, whose inhibitions are lowered. Only it wasn’t anguish for me. It was anguish for yourself. It was more, “You’re a clever girl – why were you so stupid?” You said, “Of course I don’t blame you, but…” and I tuned the rest out.
That was more than five years ago, and our relationship remains fractious. Occasionally it comes up, and you repeat those same things. You may as well have said, “No daughter of mine should have been so careless.” I’m intensely angry that the person who should have been my rock flipped the blame for a violent sex crime on to the victim; that the 17-year-old I was at the time had to be scared and alone and wasn’t given love.
Despite all this, I’m still proud of myself. Maybe having to figure it out myself gave me strength. I know it wasn’t my fault. I’ve worked out a lot of things without your help since then, perhaps the most important being that – surprise! – I’m a lesbian. You dislike the woman I’m going to marry and take every opportunity to tear her down. It doesn’t matter. It stopped being important whether you approve of me a long time ago.
I’d like to thank you for the phrase you almost flung at me, though. “No daughter of mine.” I’m going to use it, only slightly differently. No daughter of mine is going to be treated so coldly and selfishly.
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