I don't want to say what will hurt you to hear
In my previous Sapphire blog, I discuss how Sapphire says things in a more direct, raw way than I do. Why do I do that? Why do I still read about rape? Why is it important to talk about rape? And even more importantly, why would the world want Sapphire and writers everywhere NOT to talk about it? |
I sugar coat the truth because survivors are taught. No one really wants to know. If you love someone it hurts to be confronted with their pain. I fictionalize rape, because I have learned as a survivor part of surviving is the message that people think differently about you when they know you were once victimized. Part of being a victim is knowing that briefly watching a clip from the movie Sleepers, Precious, or any rape scene woven into an HBO series, will cause nightmares. Bone chilling, waking up screaming night terrors, remembering the smell of dirty sheets, or the objects that surround the breaking of innocence. |
* It hurts to hear human suffering of Sapphire's magnitude
* If we hear it we feel compelled to do something, for girls like Sapphire
* We aren't really sure that the telling of violence will help the victim
* Sapphire could be lying (not my thoughts but an idea people might have)
* If we have empathy for a Sapphire, we have to experience what she went through
* We too feel powerless to change victimization, it happens in private- perhaps it should stay in private
So why write about Rape?
This is a true story about friendship that runs deeper than blood. This is my story and that of the only three friends in my life that truly mattered. Two of them were killers who never made it past the age of 30. The other's a non-practicing attorney living with the pain of his past - too afraid to let it go, never confronting its horror. I'm the only one who can speak for them, and the children we were. ~from Sleepers