Before And After
Has anyone ever told you a secret that, in an instant, changed everything? It usually happens in a very private place — at the kitchen table, maybe, or in the close confines of a car. The teller was likely someone close to you. A lover. A family member. Your oldest friend. Telling you, I was raped. Or Our cousin Jason abused me. Saying something you might have wished, for one selfish moment, hadn't been said.
And how did you respond? You listened. You tried to take it in. But I guarantee, since I've been there, that you also immediately started thinking about what you should do. The panicked feeling that overtakes a person when something feels broken is countered by a core urge: to fix things. So you say to your hurting loved one, Let's go the cops. Or I want to kill him.
What happens after such an encounter depends on so many factors. Maybe there is a route to take, and together, you and your loved one start to explore it. You call a family meeting. You start looking for a therapist, or a lawyer. There's more shock, more pain, and eventually, some kind of healing. Or the pain never heals, but at least the wound is touching air.
Or maybe nothing can be done. The person who told you something you never wanted to hear can't do more, at least now, than say it. Or the named violator isn't around to be punished or confronted or even properly exposed. Your job, then, is simply to bear witness, to be still and strong in the moment of disclosure. It'll be the most difficult thing you've ever done, and you'll never be sure if you've done enough.
Whatever the path its reverberations take, the most striking thing about such a revelation's impact is the way it divides your life without erasing any part of it. There is a before and an after, and it can be hard, nearly impossible, to make sense of the relationship between those two. : it means "one who lives beyond," but also "one who lives in addition to." The same is true for witnesses. Intimate violence casts everything that existed before it into disarray, but doesn't erase it. The time before becomes a mess that needs to be cleaned up, rearranged; but it's also still a home, a place you know. Forever changed, but still familiar and even longed for.
