Forgetting
An excerpt from Girl, In Fragments
by Mea Cohen
You are not my father. Memory and forgetting, and time, and all, one thing I know to be true, you are not my father.
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where it happened, or exactly when. I don’t know how this could have gone unnoticed, how everyone who loved me rested well beneath a blanket of ignorance. I don’t know how it could be that the doctor who examined me saw no signs of sexual violence. Why the first therapist couldn’t coax the truth. But this is not an investigation. You will never be identified. There will be no big reveal in the end. There will be no end because I am living. Every story lives past its pages. Mine is no exception.
*
I know this story is not unique. I once read, the genre of victimhood is already so crowded.
I know the numbers: over half of women in the US, almost 1 in 3 men. I’ve read their books, their articles, their blog posts. I’ve heard them on talk radio, on the news specials, in PSAs. They said my priest, my uncle, my landlord. They said my neighbor, my stepbrother, his best friend, my boyfriend, my husband, this guy at a party. They didn’t say I don’t remember. Not unless they weren’t sober. And I have nothing ill to say of those who weren’t sober. But those are the ones who say I don’t remember.
Well, neither do I. I don’t remember. I don’t remember remembering you. I don’t remember forgetting you, though, I must have forgotten you, must’ve forgotten everything about you and anything you did to me. The mind has a funny way of protecting itself. It’s a flawed system.
*
You are less than a second in my memory. You are a ghost of a body frayed at the edges, a silhouette of a man, a soundless apparition. I am a child. You are crawling towards me, monstrous in your movements. You reach out to grab me. Your hands are much bigger than my arms, which are thin enough to wrap your thumb and your forefinger around. I am on my back, propped up on my elbows, scurrying away. I am trying to escape you.
*
I want to write this story to you. Not to be confused with dedicating it to you. That, I would never do. But I want you to read about me, about the rest of me, the me you didn’t get to see. Or maybe you did see. Maybe you still see me.
I don’t think writing to you will be cathartic, or therapeutic. In fact, the whole concept makes me nauseous. But I’ll do it anyway.
Somewhere in the ether is the person I would have been, the life I might have lived, without your intervention. Somewhere, in another dimension, is the me who thrived.
That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot.
*
Do you remember me? Do you remember me well? Or am I mostly lost on you now, as you are on me. Am I a blur of a girl beneath you, my face a bled-out watercolor painting?
You are so far from these pages. Time is a marvelous and dangerous creature. There are memories between us now, and vast gaps of nothing where memories ought to be. There is plenty of time between us, yes, and plenty of forgetting.
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where it happened, or exactly when. I don’t know how this could have gone unnoticed, how everyone who loved me rested well beneath a blanket of ignorance. I don’t know how it could be that the doctor who examined me saw no signs of sexual violence. Why the first therapist couldn’t coax the truth. But this is not an investigation. You will never be identified. There will be no big reveal in the end. There will be no end because I am living. Every story lives past its pages. Mine is no exception.
*
I know this story is not unique. I once read, the genre of victimhood is already so crowded.
I know the numbers: over half of women in the US, almost 1 in 3 men. I’ve read their books, their articles, their blog posts. I’ve heard them on talk radio, on the news specials, in PSAs. They said my priest, my uncle, my landlord. They said my neighbor, my stepbrother, his best friend, my boyfriend, my husband, this guy at a party. They didn’t say I don’t remember. Not unless they weren’t sober. And I have nothing ill to say of those who weren’t sober. But those are the ones who say I don’t remember.
Well, neither do I. I don’t remember. I don’t remember remembering you. I don’t remember forgetting you, though, I must have forgotten you, must’ve forgotten everything about you and anything you did to me. The mind has a funny way of protecting itself. It’s a flawed system.
*
You are less than a second in my memory. You are a ghost of a body frayed at the edges, a silhouette of a man, a soundless apparition. I am a child. You are crawling towards me, monstrous in your movements. You reach out to grab me. Your hands are much bigger than my arms, which are thin enough to wrap your thumb and your forefinger around. I am on my back, propped up on my elbows, scurrying away. I am trying to escape you.
*
I want to write this story to you. Not to be confused with dedicating it to you. That, I would never do. But I want you to read about me, about the rest of me, the me you didn’t get to see. Or maybe you did see. Maybe you still see me.
I don’t think writing to you will be cathartic, or therapeutic. In fact, the whole concept makes me nauseous. But I’ll do it anyway.
Somewhere in the ether is the person I would have been, the life I might have lived, without your intervention. Somewhere, in another dimension, is the me who thrived.
That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot.
*
Do you remember me? Do you remember me well? Or am I mostly lost on you now, as you are on me. Am I a blur of a girl beneath you, my face a bled-out watercolor painting?
You are so far from these pages. Time is a marvelous and dangerous creature. There are memories between us now, and vast gaps of nothing where memories ought to be. There is plenty of time between us, yes, and plenty of forgetting.
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Mea Cohen’s work has appeared in Passengers Journal, On The Run, Five on the Fifth, and The Pinch. She received an MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook University, where she was a Contributing Editor for The Southampton Review. She is the Founder and Editor of the forthcoming magazine The Palisades Review.
Instagram: @meacohen |
