Main Concept: I believe in using your voice and speaking up

Story: what led me to write my book

 

Introduction: I’m a people pleaser. I’m quiet. I’m a peace keeper. Most of my “hello’s” are asked to be repeated because they were too soft to be heard the first time. It’s hard to remember High School because I spent most of my time there with my head down. And if a restaurant gets my order wrong, you can count on me to eat whatever is in front of me because I’d rather stay silent than cause a scene with my words. I used to believe that my silence was the only way to please everyone else around me. 

 

When I was sixteen, I was assaulted in the back of a car with a group of friends that I trusted. I didn’t have a voice in the moment to stop the situation, and I didn’t have a voice for a very long time following that night. About a month later, the situation was brought to the police. The question that was presented to my parents and I was, “Do you wish to move forward and press charges, or would you prefer to stay silent and move on with your life?” If I chose the first option, I was told that the process would be messy, long, complicated, and would jeopardize the perpetrator’s football career which could result in serious retaliation from him against me. If I chose the second option, he would essentially face no consequences for what he did to me; however, I’d avoid any sort of conflict and lingering tension with him. Being sixteen, impressionable, scared, naive, and a people pleaser, I did what was comfortable to me and I chose the second option. Staying silent was what I was best at. In a situation where I felt like I had no control, I thought that I’d feel a sense of control and power back if I stayed silent because that was what I was conditioned to believe was the right thing to do. My perpetrator spent his whole life playing football and working his way to the top- after all, he was crowned the best running back in the area. I was convinced that I would be selfish to end his career in a second because of what he did to me and that it’d be unfair to him. I spent the next year with my eyes glued to the floor every time I went out in public, I was told I couldn’t go certain places or hangout with certain people because, “he might be there,” and my social media feed was flooded with his stats, articles comparing him to Barry Sanders, and videos of his High School’s student section chanting “MVP!” the second he ran out on the field. I was enraged that the same person who stole my innocence and my voice was also the same person who was getting praised everywhere he went. I couldn’t even walk into my local gas station to get gum without seeing his face plastered across newspapers showcased by the registers. He was our city’s ‘star’ and I was the girl who was too scared to speak. 

 

I spent the rest of my junior year isolating myself from everyone I knew and trying to survive on my own. Although this would result in my world being very silent, it only made my perpetrator’s presence louder. It was almost as if he was mocking me for being too afraid of creating my own noise that he had to drown me in his. My voice felt oppressed, so I used my hands to do what my mouth couldn’t do: I wrote. I wrote down every word, thought, feeling, and emotion that I had associated with him and that night. I wrote until my fingers had calluses and my eyes were dry from staring at paper all night. It felt good. It felt good to gather my words together so that way if I was ever asked to speak about him, I’d be able to recite the script I had written down. 

 

Eventually, I got to a place where I was ready to talk about what happened. I decided I wanted to write a poetry book using everything I had written in my journals for the last seven months. I looked up how to independently publish a book and then I began the process. I kept the fact that I was writing a book a secret from pretty much everyone, with the exception of family and a few close friends. I worked on the book for about a year and just wrote, rewrote, crossed out, deleted, added, and continued to write until I was finally satisfied with my work. I decided that the concept of my book would be about the raw and real process of healing from trauma. I organized the book into three sections: sadness, anger, and acceptance, which were the three phases that I lived in during my healing stage. I divided my poems into each of those three categories and I shared the story of what happened to me when I was sixteen, how it affected my relationships, and the realness of mental illness. 

 

April 7th, 2022. That was the day I officially published the finalized version of my poetry book, which I decided to title “Healing Her”. At eighteen years old, I finally debuted my voice to the world after not using it since I was sixteen. Three days later, I finally announced to my Instagram, friends, and family that I independently published my own book. As it was a secret to most people, it definitely came off as a shock. I was flooded with texts of congratulations and of screenshots of people’s Amazon order confirmations that they purchased my book. I felt so fulfilled, overwhelmed, and happy with the reactions and immense amount of support I received. The scared, shy, sixteen year old that survived on her own was finally getting the support that she needed. 

 

Now, it’s been nine months since I published my book. Over the past nine months, I have had so many people confide their own stories in me, tell me how much my poetry has validated their emotions, and how my words have given them the confidence to speak about what happened to them as well. Not only did I speak up for myself and use my voice, but I encouraged other people to do it as well. I decided to write my book because I thought that it would help give me closure. I had no idea that it would help so many readers find their closure as well. My social media was no longer flooded with my perpetrator’s name and how successful he was, but instead was flooded with people sharing their thoughts on my book and my name. Because of what happened to me, I believe in using your voice and never apologizing for the noise you create.