There is a difference between breaking and brokenness, between a splinter of pain and falling to pieces. Susanna Penfield explores the nuances of hurt in her life after sexual violence, acknowledging her splinters but still resolute in her sense of self. While we can never choose whether we are hurt or even how we heal, we can choose how we think about it, and Penfield never ceases to imagine herself as whole.

Breaking; Not Yet Broken

by

Susanna Penfield

Don’t think you proved something to me I didn’t already know. I know we are fragile. I started tounderstand this at 15, when I finally came into my body and quickly figured out what it meant to reallykiss someone. Then it was fun, flirtatious Facebook messaging, dance floor make-outs in the high schoolgym. I didn’t yet know that these things could be dangerous because within them I maintained distance;throughout them I thought I was safe. I hadn’t yet realized I was fragile, until you forgot my fragility.

You must remember that night, caught somewhere between the relief of late May and the feverish haze of early June. Sometime after I began to chip. We had been friends, beginning when we were twelve andmet after soccer practice on the field that split the distance between our houses. We found ourselves at the same high school, spent four years sharing classes and stories and laments about what it means to be a good person. You were always the nice one. The cute friend girls wanted to confide in. Maybe this got toyou; maybe you were sick of being the nice one, or hated the fact that you always had to be relied on.

I tend to humanize you this way. I catch myself doing it. I think about everything brewing beneath thesurface because this is what I’ve been told to do, the details I’ve been conditioned to cling to. Thejustification I’ve been taught to find.

Before the end, right before, the night had been perfect. A group of us returned home briefly for the start of the summer and met on the hidden porch of a friend’s cabin. We were eight, all circled in small chairs and sleeping bags, boxes of wine placed conveniently in the center. We got tipsier by the hour and louder by the minute, recalling all the nights that had come before this one and allowing ourselves thevulnerability to admit things we never would have on those nights. We laughed and drank, and as the sunbegan to rise we started to peel off. Moving inside to fall into splayed mattresses.

You and I stayed though. Sitting next to each other, each wrapped in individual blankets, we were drunkfrom the wine and raw from the night’s nostalgia. I thought we would fall asleep this way. I gave in to thepull of exhaustion and my eyes had just begun to close when I felt your hand creep over to my thigh andfelt it linger. I kept my eyes shut. I focused on the darkness of my falling lids and the pace of my slowbreaths and turned my face but your hand was still there: ascending, tightening, and before I had thechance to open my eyes you were pulling me in. I tried to pull back but your grip was strong and your lipswere wet and it wasn’t long before I slid between them helplessly.

Maybe to you it seemed harmless. Maybe for you it was. But as soon as I slid I started to drown. Yourhands contained me, tricking me so that as I continued to wallow you kept me from understanding thatthis is what it feels like to slowly lose all air. I let myself be molded, passively conforming to the whimsof your hands and your body and all I know is that somewhere between distress and confusion youtrapped me and it wasn’t until it was over that I realized this was never something I wanted.

I ran away from you that night. As soon as it was over I pulled my coat around me to protect from thechill of breaking morning and slipped into the room where our friends slept innocently, inserting myselfbetween two of them to protect against you. I fell asleep, but the sleep was intoxicated, sickening. Youwere inescapable.

Later you told me that night was a huge mistake, that you had a girlfriend of several months. You said Imust have known that. You asked that I never tell anyone so I didn’t. I stayed true to my word because itseemed to reflect more poorly on me than it did you and no one would understand that I drowned thatnight. At this I felt a crack, another small fracture in my foundation because you hadn’t thought what allthis might’ve done to me, what it put on me. Your wet lips sucked me in and spit me out and sometimes ifI look hard enough I can see the water as it slowly fills my open spaces.

I know we are fragile. I have the splinters to show for it, the anxiously picked fingernails, the rushedwords written in a since-discarded journal, the guilt I know I don’t deserve but needed distance toreconcile anyway. I held my pieces together so that when I finally spoke of you it was months later andonly then to a person who would have no idea who you were.

Don’t think you proved something to me I didn’t already know. You too are fragile, that’s why you did it.You are malleable and unsure and if my body could hold you together for just a moment it was easy toforget that what you saw as momentary glue was my slow hammer. If I splintered that night, my shardspierced your skin and the pain you felt wasn’t just the threat of a relationship ending, of a girlfriend’sdisappointment. That pain was mine.

You never apologized but I never broke. We are fragile but my foundation is strong and your slowhammer will not rupture what I’ve spent years building, the words I’m still forming to tell you that no oneintentionally decides to drown. No one asks to break. And I will not let myself be broken.

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Current undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Political Science and Feminist and Gender Studies with a passion for literature and creative writing. Previously published in Z Publishing House’s Colorado’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction (2018), America’s Emerging Literary Fiction Writers: West Region (2019) and selected for a feature in the 2018 America’s Emerging Writers series. Lover of sunny porches, fake plants, and loyal friends.