Trapped (Art Memoir - Offering 3.1)
Screaming in silence
This chapter holds a content warning for sexual harassment. It is the place where shame takes root, trust shatters, and I begin to disappear.
(Offering 3.1 of Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Power and Peace. If you’re new here, start at the beginning.)
When the sexual harassment began in middle school, I didn’t know what to do. I somehow felt it was my fault that I was being treated that way; like I did something or wasn’t enough of something. Besides, I didn’t know how to ask for help. I was never shown what that looked like. I was deeply ashamed—both that this was happening to me and that I didn’t know what to do about it. Even now, the clarity of the memory of it floods me with emotion and I am pulled back in time.
As I walk into class, my eyes dart to their seats. Oh, no, they’re already there. Getting to my seat feels like running the gauntlet: the Wolf on one side, his hunting partner on the other. I try to get past them as quickly as possible without making eye contact. Of course, there’s no way I can avoid them. I sit in the far back corner of my first period science class and there’s only one way to my seat. They spot me as soon as I start walking down the aisle, predatory eyes following my every move until I am within striking distance. They touch my legs, caress my butt as I creep by.
I slink into my seat like a dog that knows it did something wrong. The Wolf turns to face me, and I am trapped.
“Do you spread easy?” he asks. “I bet you spread like a hot knife through butter.”
He says this with a wolfish grin as he strokes my legs, which are mere inches from the back of his chair. I am 12 years old and even though I don’t fully know what he means, humiliation and shame course through me, scalding hot, burning to my core. I want to crawl out of my skin, to scream and rage at him. Instead, I scream on the inside, shoving all the anger, shame, and loathing deep inside and stay silent. My only solace is that they can’t reach my butt while I’m sitting in my seat.
Towards the end of class, we sometimes have free time to work on projects and can sit wherever we want. I immediately retreat to the opposite corner of the room and sit by a girl I don’t really know. I sit in silence with absolutely nothing to say. I feel like I’m intruding, even though she never says anything unwelcoming. She doesn’t say much either, but she seems happier than me, more relaxed.
No matter where I go in this classroom, I can’t escape myself.
I can’t escape that I feel so alone, so ashamed, so betrayed. Betrayed by my teacher, the father of a friend from elementary school. Betrayed by my parents, especially my own father, the protector. These adults are supposed to keep me safe. And they are not. Even as I think, “I’m not good enough, I must have done something to deserve this, there must be something wrong with me," my trust in them shatters.
A version of this was repeated during two other class periods every single day of my 8th grade year. Always stuck in the back corner (the bane of having a last name that starts with Z), I was cornered like prey by the Wolf, simply because of the alphabet.
As the days wore on, I was hollowed out—a shell, dry and empty as the prairie all around me. I changed from a happy, carefree kid into what I now realize was a traumatized, depressed child. I stopped talking to friends at school; I didn’t know what to say. I isolated. I lost weight. I stopped showering, subconsciously hoping that if I smelled bad, they would leave me alone.
I felt such loathing, which I turned against myself because I didn’t know where else to aim it. I thought there was something wrong with me, and that was why they were treating me this way. My few protests were weak and accomplished nothing, and I was ashamed because I wasn’t strong or brave enough to stand up for myself.
The Eagle, my friend from art class, started visiting me at my locker in the mornings, engaging in the familiar banter I had enjoyed so much the previous year. It was so sweet to have a friend, someone who wanted to hang out with me, since I often wandered the halls alone.
One morning, he walked me to my first-period class. Unaware of how the Wolf was hunting me, he came over to my desk and chatted with the Wolf for a couple of minutes before heading out. An overwhelming sense of dread washed over me. His visit was like pouring gasoline on the fire, and I wanted desperately to rewind time and somehow prevent the Wolf from knowing about my friendship with the Eagle. The Wolf, true to form, turned this innocent gesture into ammunition, perverting my friendship with the Eagle into something sexual, further destroying my innocence and any joy I found in the Eagle’s company.
The idea of the Eagle walking me to class again was unbearable. To protect myself, I severed my connection with him. I had no idea how to put what I needed into words, so the next morning when he visited my locker, I was silent. Just grabbed my books, slammed the locker shut with all my might, and walked away from him, not looking back. My world getting smaller and lonelier as I lashed out at the one person who still wanted to connect with me. Before I turned away, I saw the shock and hurt in his eagle eyes, and a wall come down, as he tried to protect himself from my harshness.
Sitting on my bed one night, stewing in the shame of the sexual harassment, in what was being done to me—I thought, “I should cry about this; it would make sense to cry.” But no tears came. I had stuffed the emotions so deeply inside that I couldn’t access my grief, couldn't even access my anger. The butterfly of my childhood, where I was free to fly and be my true self, was forced inside of a chrysalis that was not of my own making,
Summer couldn’t have come any sooner. Finally, I could breathe. I was still traumatized, and it showed, if only anyone could have seen the signs for what they were. But they couldn’t. My family didn’t have the emotional skills or the bandwidth to offer. My grandfather on my dad’s side died that year. The year before we lost my mom’s mom. Everyone was grieving—or maybe bottling up the pain and carrying it around with them. That summer, when we gathered at the Farm for the first time without him, an uncle said I ‘looked like a rail’—I was so skinny. I’m pretty sure I took this as a compliment, my young mind already warped by society to make me think skinny was good.
Finally, I thought, maybe now I’ll be worth something.
My aunt stood behind me one day, playing with my hair, and said, “Carrie! It looks like there are little worms all over your head!” I was mortified. I hadn’t washed my hair in so long that there was a build-up of gunk and grime on my scalp. At home, my mom used rubbing alcohol as she gently cleaned my skin, washing away some of the visible signs of my trauma.
It’s no surprise that when I was in high school and had the opportunity, I tore through my chrysalis of shame, spread my wings, and turned without hesitation to drugs, alcohol, and righteous anger.
🦋 Did this chapter resonate, unsettle, or remind you of something in your own life? Please take care of those feelings first. Then, if you feel moved to share in the comments, please do.
Whether it's a memory, a feeling, or a moment of solidarity—your voice helps break the silence.