The reading and the writing were bad enough; it was what was written, though, that was the real violation. Hurtful words spoken in what should have been a safe space.
Half my life. Half my life gone by, and more, and only today did I open the book again. No, not even opened. I fanned the pages, glimpsed the writing that was mine, mine, mine, and then suddenly, not mine. Four pages of unwelcome slanting black ink, the last entry for over seventeen years.
The book has been moved to five dorm rooms, three apartments, and three homes. It has been hidden in boxes, stashed in drawers, perched on bookshelves. My personal grief, a single violation that represents hundreds of thousands of others. Many times, I’ve thought about opening it and reading it again - even perhaps just reading my own words, not hers. I couldn’t do it. Or I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to, except that I do want to, and I do need to. It has been long enough that I know for certain that I am not the things written in black. It has been long enough that I don’t need to worry that they are true, because I know the truth.
(Well-meaning people who blithely advise a person to “bury the hatchet” often don’t pause to consider whether the person they’re advising was ever the one carrying the hatchet to begin with. Do they hold the hatchet, or do they bear its wounds? Those who say “it takes two to tango” don’t consider that it only takes one to swing, to chop, to sever. We must be careful with what we say and what we write.)
Wounds heal in their own time. Tonight I tend to my wounds, I find hope in the signs of healing, and I vow:
I will not be hurt any more by those words. The only one who writes this book is me.