Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  That last part was particularly true, because with no workouts to occupy my time, I began to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities I had at SMU. And good things had come about as a result. Without track meets and training, I was able to attend the tennis match where I first saw Robin. Some good could come of bad things. I had known that was true intellectually, but when I experienced it and felt it emotionally, that lesson was imprinted on my mind in a much stronger way.

  In the days after the attack, I tried to remind myself of how I’d overcome that injury—how patience and persistence and allowing other people to help me and guide me and keep me from charging too quickly ahead and doing more damage had all worked out so well for me.

  The running injury I’d suffered and the rape were very different, of course, but I hoped that I could merge the experiences and use what I’d learned to move on. Sometimes your body is willing to give more, but it’s your mind that talks you out of pushing on. It’s a complicated relationship, to say the least. I’d always worked toward having a balance between a healthy body and a healthy mind. Suddenly, I faced problems with both of them. It wasn’t going to be as easy as visiting doctors, checking on the X-rays to see how the fracture was mending, and having a coach, doctor, and athletic trainer devise a workout schedule that would get me back to topflight physical condition. The key element for me in my recovery from the pelvis injury had been rest. That was the one thing that evaded me following the rape, and it was taking a toll on me.

  I’d done some reading in my psychology studies about the effects of sleeplessness on human behavior, physical condition, and cognitive function. The effects of not sleeping are a long list ranging from irritability to overproduction of stress hormones, to less serious things like cosmetic changes—bloodshot eyes and bags. It’s no wonder that there’s debate about whether prisoners subjected to sleep interruption as part of an interrogation are subjected to torture or not. All I knew is that as I struggled to calm my mind and sleep each night, I felt as if I was being tortured.

  Part of my sleeplessness was self-inflicted. The first few nights after the rape, I woke in the middle of the night hyperventilating and with my pulse racing. I was unsure of where I was; even when I reached out and felt Robin by my side, that feeling of dislocation didn’t immediately end. As much as I tried to block them, thoughts snuck past my defenses about whether the Worst One, the Boss, and the Weak One, singly, in pairs, or all together, were in the apartment. I’d lie awake, trying to summon the courage to get out of bed. But I could almost feel someone gripping my calf when I moved my foot tentatively toward the floor.

  Eventually, I’d lower my feet and keep them on the ground. I tried not to disturb Robin and turn on the lights in the bedroom, but I’d always give in to the urge. I had to see who was there, test to see if the images I had of someone standing in the corner, or lurking just outside the closed bedroom door, were real.

  I hated those nightmares. When I first came out of them, I couldn’t think clearly at all, didn’t know what was reality and what was a product of my dream state. I’m very much a control freak and rarely let my emotions and responses get away from me. Not being able to control my mind and those horrible images and dreams tore at me. I’d prided myself on being able to maintain my composure and hold things inside, and now they were spilling out of me in ways that frightened me as much as the nightmares did. I didn’t recognize the person who was responding this way and worried that I was losing my mind. When you spend most of your life thinking that you’re the cool, calm, collected one whose lists and goal statements and schedules can keep her safe and moving forward, and you’re suddenly faced with something so unexpected, so not a part of your lists and schedules and vision for your life, you really do call into question whether everything that came before that incident and what’s happening to you now was real or an illusion.

  For his part, Robin was already on high alert. He barely slept in those first few days; he always seemed to be half-asleep in bed, fearful that one of my many nightmares would overtake me. He’d wake, hair tousled and eyes squinting as he came to my side, assuring me that I was safe. He’d trail along behind me as I inspected the rest of the apartment, opening closets, checking behind furniture, peering in cabinets.

  Even though I didn’t find anything, that didn’t end my anxiety. I knew that I needed sleep, but I also dreaded the thought of having another nightmare, finding myself back in that SUV with those three men, the gun pointed at my head. I felt it next to my temple every time I woke up, and it was the part of the nightmare that I struggled with for a long time after. I so wanted to just lie down and sleep and have the morning sunlight filter in to wake me after uninterrupted hours. That would have been a wonderful escape, but every time I lay down, I was back in that van, seeing those horrible men, smelling their foul breath.

  Someone once used the expression “between a rock and a hard place.” In learning English, I had to pay close attention, and these words made sense to me to a degree, but the phrase’s subtleties were unclear. I looked it up and found out that its origins were in mythology, the story of Scylla and Charybdis. While sailing home, the hero of the story, Odysseus, had to choose between passing closer to a rocky outcropping and a whirlpool. Both were dangerous, but which to choose? That was the position I found myself in. I knew that going without sleep was no good, but were the nightmares worse? Was it my lack of sleep that was producing the nightmares and the near paranoia I experienced? Or was it the nightmares that made sleep impossible?

  The strange thing was that I can’t say that I felt tired. I knew I needed sleep, but an adrenaline rush like I’d seldom felt before also cascaded through my body. I felt like I was running through deep, deep snow—exerting enormous amounts of energy and gaining no ground, with little time lapsing. My worries about my classes; phone calls and e-mails to professors, to family, to friends; posting on Facebook to express how grateful I was; meetings with the investigators in the police department—all took up an enormous amount of time and energy, and the hours passed quickly. Fix this. Fix this. Fix this. Go. Go. Go. Those thoughts consumed me. So much for patience and a plan; so much for applying what I’d learned from that fracture. Intellectually I understood what I needed to do, but my emotions overwhelmed me. If I could just take care of X, Y, and Z, keep my focus on getting things done, I didn’t have the time to think about what had been done to me.

  I also tried hard to put on a good face for everyone else, let them all know that I was doing okay. Kristine and Robin didn’t want to leave my side, and they more than anyone else sensed that I was doing a poor job of acting okay. They could see the fear and anxiety in my eyes when the rest of me was trying to say all was right. I was obsessed with my classes and making sure that I completed all my end-of-semester assignments and studied for my exams, or made arrangements to postpone those I wouldn’t be able to take. A few times I felt like I was someone diagnosed with a terminal disease and had only a few days to live. I wanted to put all my affairs in order.

  As well-intentioned as Kristine and Robin’s efforts were, in some ways their hovering over me stressed me even more. I knew that the time they spent with me was time they weren’t spending taking care of themselves and their studies. I hated the idea that they would end up paying the price academically for something that had happened to me. I pleaded with them to go to their classes and take care of themselves, but they wouldn’t listen. I was grateful for what they were doing, but upset that I was harming them and becoming even more stressed myself. Nothing seemed to be clear or easy in those first few days. I so wanted some aspect of my life to be straightforward, simple, and uncomplicated.

  The closest thing I got to that was having Coach Wollman on my side. When he’d come to our apartment after I was released from the hospital, he had already been in touch with a therapist, Dr. Soutter, the director of campus counseling and psychological services, and made arrangements for me to see her. Coach was caring and compassionate and very a
ction-oriented. “Here’s a step you need to take.” “Here’s the number of the woman you need to see. I’ve already filled her in a bit on what happened.” That sounds a bit matter-of-fact, and to a degree he was, but he also continued to reach out to me and the others. His frequent phone calls and e-mails to check up on me made me feel as safe as I could possibly feel at that point. Just like he had in dealing with my pelvic fracture, he offered his help, but also called in experts to make sure that all of my needs were met.

  I don’t think I would have contacted a psychologist myself. Despite my sleeplessness and the nightmares, I thought that I was strong enough to handle this myself. I feared that I would feel weaker if I gave in and contacted a psychologist. I was used to figuring things out myself; now more than ever, I didn’t want to rely on others to fix me.

  I knew that Coach Wollman understood me; he got that as an athlete I was going to handle circumstances a certain way. My coaches throughout my career in various sports had eventually earned my trust. They were adults, had more experience, and always seemed to have my best interests at heart. That didn’t mean that I accepted everything they did and said without question; it meant that I had an open mind about things and gave them the benefit of the doubt. Athletes are often focused on performance, on doing the best they can to excel during each race and each practice. But a good coach is there to help look at the big picture, and to help an athlete develop a plan for long-term success. Coach Wollman’s role was to help me take both the long view and the short view of every race.

  I was so struggling with sleep, and the sense that I was somewhat disconnected from reality, that I fell back into an accustomed role: trust the people in your life who have demonstrated their compassionate authority over you. These weren’t people who craved power for power’s sake—like the rapists had—these were people who genuinely wanted the best for me. Coach Wollman knew how I approached my running and my studies. He told me that with this new challenge I needed to take care of myself and not push too hard. As with a physical injury, he knew that treatment needed to begin immediately. The second day I was home, a brilliant Sunday, I found myself in the office of Cathey Soutter.

  I was struck by how different her office was from the ones at the hospital. Maybe it was the absence of the clinically clean smells of the institution, the more natural lighting, but my nerves didn’t completely overwhelm me as I walked into the doctor’s office. It also helped that Dr. Soutter was a petite woman like me, her kind face framed by a thick bob of soft curls. She greeted me with a warm smile that eased any remaining tension out of me.

  I’d never seen a therapist before; although I was studying psychology in school, I didn’t really know how the sessions were going to go. Kristine came to the first appointment with me—as a support, as someone who could fill in some blanks, and because I knew that she’d had a lot to deal with as well. It was a good thing I made that choice. Dr. Soutter began the session by asking me to recount what had happened. Her voice was soft, soothing, and encouraging. I wanted to please her, but the idea of having to tell the story again seemed overwhelming. My sleep was already troubled with visions that I wanted out of my mind forever. What would talking about it, describing it, do to me?

  With memories of the police interviews still fresh in my mind, I already felt talked out. Kristine did a lot of the talking on that first day, filling in most of the details about the party and what happened as I was taken away. Dr. Soutter sat and listened quietly; her empathetic expression and kind eyes helped me through. Then I had to talk about what happened in the SUV.

  When I did speak, I adopted the detached tone and language that the police used with me, which was a lot like what I’d seen in movies and on television. I stuck mainly to the facts, describing the who, what, when, where, and how of the events in as dispassionate a manner as possible. We weren’t getting into what I felt, just what happened.

  As I spoke, I could hear myself talking, but I had that same sense of dislocation that I’d had on the night of the attack. I was looking down on me, sitting in a comfortable armchair, a coffee table in front of me with a fern overflowing a brass bucket, a few dried leaves lying on the wooden surface. When I got to the point when I was about to tell Dr. Soutter about the gun being placed at my temple, I paused. I was no longer a detached observer of myself or of the events. I felt like the barrel of a gun was being pressed against my temple. I could feel its coldness, the pressure against my skin and flesh and bone. I could even smell the faint odor of oil or grease coming from it, something that had been unfamiliar to me before that night but now seemed to contaminate everything else I smelled with nearly every waking breath I took.

  I began to ramble, my face burning as I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I placed my hands underneath my thighs, feeling their cold through the fabric of my training warm-up pants. As hard as I tried to prevent it, a thought crawled its way under my defenses.

  How could having that gun against my head, something I’d only experienced once in my life, now feel so familiar, chilling but familiar, and to such a degree that I thought it might stay with me for the rest of my life?

  At one point, as I described how the Worst One struggled to enter me, I was pierced by a very different sensation. I felt my flesh prickle and the hair on my arms rise. I kept speaking, but I was overwhelmed and distracted. What if I was dead now? What if all of this was a part of the afterlife? What if the reason everything felt so surreal was that the men had actually killed me that night, and this was all the afterlife? I squeezed my arm to make sure I still had feelings. Then I felt like I needed to touch other things—the chair I was sitting in, the leaves on the table, just to make sure that they were solid and real and that I was actually in the environment I could see around me.

  Dr. Soutter spoke, but I had no idea what she said. I smiled and nodded politely, just trying desperately to look as if I were present and attentive. I’d had a lot of practice at that in my early days in the U.S. when the language eluded me, so muscle memory took over. Whenever she paused, my “I understand” face presented itself. Each time she kept talking, I felt a small thrill of victory; after all, I didn’t want a psychologist to think I was crazy.

  The session went by in a blur, but we made a deal to meet again the following day at the same time. That much I really did hear. Dr. Soutter said that if I wanted or needed to have someone else with me, Kristine could join us. Kristine and I exchanged glances. I got the sense that she wanted me to be the one who decided, but I wanted Kristine to decide on her own. I’d already asked so much of her and Robin.

  On the way home, I began to wonder how much sense it made to try to fool a psychologist. She was there to help, and I was there trying to pretend I didn’t need any help. She had told me that she had a lot of experience in particular dealing with women who had been abused and were victims of violence. She likely wasn’t someone I could fool. And even if I wanted to keep up the façade, I didn’t have much energy to devote to the task. I felt awful. Feverish. Sore throat. Stuffed nose. Cold hands and feet.

  When I got home, I bucked the apartment door open with my shoulder and stood there wobbling in its frame. Viktoria and Robin stood up and rushed to my side.

  “You’re not looking so good,” Robin said, his face a portrait of newly unmasked worry. This suspected physical illness was something he could respond to normally.

  Kristine and Viktoria nodded in agreement.

  The last thing I wanted was to have to go see another doctor and visit another health center, but I had no choice. I found myself in another waiting room, filling out another stack of papers about my health history. I didn’t include anything about the rape, but sitting there reminded me of being at Parkland what seemed just hours ago. My life seemed to be measured against clipboards.

  The doctor at the student health center diagnosed me with the flu. He started to write a prescription for me.

  “No, thank you,” I said, a little louder than I’d intended. The doctor wa
s doing his job, but I told him that I couldn’t handle another pill due to the poison I was already taking. “I hate taking any kinds of pills.”

  He set the pad aside and nodded. “Nothing to do then but ride it out. Come back or call if the fever doesn’t drop or you feel worse.”

  I knew that stress depleted the immune system. So did a lack of sleep. Food was mostly an afterthought for me during those first days, something that I could barely take in until the afternoon. It was no longer the fuel that I normally looked at it as. I also realized that my body was sending me a signal. In some ways, I thought that I had broken the agreement that the two of us—my body and I—had made, that I would take care of it and it would take care of me. Who could blame it for rebelling?

  Still, I couldn’t bear the idea of another sign of weakness. I told myself, as I frequently did whenever I was not feeling well, that I had no time for this nonsense. I had to finish the paper I’d begun for my Sports Management class. I had to attend my Psychology class. A half-attentive and congested Monika was still a better student than a Monika who stayed home and borrowed someone else’s notes, so on Monday morning, despite my roommates’ and Robin’s protests, I went to class. If I hadn’t been kidnapped and raped just two days before, I probably would have stayed home to take care of myself so that I didn’t get any sicker. But because of the rape, I felt that I had something to prove. I wanted to be someplace where I could distract myself from other thoughts. Most important of all, I wanted that day to be normal, a resumption of my life as it had been before. I also sensed that if I didn’t treat myself as special or different, then no one else would, either.

  I didn’t know if word had spread about what happened to me, as it had about the other young woman. A number of athletes from other sports had been at the party. A few of them were in the same Sports Management class. If they did know, I had to show them that I was strong. Kristine and Viktoria were in the same class, so we met up outside the building and walked in together. It made me feel stronger to have them by my side. I didn’t feel up to sitting in our customary seats in the front row; instead we sat in the very back. Whether it was the flu or the antiviral drugs I was taking, I needed to be as close to an exit and a quick route to a bathroom as possible. Vomiting had become a part of my daily routine.