Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  Kelly didn’t have any children of her own, though her husband Norman did from a previous marriage, and she treated me, Petra, and some of the other girls like family. I felt I could talk with her honestly, and she was able to put things in perspective in a way that people my own age couldn’t. She talked about some of the struggles she’d had, and how she felt like every time someone did or said something that might have hurt her or made her question things, she found some way to give back to others. That was why she wanted to be in touch with me. It wasn’t that she was using me to make herself feel better, but my story made her realize that whatever she was going through, there were other people who had tough times as well. Rather than just acknowledge that as a fact, she felt it was important to try to help others. She really shaped my thinking, especially when I decided that I couldn’t just act as if nothing had happened to me. That wouldn’t benefit me and it wouldn’t benefit anyone else either.

  That semester, I needed a sound structure and some stability in my life before I could make changes and truly turn the experience around. It was like getting a good base of training in before doing speed work to try to improve my time. I had to build a strong foundation first.

  That was the approach that I was taking with my running, though I have to admit that at the time I wasn’t quite so philosophical and understanding about the nature of recovery on the track. The SMU team had had a great cross-country season the previous fall. We won the Conference USA Championship, won our regional (with Silje finishing first overall), and then advanced to the NCAA Championship. That was all thrilling for me to participate in.

  I had been very much looking forward to the indoor season, but I wasn’t going to compete in those indoor meets from January to mid-March. Coach Wollman felt it was best for me to recover, regain my strength, and focus my energies on the outdoor season that began the third week of March.

  I felt a mix of envy and joy when I heard the girls who did compete indoors come back and report on how things had gone. It seemed to me that before the attack my life was simpler, more black-and-white. Things were either good or bad then, but afterward everything seemed to be a kind of muddled gray. I felt a bit like Goldilocks—struggling to find anything that felt just right.

  The truth was that I felt most comfortable when I was with all the other girls on the team, a place where I could retreat or be in the spotlight, depending on my mood, and no one questioned my choice. A track team is a bit different from a cross-country team. In cross-country, we all worked out together because we were involved in the same event, the same distance, etc. With track, we were more divided—the sprinters, the hurdlers, the middle- and long-distance runners, the field event participants who jumped or threw.

  Because I ran the three-thousand-, five-thousand-, and ten-thousand-meter races, I spent most of my time with the distance girls, so we were naturally a bit closer. Many of us were also part of the international contingent, so we had that in common as well. So, when Silje did well, or when Kristine, Klara Bodinson, or Sara Sjökvist ran a good race, I could celebrate with them. The team as a whole didn’t do as well as we had in cross-country, but that was okay. We still had the outdoor season to look forward to, and Simone du Toit, who was from South Africa, had won an individual conference championship in the shot put. I loved the idea that our team was made up of women from so many different places and that we all, despite our different backgrounds, got along well and had fun. The meets themselves, the actual competitions, were fun and stressful, but the road trips and our antics were so much pure fun.

  Maybe I shouldn’t generalize, but it takes a certain kind of personality type to be a long-distance runner, a certain level of seriousness and dedication to endure the kind of pain and effort that we do. On the long bus rides back from track meets, the “endurance girls” and I would sit with our headphones on, our noses in our books and notebooks, our overhead lights shining down. We sat in the middle of the bus most often, while behind us, the sprinters conducted a dance party / lip-synch battle / hip-hop rhyme-off.

  If I had a dollar for every time their coach had to ask them to quiet down, I’d be a very rich Scandinavian—the term that the girls from the U.S. affectionately used to describe a group of us. Team Scandinavia sometimes got roped into rap contests with Team USA. Throughout the season, the sprinters had been tutoring us in American urban slang while we’d tried to teach them Swedish or Norwegian. The results were equally hilarious and equally ineffective. I had no idea what I was saying half the time, and I knew I looked a little silly, but I loved it. Kristine was a different story. I remember one time when she stood in the aisle, swaying from side to side due to the bus’s movements, and said, “Okay, everyone, listen up now, yo. I’m gonna show you some hella Norwegian rap before I’m outie. Then all ya’ll gonna know what it like to pick up your face.”

  I was amazed, and so were the rest of the girls. Our laughs turned into shouts and applause.

  Kristine sat down next to me, and I had to ask, “How on earth did you do that?”

  She shrugged. “No big deal. I did that routine back in high school a few years ago.”

  “Kicking it old school?” I asked.

  We both burst into laughter that turned to tears of joy.

  Moments like that are ones that I still remember more than I do the races and the meets. I loved those girls, and being able to lose myself in those moments helped me enormously.

  Even though I wasn’t competing that track season, just being with the girls during practice and staying in motion were crucial to my healing.

  I sensed instinctively that I had to keep running or skiing in the days and weeks after the rape. Not only was that a part of my usual routine, but I loved moving and how it made me feel. I didn’t like that I wasn’t moving as fast or as easily as I had in the past, but allowing my body the freedom to let loose was enormously beneficial throughout the process. Regardless of what stage I may have been in with RTS, physical activity made a huge difference in how I felt each day. I told myself that it was better to be drained of energy physically than mentally. My body was tired, but exercising gave me mental strength and energy to fight back against all the negative feelings.

  I was majoring in Applied Physiology, so I was reading widely about the benefits of exercise, for classes as well as for personal reasons. I am a bit of a science nerd, so the combination of sports and science made the subject a natural for me. My interest in psychology also helped me as I worked toward feeling better and running faster.

  I knew that those who’d been raped suffered in the short term and the long term. As the days passed, I focused more on what some of the possible long-term issues might be for me. With the threat of HIV/AIDS lessening, I looked at other potential threats to my well-being. I learned that people who are sexually assaulted are three times more likely to suffer from clinical depression than the average population. We are six times more likely to have to endure PTSD, thirteen times more likely to abuse alcohol, twenty-six times more likely to abuse drugs, and four times more likely to contemplate suicide.

  While I think I did develop PTSD, but never received a fully confirmed diagnosis, those symptoms were relatively mild compared to what I read about others experiencing. As for the rest of the list above, I didn’t have those problems at all.

  Why?

  In my mind, the answer is exercise. I was traumatized by the attack, but not to the degree that I might have been if I hadn’t remained active. I had a great support group, and I remained focused on the future and my education, but I’m convinced that running spared me months of the kind of agony that words like “depression,” “abuse,” and “suicide” convey.

  It wasn’t just the act of running that helped. Many people understand the benefits of yoga as a way to reduce stress. Running can do the same things; it can help reduce blood pressure, reduce cortisol levels (a hormone released when we are stressed), strengthen the lymphatic/immune system to help us fight off illnesses. The list goes on.<
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  For me, having that knowledge helped my running. I need to understand the why and how of things, so I applied my Applied Physiology on the track. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking any classes like Applied Criminal Justice System. I think that would have helped me as I dealt with the other major competition I felt I was entered in—the trials of the three men who had brutalized me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Running in Circles

  Today, I can see some irony in my spending the spring of 2010 running around in circles on the track. No matter how far I ran, I still got back to the same point in space. Of course, a lot changed during that spring, but the legal system made me feel like I was spinning in circles and producing nothing tangible or beneficial to my healing. I wanted those trials behind me. I wanted those men in prison for the rest of their lives. Though I was told it was going to take some time before the trials would be scheduled, and there would likely be some delays along the way, it was very, very hard to be patient. I like to attack problems head-on, but those trials were not something I’d be able to do alone, acting independently, so I had to rely heavily on others to help me get over the many anxious moments I had when thinking about what that experience was going to be like.

  If I hadn’t had both classes and track, that anxiety would have overwhelmed me. The trials lurked around the fringes of everything I did that academic year; they shadowed every experience I had. That’s not to say that I was in a constant state of gloom, far from it, but knowing that I was going to have to testify three separate times about what had taken place that night felt like a flaw in even the most perfect of experiences.

  I knew I couldn’t obsess over the months and months that stood between me and the first trial. So I focused on smaller increments of time—seconds. Forty-two seconds, to be precise. On March 27, 2010, I prepared to run the five thousand at the Bobby Lane Invitational. It would be my first race of the season, my first since the rape.

  I tried to tell myself that there had been good explanations for that regression.

  When I toed the starting line that afternoon, I felt my usual bit of nerves gnawing at my stomach. I’d been in dozens and dozens of competitions before. My training had been decent leading up to the race. Why should this one have been any different? It was the first outdoor race of the season for me, but it wasn’t like I was running cross-country, where a course might be unfamiliar to me. This was easy, right? Run straight and then turn left around the curve, run straight, turn left around the curve, then repeat that twelve and a half times.

  I’m always nervous before a race. That’s nervous excitement. I’m eager to get out there and test myself. That’s particularly true in your first competition of the season. You’ve trained and trained, and you want to see how all that hard work has paid off. The thing about track and cross-country is that you’re in a competition against others and against yourself. Nearly all the time, unless you’re competing at a certain distance for the first time, you have some standard of your own to compete against. You want to win, but failing that, you want to go faster than you have previously.

  The nerves I felt in my first race of the ’10 track season were different. This was anxiety. Instead of giving me energy like nervous excitement does, this sapped me. It was like my bodily systems were in high gear and were devouring all the energy stores in my muscles. I was worried about failing, and that’s a heavy weight to drag around a track. This first race meant that how the rape had affected me was going to be measured precisely, with quantitative precision. I didn’t want to run slower than I had pre-rape. That would be like getting proof that I was still back there, still in that van, still hoping to get free instead of being free.

  The first few laps, I felt that freedom I loved. I cruised through them, but then I faded.

  After those first laps, I didn’t recognize myself. This wasn’t my stride. This wasn’t my energy level. Normally, I would zone in during a race. I wouldn’t allow any external or extraneous stimuli in—I’d just have that vision of my desired result alone in my head. This time, my head was crowded with thoughts and impressions. How my laces felt too tight, the scratchy sensation of my hair whipping against my back and shoulders, some other competitor laughing in the infield, the clatter of the pole vault bar striking the ground—all intruded into the quiet space I normally set aside to focus on my breathing and my technique.

  As I reached the halfway point, I looked ahead and saw the leaders nearly half a lap in front of me. I did something I’d never done before. I said forget it. I can’t catch them. What’s the point?

  Those earlier physical impressions that had crowded my mind left that space and were replaced by more emotional ones. I’d been grateful since the rape that I had survived. I was grateful that I could still run, do the thing I most loved in the world. Now I was miserable doing what I’d once loved. Worse, the reason why I was doing so poorly in the race and feeling so lousy wasn’t because I was injured—I’d accepted the blame for that pelvis fracture freshman year—it was because someone had done something terrible to me, something I didn’t deserve. I hadn’t lost the ability to do what I loved—three horrible men had taken it from me. For the first time, I questioned whether running was worth it. Was I kidding myself? Was I good enough? Was all my hard work just a way to not think about the rape? Maybe running was just an escape from the other pain I was experiencing. What was the point of that? Why suffer to avoid suffering? At least before, the pain of running was productive—I felt good about the results. But this was pointless and unproductive.

  I didn’t stop. But I did tell myself that even if I tried to dig deep, all I’d do is make the hole larger and not find any kind of reserve of strength or determination there. Someone else had come along and stolen it. They’d discovered that special place where I’d stored those things. What I’d relied on all my life had been taken from me.

  The good thing was, my teammates understood what it was that I needed just then. As I walked off the track, Coach Wollman’s expression—tight-lipped, neutral—told me everything I needed to know. He knew that I knew that things hadn’t gone well. A third-place finish, out of thirty-one entrants, wasn’t terrible. But I was a racer, and races were meant to be won. If you didn’t beat your competition, at least you beat your own best time, gave it your all, left nothing in reserve. I wanted the ground to open up and devour me. I didn’t want anyone to look at me or to say anything.

  I set off on a long cool-down run, alone with my thoughts. No one had told me that it was a good try, that at least I was out there, that I shouldn’t expect much of myself considering. They treated me how I wanted to be treated. Just another competitor who had fallen short. Yet whatever satisfaction I felt at being treated normally was short-lived. I was bitterly disappointed in myself. I wanted to receive a “do-over”—to get right back out there on the track and run that race again immediately. Prove to everyone, including myself, that I was better than that.

  After any race, I always performed a self-assessment, an honest appraisal of how I’d done both mentally and physically. I’d question if I went out at the right speed, if I was able to stick to my plan, if I was able to stay focused and in my zone, if I was able to find energy when needed. I’d determine if I had been able to push away the negative thoughts that appear whenever it hurts the most, if I was able to finish strong. I’d review the race a few times. I’d give myself credit for the positive things and let myself be angry at myself for a few hours over the negative things. Then I’d focus on what I could do to better prepare myself for the next one. Eventually, I’d tell myself to let it go; acknowledge that I’d squeezed from it as many lessons and positive and negative strokes as I could and now it would just be deadweight that would slow me down.

  This time, though, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to move past these moments so quickly. I felt the way I did as a young girl when my tongue would probe a loose tooth, sensing the coppery, salty taste of my blood and feeling the sting and the jangl
e of the nerve, waiting for the days to pass before that tooth would come out.

  My cool-down over, I went back to the infield and slipped on my warm-up top. As I tugged it down over my head, I saw someone approaching. Kristine held her arms out to me, and I let her envelop me in a long embrace. “Screw this silly race,” she said. “Let’s go home. Tomorrow we’re starting over.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said. I sensed that she understood what had happened out there, that I hadn’t just not run my best, I also hadn’t kept that promise I’d made to myself—to not use the rape as an excuse. I’d failed in more than one way, and that simply wasn’t acceptable.

  On the bus ride home I brooded about what had happened. By the time we’d made the trip from Denton to Dallas, I had come around to another way of thinking. It had been 110 days since the rape. I’d run a race. I’d done something that I loved to do, and while it hadn’t gone the way I had wanted it to, it had happened. Despite all the mental agonizing I’d done, on some level I knew that Bobby Lane was a success. I was back running and competing. But still, I was counting the days until I could feel like I had before. When I could tell people that I was okay and mean it. When I wasn’t just okay but better. There weren’t going to be any more first races after the rape. No more counting of days since. I was thinking of days until.

  The following week, I had a long talk with Coach Casey and Coach Wollman.

  “Have you ever heard of Bob Beamon?” Coach Wollman asked me.

  I hadn’t, so Coach explained that in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Beamon barely qualified for the finals and then on his first jump leaped twenty-nine feet, two and a half inches. Coach Wollman let that sink in for a moment. “He beat the world record by twenty-one and three-quarter inches. That’s astounding. Since 1901, the long jump world record had been broken thirteen times and by an average of two and a half inches.”