The Beauty in Breaking

by Michele Harper

  “Vicki, can I ask you something?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You mentioned you were traumatized in the military. May I ask what happened to you?”

  She sat up in her chair and placed both feet on the ground. Putting her hands on her thighs, she rubbed her palms against the crinkled scrubs. When she spoke, her voice was considerably lower than it had been before.

  “Yes. Yes, you can.” She paused and then resumed the rhythmic rubbing as she looked down at her hands. She made herself stop and then looked up at me. “Remember that surgery I mentioned? The abortion? I was raped in the military.”

  She didn’t cry. Her eyes frosted over—a protective cool. It was the same kind of chill that keeps a person alive far longer than seems possible when she falls into a frozen lake. The kind of cold that slows down the body’s metabolic requirements so that the person can live, submerged for hours, in case of eventual survival or, at least, rescue. This is the innate protective wisdom of the spirit: to save the body when it’s not yet time to go.

  I clasped both my hands to my heart and only partially contained a full-lung gasp. I didn’t have time to realize what I had done. I felt the soul of me unrestrained by the confines of the hospital edifice, Michele, standing next to the me with the VA badge hanging from my neck, Dr. Harper, and halfheartedly tried to pull her back in. “Oh, Vicki. I am so sorry. That should not happen to anyone, anywhere.”

  This was exactly why I had asked. On some level I already knew, or sensed, what had happened. I also knew that the other part of the atrocity was the silencing. Some would say that the even greater part of the crime was forcing the survivor to hold that trauma alone, knowing that revelation would risk exposing her to blame, judgment, and additional consequences. It was as unfair as it was invalid to blame a victim for the criminal acts of an assailant. The girl I used to be had learned that lesson well in our little glass house in Washington, DC. Only in leaving that house did I come to know in my bones that the peril in being silenced was far greater than that of living loud enough to shatter those walls and bring the whole house down. There is tremendous release in speaking, in letting go of the judgments of others, in the heroism of being willing to heal. It is only in speaking of abuses that we can address them. It is only in speaking of violence that the cycle can be broken instead of replicated day after day in our subconscious, year after year in our lives.

  “Yeah. Thank you, yeah.” She nodded, releasing deep, depleted breaths.

  “It’s so good you are healing from this. You’re taking control of your life and healing.”

  “Yeah, I am. It’s just one day at a time. You remember when you asked me if I wanted to hurt anyone or myself?”

  I leaned against the wall, propping myself up with my hands at my lower back, and readied myself for more. But I didn’t know if I could take more right now. I didn’t know if I could bear the pain of what she had survived. I didn’t know if I could continue to repress my anger in that moment. I didn’t know if I could prevent myself from telling her what I really wanted to say: What they did to you was awful. What they did to you shouldn’t be done to any human or any beast. Let’s leave this place. I’ll introduce you to a social worker and acupuncturist who can help you stay well. And I’ll find you a job that will support you. Let’s make sure you’re out of the military forever. The man who did this couldn’t have acted alone. He committed his atrocities because the military allows these crimes within their culture of institutionalized misogyny and toxic masculinity, because our criminal justice system is based on the same, because our nation was founded on these principles first. All of them need to pay the price of full accountability. Come, let’s you and me take steps together into change.

  Instead, I steadied my feet and remembered that I was in the psychiatric section of the emergency department of a hospital. This was not my living room; in many ways it wasn’t even my life. I had allowed this door to open. In fact, I had opened it, because I was committed to acknowledging Vicki, her experience, and her humanity. I had committed myself to being her provider in this way, so I braced myself for a walk across what was certainly exceedingly hard terrain.

  “Yes, I remember,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t want to hurt myself now, but for a long time I didn’t want to live. I was all alone over there in Afghanistan. I was the only woman in my unit. I was in Engineering.” She paused and brightened. There, for a moment, I caught a glimpse of the Vicki she had probably been before this story. “I could fix anything! I helped to fix the power supplies, maintain the vehicles. I really kept our unit running.” Then, suddenly, she was the woman in blue paper scrubs again, sitting there quietly. “I never figured out why, but my sergeant hated me from the very beginning. He would tell me I was nothing, I was worthless.” She paused and drew a deep breath into the tiny, hollow shell of herself before whispering, “Every single day.”

  As she told her story, I began to feel sick. I had that taste that builds at the back of your throat, like stale coffee and two-week-old corn chips, right before waves of acid churn in your stomach to expel a cascade of vomit.

  Her eyes met mine and narrowed. “You know, I joined the military because I wanted to do something good for our country and make myself better, too. Then this.” She put her hands on her hips and assumed an angry glare. “Private Honor,” she barked, impersonating the sergeant, “YOU AIN’T NEVAH GONNA AMOUNT TO NUTHIN’!” She chuckled nervously. “Of course, that’s not exactly how he looked, because spit would fly from his mouth when he yelled.” Her eyes reddened, and her whole face became heavy. “Can you imagine, Dr. Harper, being told you’re worthless every single day by your boss, when you’re far away from home? Oh, Doctor, he was just so mean. And he was only mean to me. He would make me stay up at all hours with new tasks for me to do while everyone else slept. You know that when my grandmother died, he didn’t let me go home for her funeral. He was supposed to let me go, but he never did. He never let me go.” She crossed her arms in front of her and caressed her forearms, rocking herself in the same metrical way as before.

  “I am so sorry, Vicki. I am so sorry.” My sorrow was filled with a rage that was yielding to a broken heart. I felt sorry knowing that everyone in her story needed healing, but the only person I knew for a fact who had sought it out was sitting in front of me.

  She continued: “My grandmother raised me. I never met my father. My mother was around sometimes. She’s still alive and has been hooked on drugs my whole life. Well, I guess not the whole time. She just got clean a couple years ago. When she actually does show up, she just asks me for things. Ever since I can remember, it’s been the same. When I was ten, she’d ask for the money my grandmother gave me to get snacks at the corner store. She would go into my piggy bank when she thought I was sleeping. I saw her every single time . . .” Her voice trailed off. “My grandmother was the only person I had in the world. She’s the one who encouraged me to make something of myself and get an education. But I didn’t have the money for college, so I figured I’d join the military first. I’d live with Grandma after that and help her out while I was in school. That was my plan.”

  The frost in her eyes turned to heat. “You asked me if I wanted to hurt anyone or myself. After my sergeant said I couldn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral, I wanted to die. I mean, I’m a Christian. I know that suicide is a sin, and I wouldn’t ever do it, but I just wanted to die.” She shook her head and looked down before continuing. “And then everything just got worse. The sergeant raped me over there in Afghanistan. I was so alone there. I was dealing with that and so alone. Doctor, I couldn’t communicate with any of the locals, and there weren’t even many locals around where we were, anyway. I never saw anyone. Then another private became my friend. He would bring his food and eat with me when no one else would. I was so thankful when this other private befriended me. Then one night, he raped me, too. He stopped talking to me after
the attack. Then he had some kind of family emergency—not a death or anything, but a cousin of his was sick or something. They let him go home. He raped me, then they let him go home.”

  I watched her, a small woman now huddled in a large vinyl chair. All the energy seemed to have drained from her, and for the first time she looked unsteady. She suddenly seemed so far away, far away in Afghanistan, working on artillery, praying for an end to a war that would follow her home.

  She slumped back in the chair and expelled two rapid, shallow breaths. Her gaze was intent while her voice quivered. “Doctor, the other day, the pastor gave a whole sermon on forgiveness. It all sounded like lies. If he had been through what I had . . . If they had had to go through an abortion alone, a pregnancy that came from torture so that I had to get surgery so that my rapist didn’t grow inside of me.” She continued with her voice rising, “So that they didn’t keep taking my body from me, my choices from me. They put me in that position. They took that from me!” Vicki stopped herself. She crossed her arms, then placed her right hand over her mouth. She looked away from me to the lower left-hand corner of the room. She seemed uncomfortable with the anger as if she were concerned with what it might do, where it might go. We both waited there in the space of the pause. I waited for her to make company with a righteous rage. She waited to feel safe. She continued in a tone that was restrained, “If that pastor had been threatened, beaten, and raped over and over . . . I know that Christ wants us to forgive, but I can’t. I honestly don’t know that I ever can. I want them to die. It hurts me so bad that I just want them to die.”

  “Vicki, I am so sorry. Your anger makes sense. What they did is horrific.” I paused again to give her room. She bit her lower lip and just sat there. “You know you deserve to be happy, right? You know you deserve to be free?”

  “Part of me knows. That’s why I’m here. I’m here to take my life back. When I first returned from Afghanistan, I started to drink. It was the only way I could be home alone with the thoughts of how it was over there. I couldn’t find a job. Even if I could find one, I couldn’t get out of bed most days, so what good would that be? It’s crazy when you think about it.”

  “And you don’t drink anymore?”

  “No, no, I don’t. I just got to a point that was lower than when I left for war, lower than anything I could have imagined. I thought of my grandmother. I went to church. One day, I just stopped drinking cold turkey and told myself I had to get better.”

  “Have you found anyone to be supportive since coming home?”

  “You know, my new squad is better. They’re the reason I’m here.”

  “Were you able to tell anyone in your new squad what they did to you?”

  “I told my new sergeant and some privates. They all stand by me. Now I have some time off to get better.”

  “To continue to get better,” I said, amending her words. “You’ve already done so much!” I paused, then said, “Did anything happen to the men who raped you? The sergeant who was so abusive?”

  “No. They didn’t do anything about it; they never do. But my new squad fixed my records. My old sergeant wrote me up for all sorts of crazy things, so I wouldn’t get promoted and wouldn’t get my benefits, but they wiped all that clean. I have a new therapist, too.”

  “I’m happy to hear it, Vicki, I really am. I’m sorry about everything that happened to you, but I’m happy you’re healing.”

  Here’s what I didn’t say:

  The failure of the military and our government to hold those men accountable is unacceptable. And though your victories were critical, they are small victories in the face of massive systemic failures. The systemic corruption revealed by the crimes against you is abhorrent, shameful, and illegal. Men must be made to pay for their crimes.

  But there was no way to say those things in that moment without undermining her process. It certainly wasn’t the time for that.

  “Thank you, thank you. I told my grandma I was going to school, and I’m going to go. I just have to get well. My old therapist, the one I saw when I first got back, she said I have major depressive disorder and am probably bipolar, something like that. I just hope I can overcome it.”

  “Vicki, first of all, you are well. I want you to know that your feelings are normal. You were traumatized. You were in horrific conditions, and your human response to those horrific conditions is normal.”

  She looked at me and seemed to be softening. Her breathing slowed as she rested in the chair.

  “What’s not normal, what’s not healthy, is if those things happened and you didn’t feel sad or angry. You’re right, you do need to start to feel better so that you can be happy and fulfilled. That’s all. You’re not sick. You’re not abnormal. You’re a survivor who’s doing amazing things to heal herself.”

  Vicki paused. Her eyes focused as she looked across the room, and then she nodded to herself as she considered the entirety of the situation.

  “It’s true,” she said aloud, but to herself.

  She grasped her left fist with her right and anchored her hands low over her pelvis. Then she looked up at me. “You know, Doc, I don’t even know whose child it was.” Her voice thinned to a plea as she cast her eyes down. “That’s what happens when different people rape you.” Her words landed heavily in the space between us. We let them be there in their hugeness, in their horror.

  “How could that pastor tell me to forgive? They should all go to hell. But I’m the one sinning for not forgiving?” A solitary tear rolled from her eye, landing on the side of her right cheek before she swiped it away.

  “I hear you. You did nothing wrong. The men who did this to you were wrong. These men are weak and pitiful. You know that people who do awful things are really suffering so deeply, so profoundly.”

  “Now that I agree with. My mom stole from me because she was suffering. It took me a long time, but I finally forgave her. I forgave her before I went off to war. I saw her for who she was and what she was going through, so I forgave her.” I could see her easing back into her strength.

  “Yeah, like your mom. What she did was not right. You saw her pain and understood it. You forgave her. It doesn’t excuse her actions. It doesn’t say that it was okay for her to behave that way. It only says that you recognized her pain and suffering and wished her healing. You released it. How did it feel to do that?”

  “I felt free. I went away and felt free.”

  Her voice deepened as she began to find grounding in contemplation.

  I said, “And that’s the only reason to forgive the souls of these men who did these monstrous things. They are as troubled as the acts they committed.”

  “I hear you, Doctor. I just don’t know that I can ever get over this. I have to heal, as you say. But some days, when I actually think about it, honestly, I don’t know that I can.”

  I racked my brain for something true, for something I told myself when life felt too hard and unfair, for what I had told myself before coming into work and seeing a full board of patients in the VA ER and ED directors who regularly didn’t show up for their shifts despite that fact; for what I said when I thought back on my childhood, my divorce, and the fact that I was still single in Philadelphia, a city that is famously unwelcoming to people who weren’t conceived within the city limits—and yet, I couldn’t just pick up and move without feeling that I was running away.

  “You remember Nelson Mandela?” I asked her.

  “Of course.”

  “What a loss for all of us that he passed away,” I said, frowning. “What a tremendous force for good, one that has now crossed over.”

  “I know; he was amazing,” Vicki said, brightening.

  “So, you remember what he went through? He fought to overcome institutionalized racism in his own government, and he was imprisoned for it. He was sent to prison for almost thirty years. Clearly, that’s an abuse in and
of itself, and he survived even more abuse while in prison. But he emerged to summon love, forgiveness, and compassion to literally change the world, therein healing himself and many millions of other people. His legacy speaks to what we human beings can withstand. What they did to you was wrong, Vicki. What they did to Mandela was wrong. So many things that happen to us are not right, are not okay. And we can survive and heal and use that to be stronger and shape our lives and the lives of others in wonderful, powerful, healing ways, should we choose to do so. Honestly, that’s the reason to forgive. Just like with your mom: In your own time, you forgave her to free yourself. You forgave her to heal yourself. In your strength, in your courage, in your self-love, others are healed. That’s all. All in time.”

  “I like that, Dr. Harper. I like that a lot. I really want to do that. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m going to school. My new squad is helping me. My new therapist is helping me, too.”

  “Most important, you’re helping yourself. You are doing all of this.”

  Hearing that, she glowed with pride. “Yes, I am.”

  “Yes, you are. Go forth and be Mandela!” I joined my hands in front of my heart as if to say Namaste—a force of habit by that point.

  She smiled. “Yes! That’s why I’m here!”

  “That’s right, you’re doin’ it!” We laughed deep soul laughs together. For the first time, the room was buoyant. I forgot that I was late for sign-out. I forgot that I was in the psychiatric ER.

  “Well, my dear, I’ve gotta go back to the medical side. My day here is done. All the best to you. One day, come back and tell me your stories of happiness and contentment. Congratulations already on your brand-new life.”

  “Thank you. I promise I will. You know what? I haven’t ever talked to anyone like that. I’ve never told the whole story. I didn’t know that would happen today. Feels so good to get it out. To let it go!”

  She emanated a softening, a radiance that made her appear ten years younger than when she first came in. “Wow,” I said. “You’re okay and safe and your energy is lighter, too. You even look brighter.”