Tackling Sexual Trauma Through Writing
I don’t know if I’m the best person to be writing this essay. I don’t know if there is a best person to write this essay. Everyone’s situation is different, and thus everyone’s way of dealing with that situation is different. I still don’t think I’ve fully dealt with the sexual trauma I experienced over a decade ago, and that’s with therapy and a strong support system. But as a writer, everything is grist for the mill, even the worst moments of my life, moments I would rather never have happened. Of course, every writer has those pieces of their life that they find themselves avoiding in their writing. Those memories are like bruises that we can only lightly skim with our fingers for fear of the underlying ache. Writing about those experiences is tantamount to jabbing a fingertip into the center of that bruise and then describing the pain for someone else’s entertainment or, worse, enrichment.
When I was thirteen, I got into a relationship with a boy a few years older than me at my school. That age difference may not seem like much, but it was enough for me to feel inexperienced and behind-the-curve next to him, to feel like I needed to prove myself or catch up somehow. We were together for three years, during which time he coerced me into various activities and situations that have stuck with me for over ten years. I get flashes of those years from time to time: me, underneath him on his couch, trying to step outside of myself so I could muster up the right words and sounds to keep him happy, him, pawing at me in front of my own family members until I was the one in trouble for misbehaving, me, hiding in his parents’ bathroom for as long as I could before going back out to him. Those years are years I will never get back from him, not without a lot of work and effort on my part to reclaim them.
Right now, I am struggling to write this essay, because there is a part of me that doesn’t believe I have any right to talk about this topic. There were so many things he didn’t do, that they seem to outweigh the things he did do. But my trauma is as real as any other, my pain is as authentic as any other. So, why then do I avoid discussing sexual violence and trauma in my fiction? Why do those experiences only find their way onto the page in my journals and into essays like this one?
I think it must have something to do with also being a female writer. So often, when women write about their experiences, the writing gets labelled “melodramatic,” “sentimental,” “banal.” When women write about their lives in their fiction, their writing is dismissed as unimaginative, whereas male writers are often heralded for mining their personal experiences for material. God forbid a woman draw from her own life to feed her writing, especially if it involves anything to do with sex.
The controversy surrounding My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell speaks to another issue entirely: who gets to write about sexual violence in the current climate? I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about what questions people might aim my way if I wrote sexual violence into my fiction. While the concern regarding the presence of sexual violence against women in fiction has merit, that concern should not be used as a cudgel to silence women who wish to engage with their experiences in the form of fiction. And they shouldn’t be required to trot out every facet of their lives in order to justify why they would ever write about something like sexual trauma. We don’t question male writers in this way; we give them the space to explore various themes and experiences at their leisure. While I don’t believe that every writer is right to tell every story, I do believe that every writer is right to tell their story.
I’ve been reading a biography of Shirley Jackson lately (A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin), and I’m struck by how easily and openly she wrote from her own life, using her experiences in childhood and early adulthood to fuel her short stories and novels. Discussing this with my therapist recently, I started thinking that perhaps I ought to embrace the same tactic in my own writing. Perhaps it is time for me to write more closely to my real life, even if that means risking being labelled melodramatic or derivative. Maybe it’s time to sit down at the desk and put my fingers to my own bruises, not for the sake of anyone else, but for my own sake.
About
Sebastian Murdoch
Sebastian Murdoch is a fiction writer living in Jackson, MS with her two cats, Kafka and Yoshimi. Sebastian is a graduate of the Lesley University Low-Residency MFA program, where she studied under experienced and talented writers such as Hester Kaplan, A.J. Verdelle, Rachel Kadish, and Michael Lowenthal. Her short story, "Georgia's Errand," can be found on the Johannesburg Review of Book's website, and she is currently an intern for WriteorDieTribe.com. You can find her on Twitter at @SEMurdoch, on Instagram at smurdoch94, and at her website sebastianwrites.com.
