The Weight of Maybe

Trigger Warning: Sexual coercion and emotional manipulation

Authors Note:

This piece explores the confusion, mental conflict, and questioning that can follow experiences of coercive intimacy, a lack of clarity that often lingers long after an experience ends. If you relate to the themes present in this piece, you are not alone.

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I hate not knowing. I hate not being certain. Not of myself, not of my thoughts, my memory, my intentions, my wants. Not of those moments, what they meant at the time, what they mean now. None of it. None of it at all. At all.

How can moments so fallible, so futile, so changing, simultaneously weigh so much? If it meant nothing at all, why do so many questions follow me. If it all meant something, if he was worse than I thought, why didn’t I know it back then. My failure haunts me. My failure to wrap my head around what it all meant, what it all was, what I truly wanted, what he believed I wanted. That failure - it singes into my skin, crawls into my thoughts, so easily, so bluntly.

I tell people of what happened between him and I. I let my desire for clarity, for validation knock down my wall of privacy. I see their faces twist from listening, to concerned. I see their eyebrows mould into a slight frown. Their lips purse, their eyes start analysing me. Who I am now to them. Someone affected. Someone changed. Someone different.

They say the words I don’t believe. Some say it was bad. Some are unsure. Their words rebound off my uncertainty. They rebound off the voice that tells me it was never that bad. You’ve imagined it. You’ve dramatized it. You want the attention. You want the sympathy. They try and tell me that that’s the truth of the situation. But it only ever feels more fake.

And maybe the voice is true. Maybe some twisted, sick, dying part of me wants the sympathy, wants the attention. I know it’s not like the other stories. The stories of other women who have had no choice but to experience something so, so much worse. The stories that aren’t mine, the strength that I didn’t have.

I know I didn’t feel a physical rejection to what he was doing at the time. I didn’t feel it in my chest. It didn’t spread to my sternum and weigh on my throat - the feeling that swallows me whole at mere reminders of those times spent with him. I remember it faintly, how I felt curious, intrigued, excited at times, at least at the beginning.

It’s the sick, twisted part of me that reveals itself most when I feel nothing. I park near the same spot. I feel the same grass beneath my feet. I see the same trees. I see his photo that lingers in the back of my camera roll. I see it all, and I feel nothing. I couldn’t force it. It wouldn’t feel genuine. Just as ingenuine as those two words feel. I don’t believe it’s flawed logic for me to think, that if I can feel nothing, when I’m standing where we were, who’s to say it means anything?

I’m not choked up with fear when I stand there. I’m not suddenly shaky, my breathing doesn’t become shallow, I don’t feel the urge to cry.

I remember seeing you on a dating app for the first time since you ended things. I was surprised to see you again. I was angry, but not fearful. I said what I wanted to say, called you trash, told you how you screwed me over. He’s the asshole for only wanting my body. But you weren’t him. You weren’t the worst. Just a lustful, selfish man. Through the rageful texts, you said how you wanted to change things. How we should talk it out. We met up not long after. It felt weird to be in your presence again. It was awkward. A type of awkward I wouldn’t want to experience again. I talked about how you hurt me, hoping for anything close to recognition from you, maybe even an apology. I think a part of me knew I was wishing for too much. I tried to explain my perspective to you, how what you did made me question what I was worth, what I deserved, whether I was asking for too much. Your hands had already snaked their way to my legs. I was sitting with my legs crossed, or something of that sort. I kept talking. Wanting to be heard from you and not just touched. You asked me to face you on the bench, to wrap my legs around your waist, to get closer to you. I did. Some moments are blank. The next I remember, we were at the tree. We kissed, we made out. I can’t say I didn’t want it. I liked the fact that you wanted me again, even if it was with lust. You told me to look beyond the tree, make sure no one was watching.

I saw a couple across from us, on the other side of the park. They were having a picnic. Talking, chatting. Food was laid out, they were both relaxed. Enjoying their conversation.

But right now, I was with you. I had to focus on what was going on with you, with us.

Next, we had moved spots. The couple had gone, and we were now close to where they were sitting before. Both of us on our knees. Your black jeans were unzipped. I don’t remember much from there. You pushed my head down, made me suck. You held me there. You were satisfied. You let me come up.

I remember wanting to sit with you longer. Ten minutes longer now that we’ve finished. We sat beside each other on the grass. I reached over to hug you, or get closer to you in some way. You pushed me back and said you were going to leave soon. I shouldn’t have gotten too comfortable. You wiped your fingers, still wet, on my top. Like it was something to be ashamed of, something you didn’t want to have stained your hands. Maybe you were right to feel ashamed. “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen…” That’s what you said to me. I wish it hadn’t. Eventually you left. I can’t remember either of us saying any word about seeing each other again. You told me you’d be better this time though. The drive home I can’t remember very well, it’s blank. A few other drives, I can remember. I remember feeling that same, sick, twisted, numbness on the drives I took home alone.

I don’t remember how I truly felt when it happened that day. The more I try to remember, to think about it, the more time that passes, the more distant I become with it all. The more fabricated those two words seem, the more unfamiliar and unjustified they seem. The harder it is to acknowledge that “we” even happened in the first place.

Were you ever ashamed? Some of them would say you should be feeling that way. Was that the same reason your parents didn’t know about me? Why your brothers didn’t either? Questions I won’t ever have the answer to.

It is times like these, when it is months after the last time I saw him, that those two words become more permanent in my life. Even when I don't want to be reminded of him and I, and what it all meant, what it all was, those two words find their way to be loud and frightening. Those two words hold a certain audacity to be so obnoxiously repetitive. It is almost as if has become a voice, coming from me this time and not someone else, telling me what it really was. Without the confusion, without the questioning. It was clear, assertive, with an unfortunate confidence almost. A confidence in the tragedy that it was. A confidence in the false love that he sold me. His hunger and lust that he disguised as love. A confidence within myself, in the truth of our story, in the validation of my pain.