"I learned about grief quite early, from men who weren’t my father but insisted I call them daddy. Whenever they touched me, I would close my eyes and try to burrow deep and far away from the present, but if I had left them open, perhaps I would be better equipped to understand what happened to me. Maybe then I could explain it better.

In therapy, they tell you what to expect from love after rape. Like how the trajectory of your relationships will pass through a series of uncomfortable milestones—the men you date will treat your past with the kind of reverence usually reserved for death before inevitably careening into the territory of awkward silences and tight hugs. But you ignore that, because the elusive concept of love is redemptive for survivors and it draws you in with its horizonless appeal. You take it and imagine waking up one day to find the past is no longer gnawing at you. And then there is just you and your boyfriend, lying next to each other with the question of how not to leave the bed."