a place we know| ✓

eighty

"And find a place where every single thing you see tells you to stay."
S E E K E R
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May 8th
1:12 PM
New York
- - - - - - - - - -

All eyes were on her.

"There's no judgement, Audrey. We're here to listen and support you."

Last week, Audrey found the crumpled orange sheet of paper under her bed, vividly recalling the day Gunner had given it to her. Its black bold letters stood out to her. THERAPY GROUP, it read. When her husband left for rehab, she had promised him that she'd be on track to healing herself. She finally understood that she carried a lot of baggage and it was time to unload it.

So every Monday and Friday, she attended a therapy group for victims of sexual assault. They shared their stories, they shared their progress, they shared their burdens, they shared their difficulties. She realized that she wasn't really as alone as she once believed she was. Here were men and women of all ages and backgrounds speaking openly about their impactful experiences.

Sophie, Jacob, Daniel, Kaya, Maurice, Tiffany... people she'd grown close to this past month. She could hardly believe how much time had passed, even. Gunner only had 30 days of rehabilitation to go and soon, he'd be free from his prison of addiction.

And in order for Audrey to do the same, she had to get the trauma off her chest.

"Okay, um, I just...I've never talked about it before. Not in detail. Not about how it's made me feel." She stared at the wedding ring on her finger and sighed. "It's really hard accepting that it actually happened."

Caroline, the session coordinator, smiled empathetically. Probably the way she was trained to smile. "Denial is an obstacle, Audrey. Once you come to terms with it and accept that you've gone through something nobody should ever have to go through, it's easier to move forward and work on yourself."

She began sounding a lot like Gunner.

"When did it happen?" Caroline asked. The whole group sat in absolute silence, sporting expressions that told of their sorrow, pity and sympathy.

"On New Year's Day when I was on my way home," she confessed, feeling a tremor rise in her voice. "My boyfriend—now he's my husband—and I weren't in a good place at the time so we weren't living together."

Thinking and talking about that event were two different things. In her own head, she never got so emotional. Verbalizing the things Michael had done to her made the sadness raw.

"I was raped by the superintendent of our apartment building."

Usually, this kind of news would cause shock and disbelief, but the fact that they didn't react so intensely was...soothing. She just wanted to talk. She just wanted people to listen.

Clasping and unclasping her hands together, she went on, "He followed me out of the building and I tried to get away from him, I really did. I fought so hard. I kept running and he kept chasing until I was cornered in an alley with no way out. That was when he..."

"Say a fucking word to that crack-head and I'll make sure you both end up dead. And that daughter of yours...oh, I know exactly what I'm gonna do to make sure you never see her again."

"He said that if I told anyone what happened, he'd hurt me and my boyfriend. At the time, we were also dealing with getting custody of our daughter from CPS, so he threatened that he'd make sure I never saw her again." Audrey let out a bitter laugh, tears soaking her eyes. "I was so stupid to believe him. What could he have done? Nothing. But I was so scared that I just gave in to him and stopped fighting. I didn't want anything to happen to my daughter or my boyfriend."