Angela’s Reviews > Girlhood > Status Update

Early in [our] relationship...she commented that [my first sexual experiences with boys and men] sounded somewhat traumatic. "No," I said quickly. "It was completely consensual." She made a skeptical noise. "Even when it's technically consensual, if there's a big power differential--" I shook my head. I knew women who had experienced sexual trauma, and what I had experienced did not compare to what they had survived.

There is a difference between the fear of upsetting someone who loves you and the danger of losing them. For a long time, I couldn't separate these.

Imagine a structure as delicate and intricate as a honeycomb. One that has weathered many blows... that could so easily be crushed by the sweeping hand of error. The dread did not rise from my thoughts but from my gut, from some corporeal logic that had kept meticulous track of every mistake before this one. That believed there was a finite number of times one could break someone's heart before it hardened to you.

Like a bitter divorced parent, I accepted that [my] collaboration [with my body] was mandatory...Despite my deep sympathy for all other animals, I was sociopathic in my cruelty...When she disobeyed me--in her hunger, in her clumsiness--I was punitive and withholding. I scrutinized and criticized and denigrated her ceaselessly, even in dreams. Not before or since have I felt such animosity toward another being.

...it is the persisting part of me that hates my young self, that is still afraid of being the girl in the mirror. Or even the less young self, who sought attention as if playing the slots, handed herself over for the impossible chance that it might pay off... "I forgive myself for ingesting shame I did not choose but was fed anyway," says Aja. "I may not yet be unashamed, but I am wholly unapologetic."

...when I got in trouble and wanted to be seen as good again, I would clean my room. But only when I wanted to be good, not because I wanted to be clean. I already understood that goodness was something you earned, that existed only in the esteem of others... [being good] was not a thing to care about alone in my room, unless I was thinking about the people outside and the ways I might need them to see me.

A slut was a careless girl, hands sunk haphazardly into the dough, broom stilled against her shoulder--eyes cast out the window, mouth humming a song, always thinking of something else.