“A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind. It was now deep autumn in the mountains.”
— Aspen Matis
“She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.”
— Aspen Matis
“Somewhere in the sun-washed space between Southern California’s hills of sand and the present desolate volcanic sprawl I was crossing, my legs had strengthened, but – invisibly – so had my will. The wisdom of my body had cultivated vibrantly since those sadness-drunken months after the rape when I’d felt so numbed by the hurt and shame that I didn’t move further. No longer.”
— Aspen Matis
“Helplessness didn’t have to be my identity, I wasn’t condemned to it. I was willing – able – to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me – and to save me – but, back in the home where I’d learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.”
— Aspen Matis
“In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.”
— Aspen Matis
“I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.”
— Aspen Matis
“I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
— Aspen Matis
“If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.”
— Aspen Matis
“I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.”
— Aspen Matis
“This was a vision of wildness contained – caged. Huge, powerful animals whose wild dignity was stripped from them.Panic jolted me. These animals had had their freedom seized by people who put their own desires first. In the glint of the silver cage bars I saw the same steely repression, the same cold entitlement that allows people to feel it is okay to steal bodies and lives as I glimpsed while frozen beneath Junior. The boy who had put his few minutes of pleasure before my entire life.”
— Aspen Matis
“Happy people have everything to give.”
— Aspen Matis
“I’m so drunk,” I said through the bathroom door, though it wasn’t true. I’d declared it to him in my anxiety to take pressure and responsibility off of myself for what I wanted to do next. I had already decided I at least wanted to kiss him, be held. Yet my desire surprised me. I felt the weight of shame not only on rape now, but on sex too. I was confused by it. I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him.”
— Aspen Matis
“Second—I’d take much better care of myself.There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I’d massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned—and it would be luxurious—something I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself.”
— Aspen Matis
“The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape—my word. The subsequent silencing and exile—misplaced shame—were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother’s grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong—to my mother, and to the world. I’d believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able—so they could finally know that I was strong.Instead I had shown myself.And it felt wonderful.”
— Aspen Matis
“He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.”
— Aspen Matis
“Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born.”
— Aspen Matis
“The wisdom of my body had cultivated vibrantly since those sadness-drunken months after the rape when I’d felt so numbed by the hurt and shame that I didn’t move further. No longer. The way I felt about being sexually shamed had changed. Now I was angry that others were trying to shame my sexuality in the first place. I flushed—this time not in shame—but in rage.”
— Aspen Matis
“When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.”
— Aspen Matis
“Because I feared I couldn’t walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.”
— Aspen Matis
“My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.”
— Aspen Matis
“I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.”
— Aspen Matis
“These tools were my parents’ way of saying: What you’re doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way.”
— Aspen Matis
“I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn’t mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.”
— Aspen Matis
“She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I’d carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it.”
— Aspen Matis
“death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.”
— Aspen Matis
“I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.”
— Aspen Matis
“I was desperate not to confront the fact that this really could be it—that “nineteen” didn’t matter, that there really was a point at which even young bodies fail. I was not immortal.”
— Aspen Matis
“And the idea of light unexplainably produced out of nothing was haunting, it shook me. A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible that weren’t, and so anything—great and terrible—felt possible to me now.”
— Aspen Matis
“It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.”
— Aspen Matis
“I couldn’t yet piece together the disconnected clues to understand the origin of these lights. To explain away strange magic, I’d convinced myself there was an unseen road cutting across the boundless desert floor like a scar. I imagined its different possible courses. The mystery intrigued me. I couldn’t think of the real destination this road would have been built to lead to, but I accepted I couldn’t see, and I accepted it was there, strange but – from where I stood – a beautiful vision.”
— Aspen Matis