When I Ran From Nothing - Cheryl Skory Suma

Content Warning: vague reference to sexual assault (not described, only the emotional and psychological impact are discussed in this piece, which reflects on an over-protective parenting style post assault/how the abusive shaped me as an adult)

(Names have been changed to protect the privacy of people mentioned in this piece)

I slip in to watch her last moments of sleep before morning’s rise. Sinking into the chair by the window, I’m caressed by the shadows. We are familiar, these shadows of the past and I.

I watch as she twitches her dream dance. I am as much short and aching as she is all limbs, long and lithe, tangled amongst the blankets. I exhale as she settles, her dream torture forgotten. In this moment, we are both safe, and I can breathe.

*

I’ve watched as my desire to protect has become too heavy for her to carry — an unintended burden instead of a gift. From the moment she was born, I wanted to be her guardian against life’s worst offerings. She was an angel well fallen. It was my duty to shield her from the evil that lurked just around the bend. As she grew, however, I came to fear that the world would not have it, that it would instead push all my failings upon us both. I saw how we were at once the same, yet not. How she was still the little me, the girl before the bad things happened. I would do anything to stop these things from happening to her. 

So, I keep trying to craft a worthy shield with those splinters of me.

*

I shift in my perch. The morning sun has begun to caress her face, taunting me with the reminder that, at least for now, she glows the kind of beauty born from kindness, empathy, and trust. 

The bad ones, they’ll want to crush that. They’ll try to wrest her uniqueness from her or want to claim it as their own. To paint her with their blackness until their hunger dims her light. My thoughts hide behind dramatic lines. I know better. There is just one fear that summarizes all the others — that they will take from her what is not offered willingly and destroy her in the process.

I want to see her soar, to share her heart’s joy. Yet fear and my history won’t cease screaming at me to stop the world from touching her, from breaking her and taking away her beautiful wholeness.

I abandon the chair’s haven to glide out of the room before she wakes. I do not want her to see the fears I exhale as the sun rises.

*

My two earliest memories of the perils of male attention both occurred the year I turned five.

The first time, the two boys who lived next door, ages seven and nine, came over to play. They brought this huge butterfly net, one big enough to engulf most of my upper body. They told me to run. 

“We’ll chase you.” 

So, I ran, chubby child legs pumping, hair streaming, arms flung wide, screaming and laughing all around the front yard. I remember the fall leaves floating like shattered rainbows all around me while my two friends’ warm laughter did what the fall sun couldn’t. It was a feeling like no other: the joyous oblivion of the chase, the pure warm love of being. 

Pursued, yet safe. 

That same fall, I started kindergarten. A few weeks in, my teacher sent me and another classmate, Laura, down to the art room to fetch some paint. For us, the school was still a maze of never-ending halls. On the way back, we took a wrong turn and came upon a janitor. He was heavyset, with that tired look adults get when they’ve stopped caring. 

“Girls, what’s that you’ve got?”

He stepped forward until he filled the hallway. Laura obligingly held up her paint cans. I didn’t like his smile and dropped mine, spilling bright yellow paint all over the hall floor. He opened the janitorial closet, then pushed us inside. I grabbed Laura’s hand. 

“Now we need to clean that up. You’re good girls. You’ll help.”

Run! The survivor inside me said. I looked at Laura’s face, but she just nodded and put down her cans.

“You’ve got paint on your shirt.” He started tugging Laura’s jumper over her head. I pulled her sideways, back towards the door. His face turned in. “Now, hold on.”

His plans were interrupted by the entrance of a young teacher, whose eyes widened as he surveyed the scene. “Didn’t realize anyone was in here. Just grabbing paper towels; one of my students is sick.” The teacher looked between the janitor and us, then frowned. He stood taller. 

“Girls, shouldn’t you be in class?” 

I didn’t need any encouragement. I dragged Laura out the door, our paint forgotten. 

* 

“Mom? Are you up? I’m heading out for my run. Back in sixty!”

Leaving the janitor flashback behind, I track my daughter’s progress as she laps the block eight times. I only feel the air enter my lungs on those breaths that coincide with her passage by — the rest of the time, I suffocate. 

The first time I was attacked, I was walking alone through the nice family neighborhood where I’d rented a basement apartment, just ten minutes from campus. I felt safe then too. I think I’ve told her the story one too many times. She always has her answer ready. It triggers a bundle of shame and guilt-tainted emotions. She is correct in much of her response — we do have fewer bushes on our street, it is daytime, not evening, and she knows to watch. She tells me she will be fine. 

Nine. She is on her last lap. I force myself to move to the kitchen to begin emptying the dishwasher — so she won’t see my frightened face at the window. I punish the dishes. I knock cupboards shut with satisfying thuds. How not to suffocate her light with my desperate, shielding embrace? I ache to let her shine and embrace the many rather than only protect her from the dangers of the few. 

Yet, for me, it was the few that always found me. Even left behind in the past, banished by my new, carefully controlled existence, I know they exist. Their threat remains alive, somewhere — somewhere my daughter might be, somewhere I might miss if I stop watching. 

* 

I’ve never told my daughter the full details of the first assault. Or the second, the third, or all the close calls in-between, for that matter. The particulars seem too punishing; they would reconstruct us. I don’t want her to look at me differently, to see broken things where she once saw strength and purpose. 

I’ve always felt as though my existence is a mirage; the truth is more akin to that of three fragmented people cobbled together to make one whole. The little girl before; the young woman, positive and assured; and finally, the woman she became after the assaults — fearful and guarded, forever caught in a loop driven by the need to control risk. The three of us are wrapped up in one terrified bundle, just trying to survive, pretending to be strong. Sexual assault/abuse does that — it creates broken survivors, hiding behind shields too heavy to carry alone. I recognize my demons; I’ve read enough. The abuse stays with you, impacting your relationships and ability to trust. I understand that these experiences drive my reactions to intimacy and have irreparably changed who I could have become without them. Unable to forget the past, I instead attempt to leave these experiences behind by focusing on ways to avoid the chance of it all — by finding ways to keep my daughter safe. To ensure history does not unearth the opportunity to repeat itself.

* 

My first time was tragically unoriginal, terrifying, and buried me whole in ways I didn’t fully understand until it happened again almost a decade later. The first sexual assault occurred after ending a short-term relationship. At the time, the term “date rape” was foreign to me. It was not something our mothers spoke about when I was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. When I found myself in a similar situation ten years later, while I now knew the term, I couldn’t believe I’d misjudged another man’s character for the second time. In each instance, I fought, matching my assailant’s determination with my own. Each time, guilt and self-doubt washed through me as I struggled. How did I get here? What mistake did I make? What clue had I missed? How had I not sensed what was to come? Keenly aware of society’s tendency to victim-blame, I remained silent, swearing my one confidant and friend aware of the incidents to secrecy. It would take twenty years of healing, learning, and raising a daughter of my own before I could even consider sharing that burden with anyone else. 

* 

Each day, I tell myself that I have left the harm of these assaults in the past. I carefully bundle their memories into the invisible bag I drag behind me. Despite their weight, I lie to myself and say I have healed. I review evidence that I have moved on and found my power (my successful business, my lovely children, the two instances when I spoke up, supporting friends to leave harmful relationships). Yet even when I succeed in pushing the memories away, their stain remains. They haunt my dreams at night; they color my visions for my daughter’s future by day. When alone in my bed, I cry their secrets. Invisible tears for invisible scars. For things hiding close in the past — things that cannot be changed.

Too often, I’m awakened abruptly in the dark — by my churning stomach or my pounding heart, which beats in rhythm with my racing thoughts. Tangled nightmare fears of past assaults that manage to dance their way from dreams into consciousness with ease each night. I want to neglect these scars of the past, to truly leave them behind for good, but they are thick and stubborn and demand my attention. 

Panic, even that triggered by events left in the past, is harder to resist once the light fades.

*

Not all my dreams are nightmares. Some nights, I dream of my daughter and me — both small, both whole. Beautiful little girls holding hands with our too-thick hair flowing behind us, laughing and running as I used to run. 

When I ran from nothing. Pursued, yet safe.

If only it could be that way. For all women, everywhere. Sadly, some dreams can take lifetimes to chase. Perhaps, I’ve had my fair share of dreams fulfilled already. I count my blessings.

Still, I relish those happy before-fantasies of the two of us. In those dreams, we are spirit twins — unscathed and innocent, always hopeful. Still untouched, we are unafraid to live. We do not yet know that our enemies exist.

In our blessed ignorance, we run because we can, not because we must.

This CNF piece was previously published in print as part of the 2022 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir Competition Shortlist (print anthology came out spring 2023)

Cheryl’s fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and photography have appeared in US, UK, and Canadian publications, including Barren Magazine, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award Anthology, National Flash Fiction, Exposition Review, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Longridge Review, Blank Spaces Magazine, SFWP, SugarSugarSalt, Stanchion Zine, the Anthology of the International Amy Macrae Award for Memoir, WestWord, Reckon Review, Pulp Literature, Sonora Review, Glassworks Magazine, and many others.A multi-Pushcart nominee, her work placed in fifty-one competitions since 2019. Cheryl has a MHSc Speech-Language Pathology and an HBSc Psychology. She’s a past Flash CNF Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine & enjoys mentoring younger writers. Cheryl’s MG Indigenous-inspired fantasy novel, “Habitan" will be release this summer by Chicken House Press. You can find her on Twitter/X & BlueSkySocial @cherylskorysuma