The Way I Used to Be

“Our stupid, sleepy suburbia, like every other stupid, sleepy suburbia, awakens groggy, indifferent to its own inconsequence, collectively wishing for one more Saturday and dreading chores and church and to-do lists and Monday morning. Life just goes, just happens, continuing as always. Normal. And I can’t shake the knowledge that life will just keep on happening, regardless if I wake up or not. Obscenely normal.” 

After Edy’s rape, she feels as though something so monumental has happened that the world around should come to a total halt. However, in the suburban environment where she lives, life drudges on. The inertia of suburban living prevents Edy from telling her family about her traumatic experience. In this environment, it seems impossible to disrupt the status quo. This continuation of routine also reflects Eden’s inevitably isolation, as her family is unaware that she is in pain.

“And Kevin had told me, with his lips almost touching mine he whispered the words: You’re gonna keep your mouth shut. Last night it was an order, a command, but today it’s just the truth.” 

Eden, like so many victims of sexual assault, intuits that she will not be believed if she accuses Kevin of rape. His command quickly becomes “the truth.” As such, she is forced to remain silent about her trauma. Just as Eden knows she will not be heard, Kevin instinctively knows that he can get away with it. 

“I try to silently plead with him to just keep this brief. Both my dad and my mom were making such a huge deal of me having a boy over. I hold them before he got here that it’s not like that. I don’t even think of Stephen in that way. I don’t think I’ll ever think of anyone in that way.” 

When Edy has a classmate over to house to work on a school project together, her parents are both excited at the prospect of Edy’s budding adolescence, that she is now beginning to “see” boys. Meanwhile, little do they know that Edy has already had sexual intercourse. Edy thinks to herself that she’ll “never think of anyone in that way”—referring to a romantic connotation—which emphasizes how Edy’s sexuality was stunted before it even began.