the year I let rage save me

and the violence that comes with staying quiet

This series is a snippet from my (hopefully) future memoir. If you would like to support the direction of this dream, I’d love if you considered upgrading to paid. For less than a cup of coffee a month, you’ll be supporting the notion that artists deserve to be compensated while working towards a larger goal. Plus, this series will go behind a paywall next week. An ode to Charleston and my nine years here— and how they shaped me. (To read parts I, II, and II, click them here.)

Trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault

I remember the first time the subtle rage bubbled up below the surface. 

“I just don’t think you’re remembering correctly. I mean it was so long ago–” I dip my toes into the pool water, knowing this is how the conversation would go. I didn’t mean for it to slip out, here at my apartment complex pool, surrounded by vodka sodas and reggae music. I was just so tired of hearing his name slip out of someone’s mouth so impassively, alongside the notion of friend, husband, good person. Someone needs to know the truth. It spills out of me for only the second time in my life, unmeasured and unprepared. We all know the world needs women to support their experiences with elicit detail in order to be believed. 

My friend sits next to me, shrugging off the conversation casually, marking my trauma as a slight inconvenience he doesn’t feel like facing two weeks before his best friend’s wedding. 

I swallow my rage with the next sip of vodka, looking up at my fiance from across the water, the corners of my lips twitching slightly. Neither of them believe the happenings of my teens are worthy of unearthing, for the sake of keeping others comfortable. I know if I continue opening my mouth, it will be used against me. 

My skin tingles all along the surface, thinking back to a moment shared with my fiance several months earlier. A feeling I can't quite place finds its way back to me like it had in that moment, one that feels unnerving and unsteady. I want to lunge forward and rip out someone’s throat– kick and scream and stop defending myself in a way I do not know how. Instead, I sit quietly with my legs crossed and my hands clasped, preparing for the blow I know is coming. 

“You stayed friends with the guy who raped you, I dont know if I should trust you to make any decision–” he says sharply, without thinking, without giving a single shit about the weight of the words coming out of his mouth. He turns, handing me my morning coffee without spilling a drop, the contrast of his words and his actions always confusing, always disorienting. This person cares for me, but the words feel like the removal of my teeth, one by one by one. 

His voice is steady, casual even, but what he’s said knocks the air out of my lungs and replaces it with dead space. I want to scream, to throw the coffee at the wall, to make him feel even a fraction of the weight he just handed me. But instead, I take the cup with good, quiet girl hands. Sip by sip, I swallow the bitterness. not of the coffee, but of knowing I’m still here, still hoping someone who wounds me might one day be gentle… like the boy who harmed me all those years ago.

I stayed then. I stay now. I sit with the rage, I press it down. 

But not forever—

Four years later, Bri scoops the clothes out of our shared closet with one big grasp of her arms, dragging them down the stairs and into her car. Her and I move what little items allotted mine into the echos of my new apartment, in the same complex as the one he and I shared together because they allowed me to not pay a new deposit. It was my only option, and still, there are worse things. I feel a release of tension the moment I step into the space.

This space is all mine. I feel the catch in the back of my throat.

But this newfound rage is what protects me. Through the moments of uncertainty, of him begging me to come back home, of my fear of starting over. Little moments of bitterness prick my senses, guiding the way to my new life. I use the emotion I was not allotted access to until now– become my guiding compass. No one would ever again tell me how my body should feel or who should be entitled to it. Fuck them. 

I dance between the waves of intense anger and extreme sadness, sobbing as I pack. As I rise on the crest of each, I wonder which one is the one I am entitled to– the grief stuck to the back of my throat thinking of a life without him, or the rise of hot anger creeping to the edge of my fingertips, ready and willing to gut the next person who dare question my reality once more? How can you be so terrified to leave something that is harming your identity, your self? How can you trust an emotion you’ve never had access to before this moment? 

My rage was an indicator that my body was coming back online. 

Several months later, Bri comes over on a Wednesday night to help me pack my new pieces for an art fair in London. I had been accepted, and picked up extra gigs and hours to save for the booth and plane ticket. Without him here, I was getting used to the idea that I could truly do anything I wanted. There was no permission to ask.

Still, I found myself hesitant to step outside of the daily needs. And a trip to London? That seemed risky, with my bank account teetering just above what I needed for next month’s rent.

A few weeks before this, I stood in american eagle holding a package of fresh socks. Four pairs, to be specific. All of my others had holes in them, and I was tired of feeling the floor as I walked through my apartment. When I walked out that day, carrying my socks, I realized I hadn’t bought clothing or anything considered ‘extra’ for myself in several years. Everything had gone to keeping us afloat, and the guilt that would be laid thick if I ever wanted anything else– it was never worth the fight. 

I was 29 years old, and gave myself permission to buy a pack of 11 dollar socks. I was taking back my life.

Five new pieces were packaged and ready, taken off the stretchers and rolled carefully to be tucked away on the plane for my checked luggage. Two hours later, my brother calls.

“I don’t think you’re going to London anytime soon” he says before I can even get a greeting out.

“Whats going on?” he pauses, “Trump just stopped all flights leaving and entering the US. I think we’re going into lockdown for COVID-19..”

His words trail off as I look to my packed bags on my apartment floor, my passport sitting on the counter. I had spent the last six months preparing this work— it’s what held my neck above water when the grief I waded through was too deep to sustain. I needed this exhibition. This escape. This validation. 

Three days later, Luna and I sit on my bed in front of the TV, watching Trump address the nation. “The spread of COVID-19 within our Nation’s communities threatens to strain our Nation’s healthcare systems. As of March 12, 2020, 1,645 people from 47 States have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19….”

My phone rings. It’s my parents. Then my sister. Then Kevin. 

In this moment, we are about to enter a global pandemic, and I am living alone, 900 miles from my parents. The fear is a pulsing undercurrent everywhere you look, from the non-stop news updates on the death toll, to our phone’s emergency signals,  to the neighbors outside stockpiling groceries. There is a level of collective uncertainty I have never really felt before, one that makes you check the news compulsively and wonder what step you take next. 

But for a moment, here on this bed with my dog, I feel safe. Safer than I ever have. Because I am not trapped in a global lockdown with the person who made me feel small. 

I am free to make my own decisions, and free to protect myself. 

There has never been a more pertinent example of divine timing. 

I had stayed for too many years. And I hated myself for it. Younger Sam was so unsure of herself, of her ability to restart her life with the branded mark of a called-off wedding. My world was cloaked in that shame. I had overstayed when I knew I was no longer in love, no longer protected, no longer experiencing any joy in my daily life. I held that unbearable shame with my own two hands for years, unable to reach for new things because of it. 

I would lie in bed at night wishing I could take back half the years of my 20’s with the freedom to explore, to travel, to find myself– to begin painting earlier. I had wasted so much life with a person who did not deserve my level of unwavering truth. 

But at this moment, when the world began shutting down– my decision to leave felt right on time. I arrived precisely when I was meant to.

As we know now, the world shut down for much longer than two weeks. And my experience within COVID did nothing but exacerbate the anger I felt– for the collective world, for my family, for the relationship I entered during it, for myself– and the way that all of it felt so unprotected and raw. 

All I ever wanted was to be seen and understood for the teenage girl who never got to seek out her revenge, for the adult woman who now couldn’t trust herself because of it. And when you place yourself back in that role, I have no idea how anything but turmoil can ever come from it– the place that hurts more than anything to look at. 

The COVID-19 lockdown forced that hard stare. In myself, in my relationships, in my work. 

And though I may never be the same for the loss and growth I experienced because of the years that followed, I know my life and work wouldn’t have the foundation to stand on without it. 

I thought I could outrun the younger version of me who numbed and did the best she could to forgive the world for not protecting her. 

But no matter how many thousands of miles I moved, no matter how many revisits to the relationship I cherished most, no matter how many corners I turned and zigzagged and ran breathlessly toward… 

Nothing can give you the power to outrun the little girl inside of you, still waiting to be chosen. Not time, not distance, not even true love. 

Nothing stood a chance at survival until I was willing to make the unrelenting choice to turn toward her instead of away. 

And for the next three years, I had no choice but to meet her stare.

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