by Sophia Shiroff
I’m standing, with my olive green pants flowing around my ankles, on the splintered floorboards of the same porch I had been on three years ago. That day, instead of my green pants, I had worn navy blue shorts, a pair that I had painstakingly picked out. It was summer then, just as it is summer now, the same suffocating heat wave radiating across the city. Both mornings I carefully chose my clothes, but the intentions were different. Today I wanted to look professional and welcoming; back then I had tried on countless outfits trying to find one that drew the least attention to my body and made me “look like a victim,”whatever that meant.
A smiling woman with brown curls tied back into an updo answers the door that a case manager had answered back then. The woman introduced herself as Marlen, the volunteer coordinator of the advocacy center. She waves me into the waiting room, past a mustard yellow couch. Back then, my mom and I had sat down on the mustard yellow couch, my stomach twisted into knots—wanting to be anywhere else but there, waiting for the detective and forensic interviewer to show up. I subtly nodded at the couch, following Marlen past it as she continued her tour of the center.
Exactly three years ago when I had sat on that mustard yellow couch, I had begun my search for justice and healing. I didn’t know how difficult the next few years of my life would be. I didn’t know how much would change. All I knew was that I had been hurt and that it felt like my job to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else like he had hurt me. It had taken me over a year to come to the conclusion that I needed to tell someone what had happened–over a year to end up on the mustard yellow couch. That day, my little self didn’t know that telling my story that day was just the start, that the strength it was taking for me to tell the forensic interviewer and detective what had happened to me was just a fraction of the courage I’d need over the next three years. I was blissfully naive of the failings of the justice system, blissfully unaware of the possibility that people wouldn’t believe me. Back then, I was blissfully ignorant to the fact that I would spend the next three years of my life fighting to feel worth it, to feel like I belonged, to have just one twenty-four hour period where I didn’t feel his hands all over me again.
Every Monday, as the current version of me comes to volunteer, little me feels so far away and yet so tangibly close at the same time. This past week while volunteering, two police officers rang the bell: They were there for a forensic interview. I escorted them to the forensic interview house and I felt my past self right back on the mustard yellow couch, nauseous and shaky and unsure if I was brave enough. I sent out a prayer for the little girl who was sitting on the mustard yellow couch today. I’m not a religious person, but I felt like I needed to send a prayer into the world for her. I prayed for her to have unlimited strength, the same strength little me had found when I told the world I had been hurt. I wished for her justice and healing, knowing how hard the next few years of her life would be.
After I had left the advocacy center all those years ago, I was sure that the hardest part was behind me. I didn’t realize that the pursuit of justice isn’t straightforward or guaranteed, or that healing is a journey with ups and downs. As minutes, days, months passed and blurred together, I continued to live despite it. My case was dropped by the District Attorney. I sobbed alone on a bench that night, went to school the next morning, and continued to try to make it through the day. Despite everything, I kept going. I went through multiple therapists, I felt like I was never going to get better, I went to class, I competed in cross country races, I thought the world would be better off without me, I got on medications, my meds changed, I applied to college, I wrote about my experiences for the first time, I passed my classes, I advocated for myself, I found adults I could lean on, I had panic attacks, I got into college, I walked across the stage at graduation. Somewhere between then and now, three years had passed and somewhere along the way I began to heal in my own way. And somehow, along the way, I’d found my way back to the advocacy center where I’d first started my healing journey. I was back with the mustard yellow couch, the same little girl in some ways, and a different girl in so many other ways.
Every Monday now, as I check families in for their therapy appointments, I see myself in them. I know that many other survivors, like me, feel the same unexplainable need to make a difference in the world around them. Maybe it’s because we know what it’s like to be that hurt, to be the little girl on the mustard yellow couch. Maybe it’s because we think we can make it a little easier for them. As survivors, it’s not our jobs to be altruists. It’s enough for us to just live our lives, and yet, we find ourselves coming back to help those like us, to make the world better for all the little us. Volunteering is just one aspect of my healing journey, but it's taught me that there have always been people in my corner, that there have always been people fighting for little girls, that I was never alone. This thought heals the me still on that mustard yellow couch. By making even a small difference in another little girl’s life, I’m continuing to heal myself.