just a dress

This morning, I hand-washed the dress I wore the night I met my abuser.

It’s black with silver sparkles. Swingy and stretchy, though the glitter is a little scratchy.

I found it the last time I visited my parents – in a box of things meant to be given away, placed there years ago when I moved to NYC.

My first thought was how it’d be fun to wear under a blazer for the holidays.

That was my first thought.
The second one was, “oh yeah, this is the dress…”

Not all that long ago, finding that dress in a box would have set me back some days or weeks, maybe months. Running my fingers over the scratch of the glitter sewn into the fabric, I could see and smell the bar where I met him.

It was April something, eight years ago. I chaperoned prom at the high school where I was a counselor at the time, my first job out of grad school. I don’t remember the theme or anything all that particular about the actual prom, but afterwards I met friends downtown at a bar — The Nose Dive. I ordered Prosecco for the table. We decided we wanted to go out dancing. I wish we hadn’t, but bless us — we didn’t know.

Last week, a writing mentor told me a good story starts with you loading a gun and putting it in a drawer so the audience knows at some point, that gun’s going to come back out and something’s gonna happen.

I threw the dress in a suitcase and brought it back to New York, and I washed it in my bathroom sink with some laundry pods I keep in a drawer.

That man slept with an actual gun in his nightstand drawer.
And I’ve never told anyone *everything* that happened.

But I think it’s time.

To be clear — this is not a story about a monster. This is a story about possibilities.
And how a sparkly dress I wore on a night that used to haunt me gets to be just a dress that would look good under a blazer now.

A few months ago, I was wandering around some shop in Soho when I recognized one of his favorite songs playing — a bachata song he’d play on repeat while he was drunk or high or angry, or all three. It’s a song that used to shove me right back into that time in my life.

But now it gets to be just a song.

How’d I pull that off? With time. With therapy. With screaming.
And setbacks and backslides and unpacking feelings I never should have had to feel in the first place.
And with time, and with time, and with time.

I hope one day, things lose their ability to haunt you.
I hope that day comes as fast as it can.
That time and screaming, if needed, dull what used to scratch and steal you away.

I hope the things that took so much from you once upon a time, or maybe even are right now, loosen their grip.
Release their hold. That you have what you need to draw power from them. Momentum. Some kind of equity, in the most beautiful form possible.

I hope it gets to be just another thing in a box, or a store, or out in the world.

I hope it gets to be just a song soon. Just a dress.