They did not do this to me.

I did not let them.

That distinction has mattered more to my recovery than almost anything else.

I have learned that it is one of the most important things anyone who has survived something like this can hold onto, and also one of the most fragile, because the world and one’s own mind conspire to take it away.

There is a version of my story in which I am only a victim — a woman things were done to, passive, acted upon, defined by her helplessness.

And parts of that version are true; things were done to me, in that house, on nights I could not defend myself, and I will not minimize them or pretend I chose them.