It was a late flight on December 20th. I was staring out the window, listening to music, when the plane took off. Beside me was a young girl — maybe 14 or 15, traveling by herself. A moment after takeoff, she erupted into sobs. At first, I thought she must be terrified of flying. That the shaky take-off scared her. But it didn’t take me long to realize the truth: the man on the other side of her had touched her. 

It was a short flight, an hour and a half, and the girl cried the entire way. Once we landed, all passengers remained seated while a crew of police boarded the plane and arrested the man. Turns out she wasn’t the only girl he’d touched. 

One year later, I was subpoenaed to testify in court. They told me my response was important, even though I never saw the crime itself — only the direct aftermath. 

During a meeting with the prosecution team, they asked me what I remembered of the man. I wasn’t sure if my memories were true or carefully filled-in snippets from my repeated replaying of the event. But there was one thing I remembered for sure — the man’s attitude. It was a perfectly cold sort of apathy, the kind that doesn’t fit the situation. As the police cuffed him and led him off the plane, he had the appearance of it being any old afternoon. I wondered if he’d done this before, if he chose planes because it falls under the complex jurisdiction of the FBI who has other things to do, if he thought he’d get let off with a warning because the girl would rather forget it than drag it on for over a year. I hated that he seemed to feel nothing. I hated that the girl would likely carry a lasting shame for the rest of her life.

As a woman, I accept that I will never understand the how or the why. No matter how much I intellectualize it. I can attempt to psychoanalyze, to understand childhood trauma and life patterning, to read about the underlying societal structures that influence behavior, the beliefs that underpin morality, the methodology of dehumanization, the nature, the nurture, the whatever. But I’ll never truly understand, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe that’s okay.

There’s not a woman alive who hasn’t tried, though. How could he have done that to me? How could he? Why does he think that’s okay? Why does he feel no remorse? It’s part of our nature, as humans, as women, to seek understanding as a way to avoid repetition. A way to regain the control stolen from us. A way to feel safe again.

I would like to write something intellectual about it all. About the reasons men feel they have the right to our bodies, to all bodies, to land, to the earth, to the world. To our blood and our bones and our children. I have before and will again. But I don’t feel like intellectualizing it right now. I should think it possible that we all eventually come to the understanding that it’s not okay. That we can simplify it down to that and be done with it already. We have spent enough time stringing sentences together in our attempts to understand cruelty. At this point, it should be obvious. 

I’m tired. I’m tired of reading about men in power raping little girls and getting away with it. I’m tired of watching men in uniforms abduct women. Tired of watching them aim their guns. Shoot. Kill. Tired of watching them bomb homes, massacre children, and laugh. I’m so fucking tired of it. 

It has always been demanded of women to take the pain of men into us and to metabolize it into something useful. To alchemize violence into something softer. It is all we can do if we want to make the world a bit gentler than before. But I don’t want that to be the demand of young girls, or anyone. I don’t want them to have to take what is inflicted upon them and attempt to build something pretty out of it. It makes me sick. 

But I cannot demand accountability or safety. I can only sit with these feelings and continue to metabolize them and continue to feel sick about it. So that’s what I’ll do.