The outside world remains constant, changing, and moving, unaware of personal hardships. Gay’s piece reminded me that life keeps going, no matter what happens to you.
Rich with imagery, I touched, saw, smelled and heard every experience she described. The fluidity of her piece took me on a journey. I felt like I was traveling with her, going through the phases of her life, understanding her struggle, while remaining unmoved by the distances that kept growing or decreasing between her and her abuse. She alludes to her trauma with a delicateness, allowing the reader - allowing herself - to move throughout her piece without feeling overwhelmed. Here, she leaves for the reader a fill in the blank, a mad lib of her life. She then alliterates:“tired travelers touch”. Her secret, her keep-safe, is present, unmoved by the mundane movements of life. Her perspective is weaved into the sentence with a whisper. Gay gives the reader a hidden description of what her abuse felt like. The words themselves are split apart from the sentence, connecting to her metaphor of being “broken down the middle”. These adjectives alone describe an image of abuse, violence and trauma, while still describing imagery of traveling throughout the interstate highway system. Her adjective word choice is specific, she chose to use “red”, “hard”, “tired”. Instead, she preys upon hidden illusions, disguised with imagery. Gay intentionally does not describe her abuse in detail. The movement of her words is hard to ignore. “We are red stars on maps protected beneath hard plastic in highway rest areas tired travelers touch to make sense of where they are.” The piece originally starts off depicting a highway system: Gay incorporates these heavy lines by weaving them into her story line. Unable to fess up - your entire world is different - but you keep treading. Feeling, enduring and dealing with this hidden secret - moving throughout life with the pain, the guilt. Gay’s subtle heaviness alludes to the same feeling that trauma does. The difficulties of living with what has happened to her. You can sense her struggle, her battle to pull herself back together. She gives the piece a heaviness without revealing - feeling - too much. Her choice of words is specific, “broke me down the middle”. Instead of describing what happened to her in detail, she uses an analogy of being split apart. “Before I left, there had been an incident involving some boys who broke me right down the middle, and, after, I couldn’t pull myself back together.” She reveals the theme of her essay in the middle of the piece:
She touches upon a heavy subject with hidden illusions and vivid imagery. I admire the silent boldness of Gay in this piece. She takes the reader on a journey within the interstate highway system, while simultaneously depicting a very traumatic experience. Roxane Gay is a published author of many beautifully stimulating books, my personal favorites are New York Times Bestsellers: "Bad Feminist" and "Hunger: A Memoir of My Body". Gay reveals herself in small ways in this personal essay. The personal essay, “There Are Distances Between Us”, by Roxane Gay, is bash and unrelenting in a subtle manner.
Like I said, transparency is hard, being authentic is not only about the real you, but about what has happened to you. Powerless to the next course of concerns, reactions and questions. You’re afraid of the healing - afraid of the letting go. It is scary and messy and at times too much. And then all of a sudden you have given up your keep-safe - no turning back. It sometimes feels as if you are the guilty one, hiding a secret that could break the hearts of your family and friends, but in a weird way - you feel safe keeping your secret safe from their eyes and ears. There is no ticking time clock counting down for the right moment to “come clean”. Transparency is hard - being exposed to everyone and their criticisms - being exposed to that person or people. The hidden moments of your past become raw and vulnerable. How do we write about trauma? When do we determine if we are ready? How do we make that jump? It is difficult - it is emotional, a roller coaster with every turn sharp, every breath shaky, every loop naseousating - for the writer and the reader.