Sister:: Part One.

I took a memoir writing class my senior year, thinking it would be simple to write about my childhood.  In retrospect, that was stupid.  It was incredibly challenging and emotional.  Obviously.  However, it was also amazing and wonderful.  It was a dozen college kids helping one another shape their stories into something other people can read and relate to. It was pretty unique.  It was magical.  So, Shap, thanks for forcing us to bend our stories into classic story structure, and thanks for all of your truly constructive criticism. 

Here's the first part of my memoir, titled Sister. I wrote it from the perspective of a hyperactive, imaginative, precocious child who was trying to reconcile her intellectual gifts with her need to be a kid. Which is to say, I wrote as myself, at five.  Do me a favor, for my pride as a writer, note that the voice in this particular story is not the voice of Rachel C. Esteban, Bachelor of Arts. No no, it is the voice of a five year old. Or, what I was like as a five year old, properly exaggerated for dramatic effect (but less exaggerated than I'd like to admit). A lot of it, as you might expect, is about being the five year old big sister of a brave boy battling childhood leukemia.  I can tell you now, it ends happily. He lives. And so does she. Not, really, until she's 23 and finally truly on her own. But she lives.

You know what's really scary...

Victim blaming. Victim blaming is really, really scary. It makes me scared.

I've had friends and family recently say "It's not like that, nobody blames anyone for getting raped." Sure, if it's your sister, your friend, your wife, you're not going to blame her (him or her) for being assaulted. And I would sincerely doubt that most people would say things like "It was her own fault. She shouldn't have gotten herself raped." But that doesn't mean they don't do any victim blaming at all.