Reading · Only The Jodi: Life as a Sober, Aging, Dementia Caregiver

Listen.⤴️ Read. ⤵️ Listen & Read. 🔄 You decide, you’re the boss.

Hello there, you with the pretty peepers and the shell-like ears. This was a hard one. Smash the heart below ❤️ to tell the world you love me .

Why didn’t I stab him in the neck?

I came across the knife recently when I was cleaning out a drawer. A pretty Old Timer Sharpfinger skinning knife with a drop point and a bone handle I’d bought at Hoffritz.

I knew a little about using knives back then. I knew that being sliced deeply across the palm of your hand could leave that hand useless. That slashing tendons could disable a person. I knew plunge, twist in, and push up worked especially well in that space between a person’s navel and the base of their sternum where their ribs flare out. That stomach wounds are some of the worst, but not the fastest.

It was forty years ago and I’ve let go of blaming myself. I stopped excusing his behavior as “a pimp gonna pimp.” It’s true, and I’d made some very stupid choices, but neither of those facts make his actions acceptable.

I knew his name once. He wasn’t the only man who raped me, but he was the only one on that particular night. For the purposes of this retelling, I’ll call him Michael.

It was the early eighties, and I slept with a knife wedged between my mattress and the wall, where I could easily grab it, if and when the need arose.

Michael was already on top of me. I realized that the blade of my knife might have been enough to stop my ex (which is why it was there), but he was a wiry man, without much meat or girth. Michael was a big, big man.

That’s what I call him when I think of him. The Big Man. Probably not as large as I remember, but that’s how memory works. I remember when he leaned back against the bar rail, his arms spread out side to side resting on the bar, from fingertip to fingertip he took up more than half of the bar that seated five or six. A wingspan of ten feet isn’t reasonable, but that’s the memory.

He was on top of me. I didn’t feel confident that the blade was long enough to reach his lungs from the back or the side. I was sure it wasn’t. I’d only have one chance. If I didn’t kill him, he’d kill me for trying. If I couldn’t kill him, I needed to do enough damage—serious, life-threatening damage— to buy enough time to escape. I’d have to incapacitate him in such a way that I could push him off of me and out of the loft bed. Time to get down the ladder and around his body on the floor, unlock the front door, and run.

Kidneys, I knew, were vital organs but I wasn’t exactly sure where they were outside of “lower back someplace.”

Every scenario I ran through my head came to the same conclusion. I was at too much of a disadvantage. I could not win. The Sharpfinger’s three-inch blade made it a legal carry, but a three-inch blade couldn’t buy me the kind of time I needed.

I let it happen.

Sometimes we let things happen when it’s the best way out of a bad situation. When it’s the choice with the least amount of damage. That’s the kind of decision one makes in a single breath.

I thought he’d finish and leave.

I was wrong.

I was wrong for hours.

When he left, he told me he loved me. I locked the door after him, called the bar, and told them I’d be late for work, that I’d had an accident.

I hold the knife today, and I wonder, why didn’t I stab him in the neck?

Even if I didn’t manage to sever his windpipe, surely his jugular or some other important vein would have been cut. Side to side across the back of his neck, couldn’t I have damaged his spine? Detached something, if I was lucky?

Why didn’t I stab him in the neck? The ear, the eye, or even slash his face?

Forty years. Therapy. Recovery. Writing. Processing. Sometimes I still find myself thrown right back there, not to the event, but to what can only be called the afterparty a few hours later. Where I sat on the cement basement floor of the bar where I worked, clutching a bottle of Georgi Vodka, while Michael sat upstairs at the bar, arms stretched wide. Where my boss told me I got what I deserved. Where my best friend said, “What were you thinking?” Where I asked myself that same question.

Michael showed up at a friend’s house the night/morning before, doing things to scare her. Deliberately. I went to save her—it was because of me that he knew where she lived, because of me that she’d let him in.

Why did I let him sleep in my house after that? I knew who he was, but I thought I was untouchable. Indestructible. Immune.

When I realized I was wrong, that no matter what I thought, I was prey, that I was capable of a great deal of pain and terror, why hadn’t I thought to stab him in the neck?

I thought he’d leave after the sex.

I was wrong, because rape is never about sex.
It’s about power, control, and humiliation.
Sex is just the vehicle.

I didn’t think to stab him in the neck.

I didn’t think to fight for my life because I didn’t think it was a life and death situation.

I didn’t think I could be hurt.

I didn’t think.

Today, all my knives are in a drawer, next to my bed, where I can easily grab them if and when the need arises.

I’d love to hear from you, hear about the think you didn’t do that you wish you had. Oh, if we were only as invincible as we thought we were, or as tough as we pretend to be.

Why Didn’t I Stab Him in the Neck?

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