Emily McCombs

Sometimes I imagine what life would be like if I had lived back before glasses and contacts were invented and I couldn’t see anything and just had to fumble around blindly squinting at everything. Or before antidepressants, and I just had to spend my whole life crying in bed. Both those options still seem more manageable than living life without the ability to watch 6-10 episodes of a television show in one sitting.

According to Suicide.org, about 33 percent of rape victims have suicidal thoughts, and 13 percent of rape victims will attempt suicide. Often this happens many years after the assault. Rape isn’t a crime that ends when the physical act is over — it is a crime that lingers.

...[B]eing among the dead rightsizes my problems, makes me feel small like staring at the ocean. After all, we are all being carried along toward the same inevitable fate as the men and women whose headstones I pass on my daily strolls. The best we can hope for is that someday someone will stop to calculate our ages and wonder about our lives after we’re gone.