The Vagina Monologues

Tupelo Hassman

The year I wrestled hardest with emerging memories of molestation was the year I first found the Vagina Monologues. I remember the book as it sat on my bedside table and how its deep red cover shone under the reading lamp, creating a glow that bathed the walls of my bedroom and warmed my bed. My bed, which thanks to the nightmares that accompanied the emerging memories, had become a psychic battlefield. This was the same year that I had determined to be alone, celibate, a decision made all the harder by the nightmares that screamed for the comfort brought by company.

Alone. I got in bed…and so began my personal vagina monologue. Before I got to the first monologue, "The Flood", my own flood had begun. I was crying. I cried and I cried. I cried for these words that say, "no matter what age it comes, healing never comes too late." I cried for sisterhood. I cried for resonance. I kept reading. I kept crying. I finished the book. I hugged the book. I continued to cry--and I did not have nightmares that night.

Last year I went to see the Vagina Monologues at the Canon Theatre. I cried again, but I also laughed my ass off and left the theatre feeling a victory I didn't consciously know I had been fighting to win.

Last night I saw the Vagina Monologues at the SMC Campus. I watched women I have known or know of, women I have been working alongside in the fight to end domestic violence, and I cried, laughed, moaned, and chanted with them.

The Vagina Monologues gave me a language that changed my bed, too long associated with violence and nightmares, from a battlefield into a womb. In this safe place, I was able to heal, grow, and emerge as a survivor.

The Vagina Monologues gave me language and a voice: language so I could name and dialogue, and a voice so I could scream.

Tupelo Hassman is a student at Santa Monica College.