Teresa Vozza

Transcript

I was 17 and my dad still hit me. My heart was pounding before my hand even reached the door. I went through my mental checklist. Were the shoes lined up straight? Had I left anything amiss? Was there some silly, stupid thing he would find that would tell him I messed up again? I took three quiet steps before he grabbed me. That night was a particularly rough beating. The kind of beating that makes you wonder if you'd survive another. I ran away afterwards, straight to my best friend Lynn's house, and I left a note to say I was not coming home.

Lynn had a front row seat to my shame. She saw the way I would buckle with fear when my dad would come home, when he'd grab my arm or scream at me. I'd make a joke out of it. But nobody laughed. That night, seeing me bruised and broken, she'd had enough. Teresa, this isn't normal. Your dad is abusing you. You need to get out. How? Where would I go? The phone rang and I knew it was him before anyone said so.

The whole house would melt in discomfort. "Get home," he said. No hello. "Get home or you are really going to get it." I remember how steady my voice sounded, which surprised me because nothing else in me was steady. "Dad, I will not come home unless you promise me you won't touch me." Silence. A long one. I could hear him breathing on the other end and I understood that silence. "Just get home," he said, and hung up. I had nowhere to go.

17 years old and 17 years deep into believing this was the only home a girl like me could have. Trembling, I rushed home and I saw my father standing there with a look of anger that I had spent my entire childhood learning to read. I went straight upstairs to my room, the only place in the house that felt like mine, and I sat at my desk, where I had spent hours writing down words I couldn't say out loud into my diaries.

But that night, I didn't reach for my diary. I took out a piece of paper instead. Dear Dad, you tell me I'm stupid. I'm useless. You hit me for big things and for small things. What you do to me has a name. It's abuse. You can't do this to me anymore. You can never hurt me again. Dad, I love you, but this has to stop. When I finished, I read the letter once and I folded it into a tiny, tight square.

I walked down the hallway to his room, my heart beating so hard, I was sure it would wake him before I got there. I slipped that letter under his pillow and went straight back to my room and didn't come out again until morning. I don't know what I expected. Part of me braced for him to fly into my room that night, but he didn't. The house was quiet, which was somehow worse. All that silence with my confession just inches away from his sleeping head.

In the morning, I came downstairs and he was at the table. He looked up at me for exactly a second and then his eyes went over my shoulder and stayed there. He never again looked at me with that flat, I'm in charge stare that used to fill up the room ever again. He never apologized. He never mentioned the letter, not that day or any day thereafter, but he never touched me again. I used to think the power of that letter was that it changed him, but I understand something now that I couldn't at 17.

The person that changed that night was me. I didn't suddenly become brave. I was still terrified. I just acted before the fear left. And that's what I think we get wrong about reinvention. We think we have to become the brave person, the confident person, the person who's ready, but I didn't become her and then walk down that hallway. I became her because I walked down that hallway. 12 ft, that's all it was. 12 ft from my room to his with a folded piece of paper in my hand.

Maybe there's a hallway in front of you right now. Don't wait until you're unafraid. Take the walk. Because sometimes you don't reinvent yourself and then take the first step. You take the first step and suddenly you meet the person you're becoming.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.