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“Is it possible to bear witness to the fact of a foot-long wooden ruler being repeatedly thrust into my vagina, all the way up to the back wall of my uterus? To a rifle butt bludgeoning my cervix? To the fact that, when the bleeding wouldn't stop and I had gone into shock, they had to take me to the hospital for a blood transfusion? Is it possible to face up to my continuing to bleed for the next two years, to a blood clot forming in my Fallopian tubes and leaving me permanently unable to bear children? It is possible to bear witness to the fact that I ended up with a pathological aversion to physical contact, particularly with men? To the fact that someone's lips merely grazing mine, their hand brushing my cheek, even so much as a casual gaze running up my legs in summer, was like being seared with a branding iron? Is it possible to bear witness to the fact that I ended up despising my own body, the very physical stuff of my self? That I willfully destroyed any warmth, any affection whose intensity was more than I could bear, and ran away? To somewhere colder, somewhere safer. Purely to stay alive.” — Kang Han