It got to a point where Roxane wished she was gay so that she would only have to deal with women, who she thought were less likely to be abusive. She felt so awful that she still avoids makeup. Once, she made an effort to impress a partner by going to the cosmetics counter at a department store and having herself professionally made-up, but all she got in return was ridicule. In her relationships, Roxane would fall into a cycle of trying to win the other person’s affection – feeling so lucky that they would even consider dating her, only to be constantly criticized and belittled. It also justified her own self-abuse, which she perpetuated by eating as much junk food as she could. The physical abuse was something Roxane sought out, especially in her twenties, because she felt like her body had already been ruined during the attack, so why bother protecting it? She already felt worthless, so it made perfect sense that the men and women she was with should treat her like garbage. These people were both physically and emotionally abusive.
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Unable to cope with this any longer, she was about to start a new chapter where she’d be treated as poorly as she felt.Īfter dropping out of med school, Roxane Gay began a series of relationships with people who were willing to treat her in a way that matched her ugly self-image.
But as she began her junior year, she couldn’t keep up the act any longer – so she dropped out of school to go and live with a potential partner she met online.Īt Yale, Roxane felt like she had to deny the reality of who she saw herself as being now: someone ruined. So, as she quickly began to put on weight, part of her knew she was becoming sexually invisible to predatory men.įor a while, Roxane continued playing the part of the obedient Catholic girl who was expected to become a doctor, and her good grades got her into the pre-med program at Yale University. Roxane was already old enough to understand that fat women aren’t what society thinks of as desirable. In her mind, food wasn’t just a way to punish her body she believed that the more she ate, the bigger she’d get and therefore the less vulnerable she’d be to another attack. In the year following the attack, Roxane was sent to a prestigious boarding school where, away from the watchful eyes of her parents, she could eat as much as she wanted. So, she kept it to herself and continued to bury this secret deeper by overeating more and more food. As a result, she couldn’t bear the thought of telling her parents about the rape. The event was devastating on many levels: since Roxane had already been intimate with this boy, what she experienced was a heavy feeling of shame – as if the attack had been her fault for defying the values of her Catholic upbringing. When she was just 12-years-old, Roxane was raped by her boyfriend and a group of other local youths.
What she could never have expected was that a tragic act of violence would derail those plans and set her on a completely different course. In her early years, Roxane was raised Catholic and believed that if she did well in school she could grow up to be a respected doctor. Roxane Gay was born to a family of Haitian-Americans who lived in Omaha, Nebraska.