I just finished In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I usually read a book in a few days, but this memoir took longer. Where was the wisdom I was seeking? I was afraid for a long time that it would not come. I was doing NaNo during those weeks too, so I was writing my own angry story and struggled to know how to rate Machado’s until the last entries raised it up for me. “Dream House as Memory.”

Machado is brilliant and her writing is important. There is an element of revenge here but also of documentation. I believe her. She did not have to work so hard to prove her experiences to me. 

“It’s not radical to point out that people on the fringe have to be better than people in the mainstream, that they have twice as much to prove. In trying to get people to see your humanity, you reveal just that: your humanity.”

She did not need to prove that abuse is also possible between women lovers, I understand that. I have seen abuse. The seduction and gaslighting she so deliberately documents through her own experience and popular culture with an episode of Star Trek and Alice’s adventures. Readers must be forgiven for thinking again and agin: Why is she still there? Why does she come back? Again? Though Machado fails to fully explore the why, the answer is common enough. We believe the abuse is what we deserve. 

The last entries saved this book for me. I was impatient throughout the second hundred pages, but she writes so well—I make this judgement as a writer. She is brilliant. I nearly did not finish because I disagree that queer abuse is different. From inside all abusive relationships are the same. It is only details that differ. It is strong relationships, constructive and kind relationships that [should] matter, and this is merely a sketch here. I wish she had the perspective and distance to tell me more of that story. 

Perhaps in time she will.