The Way I Used to Be

“And Kevin had told me, with his lips almost touching mine he whispered the words: You’re gonna keep your mouth shut. Last night it was an order, a command, but today it’s just the truth.” 

Eden, like so many victims of sexual assault, intuits that she will not be believed if she accuses Kevin of rape. His command quickly becomes “the truth.” As such, she is forced to remain silent about her trauma. Just as Eden knows she will not be heard, Kevin instinctively knows that he can get away with it. 

“I try to silently plead with him to just keep this brief. Both my dad and my mom were making such a huge deal of me having a boy over. I hold them before he got here that it’s not like that. I don’t even think of Stephen in that way. I don’t think I’ll ever think of anyone in that way.” 

When Edy has a classmate over to house to work on a school project together, her parents are both excited at the prospect of Edy’s budding adolescence, that she is now beginning to “see” boys. Meanwhile, little do they know that Edy has already had sexual intercourse. Edy thinks to herself that she’ll “never think of anyone in that way”—referring to a romantic connotation—which emphasizes how Edy’s sexuality was stunted before it even began. 

“I feel like I’ve gone off somewhere else, like I’ve just sort of slipped into this other realm. A world that’s a lot like the real world, except slightly slower. This alternate reality where I’m not quite in my body, not quite in my mind, either—it’s this place where all I do is think about one thing and one thing only.” 

Without having to name it, the reader knows what Edy is referring to when she says she thinks about “one thing and one thing only.” Edy’s growth is stunted after she is raped by Kevin, which is why she feels like she exists in an “alternate reality” that leaves her in an in-between state of “not quite” in her body or mind. Her rape is the defining moment of her life.

“I do what they tell me to do, what everyone tells me to do. Why didn’t they ever teach me to stand up for myself?”

After Kevin rapes Edy, she feels that it is, somehow, her fault that he sexually assaulted her. This is implied in the paragraph above, in which Edy wonders why her parents never taught her to stand up for herself. The implication is that, if she were able to stand up for herself, she would have been able to prevent Kevin from forcing himself on her. 

“‘And why is she [Eden] a totally slutty disgusting whore, again?’ She [Amanda’s friend] laughs. ‘Trust me, she just is,’ Amanda says as they stand back and admire their work. ‘Besides, she practically screwed some guy out by the tennis courts after school yesterday!’ she lies.” 

Edy’s reputation as a “slut” has a major effect on how Edy conducts herself. By the end of high school, Edy is notorious for her promiscuity and has embraced that identity. However, in Edy’s sophomore year, at this moment, the rumor is completely unfounded. This moment shows how the pernicious, damaging rumors about Edy’s reputation begins, and how her reputation as a “slut” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I find myself evaluating every detail of the situation: him, me, the distance between us, the way his comforter feels soft against my legs, and everything smells like clean laundry, the sports posters on his walls, the hardwood floors, the curtains parted just slightly. I try hard to keep breathing as the fear tightens its knot around my heart. His lips are also slightly parted. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t.”

This scene marks Eden’s first consensual, sexual experience with Josh Miller. The main emotion in this moment is not one of excitement or arousal—it is one of terror. Eden feels the same fear she experienced when Kevin assaulted her. The author shows how, for Eden, sex and sexuality becomes inextricably linked with trauma. 

“I start thinking maybe he’s disappointed with what he sees; I know, of course, I’m not the prettiest, not the sexiest. I feel my arms twist together in front of my chest. I suddenly want to run. Run far and hard and fast, away from him, myself, my life, my past, my future, everything.” 

As the survivor of rape, sexual encounters are fraught for Eden. In this scene, Eden has made the decision that she is going to have sex with Josh for the first time, but the idea terrifies her to her core. She experiences a profound repulsion, which makes her want to escape.

“Somehow, when we had started talking, I was in his arms, and now it’s the opposite.” 

Eden’s relationship with Josh deepens significantly in Chapter 19. In this scene, both Eden and Josh show their vulnerability, and in doing so, the intimacy between them increases. The physical manifestation of embracing shows their equal exchange. 

“If there had been a train coming, then I would have been killed or at least seriously and irreparably injured. And 542 days later I would have been lying in either a grave or a hospital somewhere, rotting away or hooked up to machines and not in my bed with Kevin in the next room and me thinking he was the greatest person in the entire world, incapable of hurting me in any way, because , after all, he had saved the day.” 

During an intimate moment cuddling in bed with Josh—the first time he tells her he loves her—Eden is thinking about the day from her childhood when Kevin rescued her after she had a bike accident. Specifically, Eden thinks about how foolish she was for developing a childhood crush on him that day. Her suicidal urges are first expressed in this moment, too: She wishes that, rather than rescuing her, Kevin had left her to be struck by an oncoming train instead. At a moment that should be joyous (because of Josh), Eden is suicidal over thoughts of her past and of Kevin.

“I stare at him and wish that I could somehow make him understand everything. Everything that’s happened, everything I think and feel, about him, about me, about us together. How my heart—that stupid, flimsy organ—aches violently for him. But it’s too much for words, so I just utter that one syllable, the one that matters most right now.” 

Eden has trouble communicating her feelings. She refers to her heart as “that stupid flimsy organ,” showing a disdain for the vulnerability that accompanies showing emotion. Still, she longs to connect with Josh. Without referring to the rape explicitly, the reader understands that when Eden says she wishes that she could somehow make Josh understand “everything that’s happened,” that is what she alludes to.

“The giant wooden playground is what we always called, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a wooden castle the size of a Hollywood mansion, with towers and bridges and turrets and secret passageways. Elaborate swings in the shape of life-size horses with black rubber saddles.” 

This is a coming-of-age story for both Eden and Mara. Their story, particularly for Eden after her trauma, is also one of lost innocence. At this point in the narrative, the girls are juniors in high school, and that innocence is far in the rearview mirror. In this scene, the girls drink beers in a playground of their childhood, further underscoring that motif of lost innocence. 

“She would never say it, but I know it still weird her out that I’ve had sex. Or maybe it’s just knowing that people think I’m a total slut, that people talk about me like I’m a total slut. Especially when she’s standing there next to me, not one.”

Eden’s reputation as a slut is unfounded, which Amanda started as a complete falsehood. Even so, that reputation is so toxic that it even threatens to come between Eden and Mara, two best friends. There is a “contagious” quality to that label of “slut,” which threatens to pollute Mara’s reputation, as well. 

“The truth. I take a big sip from the cup. His words echo in my head. Truth. What is that, anyway? No such thing.” 

At a house party with Troy and Alex, an older guy approaches Eden and asks how old she is—he says he wants an answer, and he wants the truth. Although this is a straightforward question, Eden ponders the nature of “truth.” While she is only a teen, her traumatic experiences have aged her. So many of the things she believed to be true turned out to be false—her sense of “truth” has been turned upside down.

“It’s over before I even fully believe it’s happening. Before I’ve even fully decided I’m going to do it.” 

In this scene, Eden makes the decision to make out with a stranger at a house party. While Eden made the choice to make out with him, the reader learns from her first-person narration that she was still undecided about having sexual intercourse with him. Eden’s experience—especially considering the age difference and that alcohol was involved—explores a gray area between “consent” and “sexual violation.”

“It turns out getting high really isn’t my thing. This is my thing.” 

Midway through her junior year of high school, it is evident that Eden has gone through a dramatic transformation. A far cry from the self-described nerdy “band geek” from her freshman year, the “it” Eden refers to above is “anonymous sex with strangers.” Eden uses casual sex as a way of disconnecting; it is like a drug to her. Also, comparable to a drug, Eden uses sex as an unhealthy and unsustainable coping mechanism. 

“Ever since we got back from winter break, it’s been SAT fever around here. Suddenly everyone is deadly serious and slamming energy drinks and overthinking the importance of their entire lives.”

Eden is not on the same trajectory as her peers, having been de-railed by her traumatic sexual experience. With her characteristic cynicism, Eden observes her fellow senior classmates scrambling to prepare for college. She, on the other hand, takes a nihilistic approach to her future, feeling that her life has less importance. 

“I’m so far gone now, sometimes I feel like maybe it’s almost enough. Because honestly, there isn’t the slightest trace left of that frizzy-haired, freckle-faced, clarinet-playing, scared-silent little girl. And her big secret is really not such a huge deal anymore. It was all so long ago no, it practically never happened.”

Part 4 opens with Eden’s own personal statistic about how many men she has had sex with. Years put distance between her and the traumatic incident with Kevin, but as she also explains in this passage, every new guy she sleeps with also distances her from the incident. She relishes in the fact that, with her new behavior, there isn’t “the slightest trace” of the girl she was when she was raped.

“I want to slap the girl. I want to stand up and sweep my arm across the table, knocking over the little dog and the little show, the plastic houses and the paper money. Because as the girl smiles demurely, I look in his eyes and I see now what the girl couldn’t then: that this is the moment. He had been thinking about it for some time and was pretty sure, I could tell, but this was the moment he knew not only that he would do it, but that she would let him get away with it.”

In a flashback to the evening the night she was raped, Eden fantasizes about being able to somehow stop the incident from happening. Through older eyes, Eden can see Kevin’s intentions for what they were. She can also tell that part of his deciding to go forward with his assault of Eden was the knowledge that she would remain silent about the incident.

“Not only do I need to be wasted to have a good time, I need to be wasted to even be conscious right now, knowing I still have the whole weekend ahead of me before Caelin leaves, and Kevin along with him. I feel like I need to go shoot heroin or something. If I only I knew where to get some, I just might.” 

In The Way I Used to Be, Eden’s internal monologue shows the psychology behind addiction and escapism, whether it be in relation to sex or drugs or both. By the time she is a senior in high school, Eden cannot bear to be in her own skin, for almost any length of time. She seeks relief through whatever means is available to her. 

“So I close my eyes, focus everything in my mind and my body on pretending that the boy I’m kissing is Josh, and that I am some better version of myself—the girl I used to be, the one that Josh once felt the need to say ‘I love you’ to.”

Eden’s relationship with Josh her sophomore year was a formative, milestone experience. Thus far, it marks one of the only—if not the only—genuine romantic bonding experiences for Eden. Still in her senior year, Eden longs for Josh. As her behavior becomes more unpredictable and erratic, Eden’s kisses Steve, in a desperate attempt to escape the present and return to the feeling she had when she with Josh.

“‘Look at me,’ he whispered. ‘No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever.’” 

This moment is the catalyst for Eden’s long silence about Kevin raping her. Kevin is emboldened by his social standing with Eden’s family, but more generally as a man—he feels that he can get away with this. Her burying this incident, as evident by the rest of the story, is the root cause of her inability to regain control of her autonomy in a healthy way.

“Like some kind of junkie with no self-control, I just cannot stop myself. I dial.”

Eden’s mental state is quickly deteriorating by the end of the novel. When Kevin is arrested on charges of rape, Eden feels a desperate, urgent compulsion to tell someone trusted about what happened. Her need to speak to someone is a compulsion comparable to a “junkie” at this point. 

“I always promised myself that if only someone would ask, if someone would only ask the right question, I would tell the truth. And now it’s here. It could be over in one syllable. I open my mouth. I want to say it. Yes. Yes. I try to make a sound. Yes. Say it! But my mouth is so dry, I can’t.”

Eden finally has an opportunity to explain that Kevin raped her. The social forces holding Eden are so strong that they manifest themselves physically in this moment: Eden cannot make her voice heard when she tries to tell the detective what happened with her and Kevin. This passage also draws attention to the fact that, in all these years, no one asked Eden the “right” question, one that would make Eden feel comfortable to speak the truth.