If You Dare Look

By Brooke E. Criswell

Medusa tells her story, and confronts misconceptions. Her story is an exploration of both her identity  and the perceptions others project upon her. How do we define our self worth? Who defines our expectations, limits, and possibilites? These questions are among those considered in this powerful tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brooke E. Criswell
• Release date: Mar 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386802532

Brooke E. Criswell

Brooke Criswell is a long time lover of language and expresses her passions, observations, quanderies, and commentary in prose, poetry, essay and any written form. She explores stories of identity, relationships, and the many challenges faced in daily life. As an herbalist her interests extend to growing and propogating herbs, gardening, herbal consituents and actions, and crafting herbal recipes. 

Book preview

Chapter List

Chapter  Title   Page

1 Allow me to Introduce Myself  3

2  Medusa’s Youth  8

3  My Own Recollections 10

4  Medusa’s Potential  13

5  Medusa’s Dilemma  23

6    What I Felt     27

7  Medusa’s Undoing  29

8  Am I Worthy?   34

9  Medusa Returns  41

10  I Renewed my Life  45

The following story contains sexual violence

Allow Me to Introduce Myself 

Chapter 1

Iwant to tell my story , because it is mine. I did not always know the story was mine to relate, let alone direct. Instead I saw myself a pawn in the hands of others – weak, powerless, subject to the whims of fate. Or should I say Fates, those loathsome sisters.

Maybe they are not loathsome; I know how sisters can get a bad reputation through no fault of their own. Recall the Sirens, the three hags who share a tooth and eye among them, also a maligned trio.

Consider, too, we Gorgons: Monsters. Repulsive. Upon reflection, all sisters seem storied as ominous entities. After all we, too, were shunned, banished, ostracized, ridiculed, and hated, so maybe the Fates deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is not the story of the Fates, though, or even the Gorgon sisters three, no – I assert my story. I am Medusa.

You have no doubt heard of me. You probably think you know me, you may even have thought, ah, yes, Medusa, when I told you my name, I know that creature.

You do not.

No one knows me.

I am and have persistently been intentionally misrepresented, ignored, maligned. I serve merely as a footnote or minor conflict in someone else's story: a warning, a villain, a lesson, a triumph. I am never the protagonist, the hero, or shall I say heroine, worthy of accuracy of detail, let alone of a voice. Oh, everyone knows my story, or so they think and confidently attest, averting their gaze, of course.

I also have heard those stories.Too often. I once believed them myself, that is the real tragedy. I listened to the story, I believed the narrative, I became that which I was defined by others, yet I did not know I had given away my power. I was used as a tool, though I did not know it, nor did I know by whom I was wielded. Does the hammer know it is a blunt instrument? The knife a subtle blade? The girl a monster?

I was not always as you see me now, if you dare to look. Once I was fair, though the world was not fair to me.

You think that I sound bitter? Sour? Accurate assessment. I am as bitter as over-steeped tea. As bitter as strong black coffee. As bitter as unsweetened chocolate. As bitter as a long life of alienation and betrayal can make a woman. I am as sour as fermented vinegar. As sour as overripe lemons. Yet I have drunk deeply from the dregs of life, and I embrace my bitterness as solace. I acknowledge that sourness is cleansing. I developed an appreciation for strong tea, vinegar, black coffee, lemons, unsweetened chocolate. I know the power and beauty of unadulterated natural stimulants. I accept the bitterness and the sourness too. I recognize that all vinegar is fermented, it is just a matter of degrees.

I am a woman unlike any other, just like every woman. I struggled to find my strength. I was hated, ostracized before even I found and asserted my strength. Even those I thought loved and respected me chafed at my striding into my own. Which, makes me wonder whether they loved and respected me or did they love the reflection of themselves, their desires manifest in my form? I don't wonder anymore. I know each preferred the respective version of me they created. They label my response 'bitterness' or 'ugliness' for they like it not.

I laugh at the absurdity of it all. Laugh until phlegm-ridden, I spit out the sputum of hatred, recrimination, longing and loss.