receipts and discussing the crime with the police and a survivor’s support group.Īnd yet, as her memory becomes more clear, accountability for her perpetrator becomes more elusive. In subsequent episodes, she fills in the gaps in her timeline by talking to friends she was with that night, retracing her steps via Uber and A.T.M. The show opens with Arabella (called Bella by her friends) taking a break from working on her book to meet a group of friends at a bar, after which she ends up being dragged to a bathroom stall and assaulted. In “ I May Destroy You,” Coel created an entire series based around flashbacks and fragmented memories of a rape. In 2018, she revealed that one night while she was working on her first show, “Chewing Gum,” Coel went out for a drink with a friend, only to wake up the next morning realizing that her drink had been drugged and she had been sexually assaulted. The show revolves around a rape victim named Arabella, played by the creator, writer and co-director Michaela Coel, and it is partly based on Coel’s own experience with sexual assault. But my retributive fantasies returned as I watched the season finale of “I May Destroy You,” HBO’s summer breakout hit, which aired on Monday. I never did see my assailant again, and more than 20 years after that brutal night, I can barely remember his name. In my darkest moments, I’d replay scenarios in which I’d attacked him - sometimes with a knife or a gun or, at my most extreme, a bomb - in a desperate attempt to approximate his decision to destroy me. In others, I’d scream my story out loud, giving him no chance to dispute my account, while making sure those most important to him - his boss, his fiancée, his friends - knew the violence he was capable of doing. In some of my thoughts, I’d track him down and demand an apology. In 1998, nearly two years after I was sexually assaulted and during the height of my depression, I’d spend hours imagining what I would do if ever saw my assailant again.
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