What This Theme Explores
Healing and Finding One’s Voice in The Way I Used to Be asks what it takes for a survivor to move from silence to self-definition. It probes how trauma fractures identity, language, and trust, and how speaking—even imperfectly, indirectly, or late—begins to reassemble a self. The theme insists that “healing” is not a return to a previous version of oneself but a hard-won integration of pain, agency, and truth. It also examines the conditions that either stifle or sustain voice: who listens, who believes, and how community or its absence shapes recovery.
How It Develops
In freshman year, silence wraps around Eden McCrorey after the assault by Kevin Armstrong. The lie offered by her mother, Vanessa McCrorey, becomes an anesthetic and a trap: Eden accepts it because it spares her the terror of not being believed. Cut off from Mara and her brother Caelin McCrorey, she retreats into a wordless survival mode where feeling safe seems impossible and speaking feels lethal.
Sophomore year, she simulates voice by constructing a tough, hyper-controlled persona. This “voice” performs invulnerability—new look, new habits, new rules—yet it cannot sustain intimacy. With Josh Miller, the possibility of honest connection flickers, but Eden’s self-protective scripts choke off vulnerability. The performance asserts control while burying the truth, postponing any real healing.
By junior year, rumor and self-definition collapse into each other. Eden leans into the “slut” label, using reckless hookups and emotional numbness as a counterfeit voice that claims choice while masking pain. Her panicked reaction to Steve Reinheiser and the explosive rift with Mara unmask the façade: the real voice—raw, terrified, furious—keeps breaking through scripted defiance. The narrative begins to let the unsaid press against the surface.
Senior year brings the turn. News that Kevin has assaulted other girls, including his sister Amanda Armstrong, exposes the lie that Eden was alone, at fault, or unbelievable. Late-night calls to Josh mark her first risky reach outward; telling him is the hinge on which secrecy swings toward testimony. After confiding in Caelin, she goes to the police and narrates the assault in full. Speaking to authority doesn’t erase the past—it authorizes a new self who can carry it.
Key Examples
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The morning-after silence in the first few chapters shows how a single lie can harden into a tomb for the truth.
Then my mom shakes the robe at me, offering me a lie I didn’t even need to think up... I take my robe. Take the lie... I know somehow if it’s not now, it has to be never.
Eden’s acceptance of the lie is not consent but shock triage; it folds Kevin’s threat—“No one will ever believe you”—into her own reasoning, cementing isolation. -
When Steve tries to be gentle, Eden’s body remembers what her scripts deny.
“Don’t touch me!” I only realize I’ve screamed it as my words echo back at me...
The involuntary scream is the unperformable truth: fear surges past her curated persona, proving that detachment is not healing but suppression that will erupt under pressure. -
At IHOP, Eden writes the word she cannot say.
My hand wants to break as I press the waxy crayon... I look at the word “RAPED”... before I fold it... along with every last shred of trust and faith and hope I have.
Writing instead of speaking is a bridge between silence and voice. It is both a confession and a test: if one person can hold this truth, perhaps Eden can begin to hold it aloud. -
At the police station, she narrates the assault as evidence, not rumor.
I take a breath and look Dorian in the eye... I tell her, as best I can, every gruesome detail.
Transforming memory into testimony converts private anguish into public accountability. The act dignifies Eden’s experience and creates a record that counters the erasures of shame.
Character Connections
Eden is the theme’s axis: each version of her voice—silence, performance, self-destruction, testimony—maps a stage of survival. Her growth is not a straight line but a spiral that returns to pain with greater capacity to name it.
Josh Miller bookends the journey from thwarted intimacy to earned trust. Early on, Eden cannot risk authenticity with him; later, his steady listening becomes the condition in which her voice can re-emerge. He doesn’t fix the trauma; he witnesses it, modeling the kind of belief that makes speech possible.
Caelin McCrorey reflects how family can unknowingly abet silence. His initial obliviousness deepens Eden’s isolation; his eventual belief repairs a crucial bond and re-situates Eden’s truth within her own home, shifting the family from a site of concealment to one of validation.
Amanda Armstrong embodies the catalytic power of collective voice. Her willingness to speak fractures Kevin’s aura of impunity and shows Eden a future beyond solitary suffering. Their parallel experiences transform shame into solidarity, making healing communal as well as personal.
Symbolic Elements
Eden’s voice—scratchy, withheld, or erupting—functions as a barometer for her inner state. By the time she can calmly recount her story to a detective, the timbre of her speech reflects a reclaimed agency: not the absence of pain, but authorship over it.
The sleeping bag on the floor externalizes her refusal of the bed where she was harmed. Remaining on the ground signals a life organized around danger; choosing to return to the bed marks her reassertion of safety and ownership of space.
The locked door is a material stand-in for emotional barricades. It grants a sense of control but also keeps care out. The thematic victory is not the unlocked door, but the decision to name what required locking in the first place.
Contemporary Relevance
Eden’s arc mirrors the realities surfaced by #MeToo: delayed disclosure, fear of disbelief, and the lure of silence as self-protection. The novel critiques the cultural conditions—victim-blaming, rumor economies, familial discomfort—that muffle survivors. It also models how belief, documentation, and shared testimony can interrupt those silencings. In a world still negotiating how to hear and hold such truths, the story argues for building structures—legal, relational, institutional—where a survivor’s first honest words are met with care rather than doubt.
Essential Quote
I look at the word “RAPED” for just a moment before I fold it in half and slide it away from me, across the table... along with every last shred of trust and faith and hope I have.
On the page, the written word does what Eden’s voice cannot: it fixes the truth in visible form. Folding and sliding the note both surrenders and protects her: she risks belief while insulating herself from the terror of speaking aloud. The moment crystallizes the theme’s thesis—voice is not only sound, but any act that claims one’s story—and marks the threshold where healing begins.