There’s Really No Easy Way to Say ‘I Was Stabbed’

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The first thing people usually want to know is what getting stabbed feels like. The answer is that it feels like getting punched really hard. Or at least, I assume it’s what getting hit feels like. I’ve never been punched. I have been stabbed six times.

I’ll back up. And I’ll try not to make this too writerly, but I’m fighting my instincts. I wanted to add a quote from an Auden poem about suffering, but I desisted. Please admire my restraint.

You have to understand, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Wellington. It doesn’t happen in most places, but it especially doesn’t happen in a small city in New Zealand, in a park, at 11:30 a.m.

I go back and forth. It wasn’t that bad, I tell myself. It could have been much worse, people have survived much worse. And then I look at my scars, still red and new, and I think: But it was pretty bad, wasn’t it? It is possible I could have died. What if I hadn’t had my phone? If I hadn’t met someone on the path? I could have bled out somewhere between the trees. But of course, it’s useless to think about what-ifs. What if he had stabbed me in the heart? What if I hadn’t gone to the park at all? What if I died in a car crash tomorrow? It’s a pointless exercise.

Author Emma Berquist writes about her experience of the (extremely unusual) incident she was involved in, of being stabbed by a stranger in a park in Wellington. An inspiring personal story.

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