Everything that was lost

 I think too often people say that they have lost everything but really have they ?  I don't know I guess everyone can have a different view but I can say that at 13. I lost everything. Absolutely Everything was gone, everything was taken away and I was left this shell of a person not knowing what was up and where I was going. I was embarrassed, I was humiliated. I wanted to die, I wished that they would have killed me, just taken one last turn and taken away what little breathe that I had left.  There are not many people that have had those types of feelings. They took life, created life and killed the person I should have been.

I was left with memories of things being taken that no person should have to remember or experience in this life.  But this was my life; they took over and over and over again until there was nothing left. At 13 I didn't want to live anymore. I had lost the little girl who wanted to belong, I lost the girl who innocently thought Don was cute, I lost all that was good in the world. I lost joy, I lost safety, I lost who I was, and who I wanted to be. Men to my left men to my right, men holding me down, men hurting me. Hour after hour. All day.  Unimaginable, Sometimes there underneath their bodies, sometimes in the corner and still other times in complete blackness overwhelmed by every sense. 

My body wasn't mine, things were done that will never have words.  My body was used  by all 5 men , never having been given the chance to grow into my own skin, never a virgin, just their slut; they took what was never theirs to begin with.  They took my sense of safety, my sense of who I was and what I wanted. They took my joy, they took my spirit and made me hide in a place where there was no light no sound no pain, a place to hide away until their soul killing deeds were done. Every sense was overwhelmed, things, parts were coming at me from everywhere. Over and over, like once wasn't enough, I will never understand.  They took my life and made me want to go away and never come back. I wasn't a person, I was a nothing that was theirs to be laughed at.  I think even for me its hard to put to words all that was taken because they took things away before I even knew that they were mine to begin with.  

So many things that a child doesn't know, that a child doesn't understand yet I was expected to know them all and to understand and deal with the consequences.  I still deal with those aftereffects, the things that I never knew were mine to have enjoy and experience because they were so violently torn from my being.

This is a time when there is no rest, there is no peace, there is a constant fight for survival, for the breathe that you need to keep you alive.  Those are all things that I can and will  never take for granted.  When you are gasping for air ;there is a part of me that is fighting for another breathe and yet there is another part that just wants it all to stop.  A part fighting for life and another hoping for death, all in the exact same moment.  Their parts being shoved in my face, in my body , the horror and and I would go away.  Hoping when I came back, I would be alone ; they would be gone. Only they were never gone, it was night before they left. Sometimes there are parts of me that wished I never came back from that place of nothing.  where I went wasn't even a happy beautiful place.  The place that I went was a blackness, the place that I went was far away from what was happening to me.  It was a place away from the chanting, and the turns and the immense pain. I wonder why I ever came back at all because sometimes I don't even know how to face people with the pictures that I carry in my head.    

Tied by my arms and feet to the furniture , like an animal.  When I was still trying to fight for my life, hoping for a way out, hoping they would stop and go away.  What kind of men do that, such evil.  By then there was little fight left, I was dying inside; nothing else mattered, nothing left to be taken.

All things good were stolen, I learned not to trust, not to believe in good things.  I learned that people will take and take until there is nothing left I learned to do what I was told. I learned that when something hurt it really didn't, because they said all women do this. I learned to hide away from the awful finding a place any where else than where I was.  I was good at going away pretending that I wasn't hurting. Pretending that the pain was fine, the blood was normal and what I felt didn't matter. Their laughing still rings in my ears, I was nothing.  

They took things I still don't realize that I have lost.  They took memories, they took, dreams, they took life they stole the world from a girl who could have done so much.  They took away my right to have a loving husband, and children born in love.  They took happy dreams and made them seem all too far away.  They stole confidence and self acceptance. They made me believe that I was the worst of the worst and so far beneath every person I would ever meet. They made me believe I asked for what they did.  They made me believe I asked for the attention, the assaults, the hurt.  They made me believe that no one would ever want me and I believe that they were right. 

I heart your heart.