This is more than hard for me to be able to explain. I feel crazy, I feel like a burden because these are times, I feel so incredibly needy. I know that I don't have the words, but I need someone to listen as I try to find them. There are times that I want to speak, but I can't find the words because they have never been there. It just happened and I suffered in silence. All the rapes didn't matter and neither did I. When I was thirteen there are pieces of me that stopped breathing. What happened to me is unimaginable and my world just stopped. Pieces of me kept going because that is how life works, but for that thirteen-year-old girl she never moved forward. She became that 13-year-old stuck in that time trying to figure out, the how's and why's of the things that had happened to her. Her job was trying to figure out, why she was so terrible awful that no one wanted to keep her safe. Her job was to clean up and keep smiling. She was left with the questions in her head is this what I am good for? She stayed stuck there, every nasty word that was said sticking in her heart like a sword. She absorbed all the nasty comments, all the finger pointing and blame. So, she kept smiling, kept cleaning up and kept moving forward. And that thirteen-year-old girl all alone never caught up in life. The things that happened to her were like a trap and she has never been able to get away. She stayed trying to fight those demons all on her own.
So, I am here in 2022, 34 years after that time. I am doing all the adult things necessary of me. I am a mom and a teacher; a friend and I also feel like the walking wounded. I live this life, but I don't have all the parts of me. I fight for them, but I am not sure that others can understand where I have been or why things have been so hard. I am working to heal that 13-year-old girl, but she carries things that you could not even comprehend. I say that because she lived them and even, she doesn't understand. I lived them and still put it all on the 13-year-old, because I am not sure that I can handle all the things that she did.
They don't just stay with her because she is me and I am her. I know that might sound crazy but it's one of the only things that make sense. Things were so awful so crazy hurtful that I kind of went away, because I had to in order to survive. I had to go away because it was that awful. I had to go away because I would not have survived if I didn't. So, putting everything on her, somehow let me move forward but today I need that 13-year girl to be a part of me, I need to honor her and move forward in my own life. The problem with that, is that I am so afraid.
Even the other day, I was talking about that time, and I am already paying the price. My body physically hurts. I feel it in my bones. My body remembers everything. Every sense is on high alert. I feel their hands, I can smell them, I hear them I see the smallest details of the rooms. Sometimes I wonder if the 5 0f those men are alive, or dead. Do they have families are they fathers? Do they think about the things that they did to me? Would I even know them today? I am not sure that I would really, I do hope they are dead, I hope that they have lived horrible lives, and that they have suffered. I hope that they were all miserable. Except for Andy. He was the kind one he was the one who treated me like a human, more human than the other four. He was the one who looked at me. He looked at me early in the morning on my parents' bed, when they first got there. He wasn't involved on that bed. He was in the doorway, but he saw me. He looked me right in the eyes. I can remember feeling so ashamed and embarrassed. I was there all four of them surrounding me but writing this he was just standing there......Maybe he was shocked maybe he was repulsed
.....I don't understand maybe he was just as scared as she was. He didn't stop them early in the morning that day. Maybe he cared a little too late. I have always said that I wished he was Bella's father. But that would also mean that Andy raped me that day. I guess somewhere in my mind it was just a normal rape he wasn't evil. And I am sitting here trying to wrap my head around my own thinking. Somehow everything was ok, just a normal rape in a day full of so many. That is terrifying really. No wonder I feel so insane, I am trying to make sense out of a day that there is no sense in. Hundreds of times I was hurt that day, turn after turn. Andy was not like the others, and he may have raped me, but he wasn't in it to hurt me; make me less than human. He was the one who saved me later in the day when they took me into my brothers' room. Somehow, they all decided they needed some privacy. So, each one came in taking their turn doing whatever they wanted, when Andy came in, I was at a breaking point really. I wanted him to kill me, I wanted him to just make me stop breathing. I screamed and found a fight like nothing else. He calmed me down and said that he wasn't going to hurt me, he covered my body, he wiped my face and for a few minutes in that day he took care of me. I felt like a person, that someone cared. I feel far away from my own body how does a person survive this. I was far away, not even in my own body anymore. There is so much shame, how does she live with what was done to her. I see my body as a thirteen-year-old and I am disgusted by what they did . So we have lived two very different lives her and I. I did all the things that a person is supposed to do and she stayed there fighting demons that were never hers to fight. My heart is broken. This is why I am stuck here; I don't know how to live with this. The things that have happened, what those men did. They were so awful that I went away, my entire world went black, and that 13-year-old lived through that.
That is why I am fighting so hard today, wanting to keep her out of that dark place, but it is terrifying for me. The things that I have to realize. These things are a part of me and not some little girl far away. So yes, every breathe that I take in dealing with this hurts. It hurts more than I would ever want to admit. So, when I was talking about this yesterday, and that I needed to teach her to breathe, that is more than hard. She just stops breathing sometimes; thinking that if she does the hurt will go away. For me teaching her to breathe is a way to connect with her, but I am not sure that I am ready to feel and see and think about those things that she experienced. I wish that I had the right words to explain how terrifying that this is. When she breathes, when I can connect and focus on my own breathing it seems to come back and it's not her back there in that body it is me.
What if this is just too much? All this time later I am fighting demons that someone should have helped slay many many years ago. That is a very different kind of painful. I know that I want to connect with her and help her come into the here and now with me. I know that I don't want to leave her there during that time, there are strong doubts that I am not strong enough, I worry if I am enough. When every breathe that I take, I feel like I breathe the air of that so young girl and once again the whole world stops. Connecting with her, teaching her to breathe brings her closer than ever and that makes my heart so very heavy. This is one of those things in life that isn't fair. I should not have to be doing this today at 46, when someone anyone should have helped that poor girl back then when she was 13. My heart is literally breaking all over again.
I heart your heart.
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