She can't move on

 

She is stuck back there, back in a time when nothing makes sense. The world was so loud yet all she knew was silence.  She went to bed hoping to die and woke up with the deepest sadness that she hadn't.  That is no way for a thirteen-year-old girl to live.  Scared of the world and all the people in it.  Men were attracted to her; her entire life, and women always seemed just to look the other way.  All that she ever had were her animals, whether stuffed or real.  Today I am this woman with a house and a job, and I do all the things that have to be done. But this part of me, can't move on.  She is still trying to prove that she isn't this awful person.  She replays what she can, trying to remember little details that might prove to others that she was telling the truth.  If she could just get them to believe her than maybe just maybe she could stop looking for those just right answers, to prove the unimaginable things that happened to her.  No one ever listened and no one ever heard. She was silenced before she ever had a chance to breathe.  She was silenced because they could not imagine the horror that she lived though. But she did, and has to live with what was done to her little body by those men, she has to live with the memories that repeat, she has to live still feeling their hands and being afraid of any group of men.  If 5 men are in a group, her world gets small, and she just wants to get away.  It's been so long but she can feel them, sometimes she smells them.  And she hears them in the way people laugh at her sometimes.  Can you imagine living your life like that?  All day everyday she is still fighting them still, trying to find a way out, or make a different choice.  Somehow if she can just answer some of those questions in her head, then she would be ok. Maybe if she could, have some answers then what they did wouldn't still haunt her.  I don't know what else I can do to help her.  As clear as I can see this computer in front of me, I see the things that happened to her. I see them and I don't know how she survived. I see them and its heart breaking. No one cared to make her feel better or give her a hug, let her talk about it.  She was shamed into silence and has lived there ever since. Even if we want to talk about it we don't know how.  How do we put words together to tell about the horror, how do I give words to my nightmares.  It is not fair that anyone has to listen to the hell that she was put through.  It isn't fair for anyone to have those pictures in their head.  I know I have said it before, I want to be able to stand in those things that happened and not feel ashamed and gross and disgusting and I am not sure that I know how to do that, not yet.  She was just a girl and didn't understand so much.  All the time Mark talks about filling in pieces, and I can do that but I don't want to. The evil that was done to her, how they used her and hurt her so violently.  I don't know how a person can live after that.  Sometimes I wonder how in the world I am still breathing, how I am still functioning in the world that let those things happen to me.  She didn't understand so much, she was so so afraid, and just wanted to die. But she didn't, she didn't want to let them win.  As hard as it was to live, dying would have been an easier option. Callahan was never one to go with the easiest way through anything. I will never give up on her, but I am not sure what it is going to take. 

I heart your heart.