I was so hurt

 

I have sat on my couch for the last hour and the tears haven't stopped, the kind of tears that are tired of being alone, tired of pretending the everything is fine.  Nothing is fine, not even close.  I am more than tired of being alone and having to keep everything together.  I just keep going and keep going but there are pieces of me that are frozen. Pieces in a place that so sark and devastating that it holds that innocent 13-year-old girl as a hostage.  There are pieces of me that have never been able to speak never been able to express just how badly that she was hurt.  That 13-year-old that was so young and just wanted to belong, was hurt brutally beyond understanding. She was hurt so badly and yet no one around her ever acknowledged that she existed little lone what happened to her.  The blamed and pointed fingers. So, she shrank in shame and has lived in that place ever since.  She is so afraid still trying to find answers for the things that no words can ever begin to explain.  She is so afraid that staying in that place is safer than being here in the present.  I am not sure that there is even a way for me to explain just how complicated that her world is.  I have been working so hard in counseling for her to come into the present and work on healing and it isn't happening fast enough for me.  I want nothing more than to be done.  I want nothing more than to be free of this and for it not to hurt my heart anymore. I am drowning in the sorrow of that spunky girl, she just wanted to matter.

She always covered up so much, all the bruises all the marks, all the everything. Things would happen to her and you would never know it.  She would be a 10 on a pain scale and yet keep smiling.  That was how she survived, that is how she kept breathing and for that no one believed her. When you have grown up having to pretend that your body didn't hurt it's amazing how good that you get at ignoring your own body, and the things that happened to it.  The first time that Don came there was a shock.  He was supposed to be a good guy, but he was not.  He threw me on the floor right there by the door, the floor was so cold and he was so different. I kept saying no telling him to stop, there was this conversation in my head but you are a good guy, why are you doing this.  Right away the self-blame kicks in I danced with him, I kissed him, I had butterflies that an older guy was paying any attention to me.  I cried, and I begged him to stop, that was not going to work. I can still see the pattern on the floor, and the wicker shelf that was in my room when I was little there was one of the little slats that was broken.  I remember the shadows of the TV on the wall, and the faint voices from some TV program.  He was hurting me, so very rough.  I wasn't a person, I was nothing.  He had his hands on my neck and all over anywhere he wanted.  I wanted him to stop and just go away.  I wanted him to be the good guy I had met on that weekend.  Things get so blurry; he rapes me again in the living room.  I remember him sitting on the couch with this Look of accomplishment on his face, he was laughing at me.  I had curled up in a ball on the floor.  My mind was everywhere and nowhere, I was just a slut, and this is what happens when you want attention.  He finally left and I spent the next moments of time, fixing the living room.  Fixing the pillows, the fringe was perfect, and I made everything look as it did before he came.  I can remember the pain in my body, walking was painful, and everything hurt.  Everything Everything.  And you do what you know hoe to do, you go to bed and wake up in the morning another day.  There wasn't even a thought for someone to know and to help you.  There wasn't a single thought that I needed to tell someone so that they could help and make things better.  I just dealt with what had happened to me.  Why wouldn't I , it was my own fault.  I flirted and I danced, and I was the one that wanted to see him again, well I guess that I got what I wished for didn't I.  

And life goes on until it doesn't.  Done comes back bringing his friends and I am no longer a person.  I don't have the words that I so desperately want to have just to get it out of skin, and out of my bones.  I feel like I carry it everywhere all the time and I am exhausted.  I see the window, and the waterbed and that burnt orange chair.  I relive the details of that day in such great detail.  The smallest of things etched on my very soul.  The sun on my face as I was laying by the back door.  The feeling of the rope on the hands behind my back.  The rug burn from when I tried to run and fell in the hall.  The fan in the living room as I repeated their names hoping that each turn would be their last.  I remember the turn taking in my brothers room. I remember the panic, when I thought they had gone but another one was coming. I remember them chanting and laughing.  I remember being so very cold.  The kind of cold that no amount of warmth would fix.  I can remember thinking that if I just curled up tight enough in a little ball then somehow, they would give up and leave. I can remember the moment that I thought they were going to kill me.  Laughing and waving the gun around, him ending my life would have been a relief.  He used the gun to assault me laughing. That second when you realize just how hurt that you are. Them laughing at the blood, I was their joke. I can remember screaming and at the same time there was no more sound coming out of my mouth.  Things were more black then in color, I just went to a place far far away so I didn't have to experience or acknowledge the things that were happening to me.  It was never ending, there were more turns and more abuse, more taunting and teasing.  There were moments in the day I gave up and moments in the day that I fought like hell. There were screams that sounded less than human and I begged them to stop, but I was wasting my breath. They tore at my body and took pieces of me that I will never get back. When they left that day there was nothing left of me.  I was a shell of a person; I was a nothing that deserved what she got. I danced with him, I got butterflies, and thought I was something special.  I am pretty sure that I missed a few days of school.  I am sure that I made up something a migraine, a stomach virus something anything to give my body a few days of rest.  My body was black with bruises and everything hurt. 

Then there was the last time that Don came.  I still beat myself up because I answered the door.  After everything that happened I am not sure why I thought it was ok to answer the door but I did. I know that the world stopped and took my breath away.  The tears started right away, I can remember their warmth streaming down my face.  By this time I knew what he had come for.  There was no fight in my heart.  There was nothing, just let him take what he wants we can make this easier or harder. I chose easier. I think that he was looking for a fight and was unprepared for my reaction.  I unbuttoned my pants and I laid down right there on the floor .  The same scene as the first rape.  He was looking for a reaction, I didn't have one.  All was taken, I just wanted him to get what he had come for and leave me alone. I will forever be guilty I didn't want to be raped I didn't think that there was any other option for me.  I was alone, no one cared to ask if I was ok or why I seemed so sad so you do the things that you have to do to live another day.  That is what I did.  I think that there was also a part of me that that believed if I had just laid down the first time then he would have left me alone.  So either way there was no way for me to win.  Fight and be hurt, or lay down and let him do what he is going to.  Really nothing mattered, he had already destroyed that spunky girl, the last time he seemed so unsure, I didn't fight didn't make a sound. He got up when he was done kicking me, spitting on me and saying awful things, and just left.  It made him so angry that there wasn't any fight left.  There was nothing left and I wanted to die.  I was barely breathing going through the motions of life but I really didn't even feel human anymore.

I wasn't ok after that.  Calvin was the one who knew I wasn't ok. And there are parts of me that still aren't ok.  I feel terribly guilty even writing about this time.  Somehow this is something that deserves to stay in the dark.  I feel like I don't even have the right words to convey all the feelings that are inside.  Things are so intertwined.  I have done this hard hard work and yet there are parts of me that can't let this go.  I am struggling that no one stepped up and did the right thing.  I don't understand why I wasn't important enough. No one cared for my heart, no one was there even after they knew.  As hard as it was telling I thought that maybe maybe I wouldn't have to carry it alone.  The truth is , things just got heavier because, people knew, and I still had to carry it on my own.  This place is so lonely because there are worlds that I need to get out and I don't have a clue how to get any relief.  I don't understand why this piece has such a hold. I see the pictures in my head and it's almost like I am still in shock. I am still on repeat trying to make things different.  I get more than angry with myself because all these years later I still haven't figured out that there is no way to make it different to make it better.  There is no way in this world to pretend that it never happened.  I wish that girl would have had a normal teenage life.  I wish she could have experienced all the fun things in high school.  I don't know what to do with the sad that because of all of this I missed out on any sense of a normal life and I have spent my entire life searching for what I will never find.  I just want to let go.  I just want to feel like I am not some kind of damaged human. I just want to forget that it happened at all. 

I heart your heart