Christmas Eve

do you speak your history in the way you move
I am trauma incarnate

I cry in closets and bathrooms and
do not lift my head

I do not want to see their accusing faces
I do not want to respond to their interrogations
I do not exist anymore

every breath is fraught with danger or
the possibility

I anticipate your return every year

your contact

how long will it take until it

starts

Owning your experiences is difficult.

I cringe every time I hear the word

I don't what it to be a part of my story

my life

I can mention what he did

but not what he did

I don't want the memory of you coming into my room at night

haunting me no matter how far away I may get

yet I have it

winding sharp-fanged around my mind

around my heart

I am not worthy of healing

oh sullen girl

I have a lot of nerves

and nothing to prove

I wonder what it's like to feel whole

useful

something more than

a broken doll

insomnia part 5

I am always tired. Short tempered. I wonder what is wrong with me that I can't seem to sleep anymore. Always waking up feeling terrible, sick, scared.

I think sometimes that this is the hardest part. It's so insidious that you can't seem to even exist now that you're tainted by nightmares and fear that you thought you'd grow out of but it's somehow always there, lurking, reaching and clawing its way into your mind and you're jolted awake in the dark.

unscathed

I feel your weight

reaching out to claw at nothing I try to scream try to open my mouth

but nothing ever comes

do I deserve this? I never know.

I think sometimes I was made for fucking

made for giving up

made for your little games I never want to play

I don't live in this body anymore

I don't live in this home anymore

I wonder who you see when you look at me

did you ever really love me?

no matter what

I don't know how to feel anymore
anything besides pain

I close my eyes and hope it'll all be over soon

will this ever not cause me pain?

will my body ever be free from the memories?

concrete

Fear is the thing that knots up your stomach while you sit there
waiting for the day to be over
so you can find a blanket and
hide

the thoughts won't leave me be
the only thing I have ever been good for

fingers like talons like weapons
pain

my body a sacrifice to you

unfinished business

I triggered myself compulsively
left myself sobbing and shaking

this self-destruction is the only thing I can ever succeed at

I think I trust myself less than I trust you

I think that maybe they all lied to me

tried to protect me from the truth of what he admitted

because I didn't ask

because I didn't know

I wonder what my mind has locked away so tightly

too horrifying for me to remember - 

my secrets already so dark

how could there be even more?

But I can feel it there lurking at the back of my mind,

scratching and clawing and begging to be acknowledged even as I push it way

I try to open my mouth to scream

to cry

but nothing ever comes

yes I know what you think of me you never shut up

What did you do to me?

October 3rd, 2015

It's been seven years since I started to understand what has happened to me.

I'm not done yet. I don't think I ever will be. My relationship with this strange information has evolved both for the better and worse.

Today it's for the worse. It's days like these I ache for the familiar pain and circle thoughts because they gave me some solid ground. I understood who I was when I carried the abuse around constantly feeling it weigh me down with every step, when it kept me up at night listening to Tori Amos and sobbing, when I raked metal against my skin late nights before school. That girl was drowning in the weight of everything but at least she could touch her pain and and hold it and acknowledge it and dance in it. I used to write every single night.

I don't do much of that anymore. Mostly I actively ignore unless confronted, and even then my response is muted, empty, hollow.

I am still processing memories, sometimes as new and terrifying as the first few when my world crumbled around me now - now I have memories like the the memory of me screaming my head off as a child because I didn't want to brush my teeth, my father - an abuser - holding my head back and brushing them for me.

screaming when I got out of the bathtub and someone shoving a towel in my mouth to make it stop

always screaming

or processing seeing another abuser for the first time since the abuse ended and shaking hard yet somehow not as affected as I thought I would be and spiraling out of control into a deep dark circle of doubt that this really happened at all

The doubt is painful and terrifying as the memories sometimes. I have learned of more than one abuser, of events that I didn't ever understand in this last few years. I have wondered if maybe it was all just him. I still wonder that. I hold all my knowledge so close but I shove it away as far as I possibly can. It's too dark.

But it's days like these that I remember how it felt to be small and scared and to feel this all new, to be eyes wet and wide open at 16. The feeling in my stomach is the same and the heaviness pushes down down down and I cannot move, I cannot breathe. I cannot remember anything but this.

It's been seven years since my first Take Back the Night. And like every single one, all I want to do is go back.

your knife it might be too sharp

I haven't felt this broken in about a year or so, since I moved out. Had a long last night talking about other people in my life and realizing that I had other abusers, too. Abusers who accused and gaslighted and invaded my privacy and made me feel insane. Abusers who did other things to me and who I still have to see almost every day.

I feel so empty and so sad. Like there's no way out of this. This is how I felt so many years ago when I woke up to realization of what he had done.

It all feels too much now. That familiar heavy crushing weight on my chest, the anxiety that makes me pace until I can't stand anymore.

This is what broken feels like, like there's nothing I could do to drag me out of this.

supposed former

It's been a while.

I honestly forgot about this blog, I forgot about a lot of things but here I am on Father's Day again because I woke up this morning and suddenly remembered all about this blog, all about the things I have been working so hard to forget.

I have been completely lost without my pain as a compass, temporarily consumed into social anxiety and self-loathing as I gain and gain and gain weight and spin hopelessly towards nothing.

I wonder if I will ever amount to anything. I don't think so.