**TRIGGER WARNING**
2013
I came to awareness slowly. The barest rays of the sun filtered thru my closed eyes as I lay in my bed. My first conscious thought that I can remember is, "What the fuck is wrong with me," as I began to check in with my body.
Pain. All I registered was pain. And not the good kind. The kind that lets you know that your body has been thru some kind of traumatic experience. That you have been on the receiving end of some kind of physical violence...possibly an airplane crashed into you...maybe a bus. That kind of pain.
2021
I wake up with an instant awareness of myself, mind and body. This isn't 2013 and the only aches and pains I feel are those brought on by wear and tear thru time, some not even physical. I'm not laying in that bed anymore. I'm on a couch because I stayed at my sister's rather than be alone with the ghosts of Thanksgiving's past.
I don't think about what the fuck is wrong with me because I know. I am intimately acquainted with my skeletons and dirty laundry.
2013
I limp the few steps to my bathroom. The pain so severe I couldn't figure out what part of my body should be taking my weight. I hug my arms around myself thinking maybe I could keep it all contained. Or maybe I just needed the reassurance.
I open the bathroom door and flip on the light. I stare at the scene before me, unable to comprehend or remember what exactly happened here. Was someone hurt? Are they okay? This tiny bathroom, barely big enough for me to lay down in, has surely been the scene of a murder...or, at the very least, some terribly awful thing happened here.
The cabinet doors are hanging from their hinges. The toilet has been completely turned around on its base, screws ripped from the floor. The shower curtain is ripped from its hooks and the rod is bent in half.
Everything is covered in blood. Puddles of it on the floor, handprints streaked down the wall, smears on every surface. So much blood.
I glance in the mirror and one look at myself has me realizing, all that blood? It's mine. I feel the understanding settle into place inside me. This is my blood. It is my life force that has been branded all over my bathroom like some horrible abstract painting of death and destruction. Surely I am destroyed?
2021
I roll off the couch and walk to the bathroom. No limp, arms hanging loosely at my side. I do not need to hold myself together anymore. I've done enough of that over the years. I refuse to show that weakness.
I walk into the bathroom after a barely perceptible pause. Logically, I know it's just a bathroom. A normal bathroom, not a macabre scene from some horror film. I look at myself in the mirror and take stock. I look like me. I'm okay.
I splash water on my face and step out of the bathroom. I glance around once more at this bathroom that hasn't been witness to anything more brutal than a painful shit. Everything is in its place. I flip off the light and shut the door on this bathroom the same way I do my thoughts of that 2013 bathroom.
2013
My mind goes into crisis mode. I start taking stock of my injuries. My long, beautiful hair is an unrecognizable mass, tangled and matted into a ball. Later, when I was able to comb it all out, I would lose half my hair length due to the damage and find bits of my scalp that had been torn out.
My forehead has a massive lump about the size of a ripe plum and I can tell bruising will appear...but not yet. My left ear has a laceration on the back that has caused a trail of blood down my neck, now drying and flaking. My right ear doesn't even look recognizable as my own skin, it is almost completely black, blue and purple all swirled together in a chaotic mess. Blood is dried and caked in both of my nostrils and my nose feels as if I ran into a brick wall at full speed, painful but thankfully not broken. My double spiral lip ring is now a straight barbell in my lip and said lip is swollen to twice its size.
I gingerly go to remove the metal from my lip and realize the inside of my lip is torn to shreds in the perfect shape of my teeth. A closer inspection has me pulling a tiny bit of my lip flesh from between my teeth where it had been lodged. My neck hurts to touch or turn my head but shows no visible harm. The following days would result in the appearance of dozens of deep bruises covering my face, neck, back, shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, hips, ass, and legs.
The backs of both my hands and fingers are as bruised as my ear and my right thumb is dislocated. I popped it back in to place, alone, in that bathroom of horrors, silent tears running down my face the entire time because it hurt my left hand to grip just as badly as it hurt to fix my thumb. It took three attempts before I got it done. Both of my feet were in the same condition.
Moving hurt. Breathing hurt. Three days later I had a bruise appear on my inner thigh, high up, almost in my groin. It was the perfect imprint of a hand. His hand.
At this point I had completely dissociated. The essence that is me took shelter and left my mind and body on autopilot. I gingerly made my way back to my bed and curled up as much as I could physically stand. The sun was now fully up and I could see down the hallway into the living room. The love seat was in my direct line of vision as I sheltered in my bed.
I saw Him. He lay there on the love seat, positioned so He faced my bedroom. I could see His eyes glittering in the light. He was awake and had been this whole time for all I knew. Instead of laying His 6'4" frame on the much larger couch, He chose to occupy the one piece of furniture that let Him watch me.
2021
Every time I stepped into the bathroom and sat down to pee, I couldn't keep myself from compulsively checking my thigh for His handprint. I glanced in the mirror, expecting to see some sort of injury even though I know they are long gone. Any injuries left behind are invisible, but no less damaging.
2013
He watched me laying there, crying silently. I do not know how much time went by. My sense of time after this was extremely skewed. Minutes felt like years and days felt like hours.
After a time, He got up and came to my bed. He lifted the cover and He slid in behind me. He folded His much larger body around mine and He wiped the tears from my face. He spoke quietly in my ear, "It's going to be okay. I'm here for you."
I spoke for the first time since I'd opened my eyes. I remember feeling terrified to speak and when I did it came out raspy and damaged, "What happened?" Part of me knew, the part that had left. The other part needed something to grasp on to.
He held me loosely and whispered to me about how I just lost my shit. How we both knew I'd been very heavily depressed and something must have triggered me and I started hurting myself...even though it had never happened before. He tried to step in to hold me to stop me from damaging myself further and I started fighting Him so He left me in the bathroom. He said He went to the love seat and went to sleep.
For a brief moment, I allowed myself to believe His words. And I lay there in His arms, sobbing myself to sleep. I don't know how long I slept. I was dragged back to awareness from the pain of being rolled over onto my back. All the aching muscles and bruises had stiffened while being in the same position and the shift was like ice water to my system, white hot pokers piercing my body.
Involuntary tears leaked from the corners of my eyes as I lay on my back. He covered me with His body and shoved His tiny penis inside me. I didn't want it, everything hurt. I felt ravaged and gutted and wasted and I didn't want Him inside me. My mind was completely wrecked, utterly damaged. I didn't want it...but I didn't fight it. All my fight was spent, long gone, spilled out with the blood still decorating my bathroom. All I could manage was to beg for a condom, please don't fuck me raw, please don't get me pregnant.
I laid there, unmoving, and let Him take my body. And, in that moment, He broke me.
2021
I used to choke on my anger and self-loathing. I looked in the mirror and all I could see was this weak, waste of space that let a man break her and violate her. I gave up on myself, in that moment. That one single moment took everything from me that I used to believe about myself.
It has taken years, eight of them now, for me to rebuild myself. And I'm not done. But I'm also not broken anymore. I'm still angry and some days I really really don't like myself because I get frustrated with what I perceive to be weaknesses.
But I've learned patience and grace and forgiveness. Not for others...because He can go hang. I don't forgive Him. I will never forgive Him. What he did to me is unforgivable. But I do forgive myself.
I forgive myself for the hate and the anger and the pain and the distrust. I forgive myself for giving up on me. I forgive myself for losing me. I extend patience to myself when I have dark days. Because I still do...often, sometimes. I extend patience to myself when I get frustrated with my progress or lack thereof. I give myself grace in my moments of weakness and doubt and exhaustion. And I pick myself up and keep on going.
2013
He left and three days later, when I started asking questions about things that didn't make sense, like the handprint bruise on my thigh that had just shown up, He quit talking to me. He quit answering my texts and ignored my phone calls. And I knew. I had all the answers I ever needed.
I was still dissociated at that point. I could feel myself splitting, almost creating another personality. I was like that for two weeks. For two weeks my friends slept in the living room with me. I think they were scared I was going to kill myself. And I thought about it.
I couldn't go anywhere for weeks afterwards. If it wasn't work or home, I didn't go. For months after I started venturing out, I couldn't go alone. I couldn't go to the store or a friend's house without having a panic attack. I went to Wal-Mart with my friends and they walked away from me, just shopping like normal people. I had a panic attack, sitting on the floor of Wal-Mart, staring up at Hallmark cards until they found me.
I didn't know if I would ever be okay again. But deep, deep, deeeep down inside me, in a place I was not even aware of, was this kernel of a spark. That tiny little spark that refused to die, refused to give up, refused to lose, refused to truly break.
2021
Today that spark is a flame that is being fed and growing. I am nurturing that flame within me. I hold it close and warm myself with it. And I smile because I know, one day soon, that flame is going to become an inferno. That inferno will destroy every lingering thread of darkness that still tries to lay claim on me. This is MY will. I speak it into existence. I claim that inferno for my own. Creation thru destruction, oh how mighty that is.
