Content Warning: This entry contains childhood trauma, emotional abuse, and loss of personal boundaries. Reader discretion is advised.
This post reflects real-life experiences and is not related to consensual BDSM, roleplay, or kink.
When I was little, I used to steal stuff. Not big things. Just tiny things I wasn’t allowed to have. I still have the stone with a cross on it.
- I like the cross and the smoothness of the stone. -
A lock, a key, little things I could hide in my pocket. I did it because I wanted my own stuff, and at home, I wasn’t allowed to have anything. Not really. Every time I asked, it was always no. So I learned to take the things nobody would notice missing, at least hope they didn't notice. I had been doing this since I was little, growing up in my biological family. It was something I had learned. I was taught and saw it by Richard. I remember watching him take beef jerky once, eating it before even getting to the register. Didn’t pay. That’s just one example.
At school book fairs, I’d walk around slowly, acting like I was going to buy something, but really I was waiting for the right moment. I’d slip a little lock in my pocket and pretend as if nothing had happened. I needed it for my diary. That was the only place I wrote what I actually felt. What I told God and Jesus. Talk to Him like He was there. My dear friend, and to tell Him how my day was, and when I had time to write. Things I didn’t tell anyone else.
My writing was messy, I skipped words, and sometimes it didn’t make sense to anybody but me. But it made sense to me. That was the whole point.
Then one day, Thomas took it. I was at school.
He walked right into my room and grabbed it like it was his.
I remember coming out into their bedroom and seeing him holding it open. Margaret was right next to him, reading it too. My heart dropped straight through my stomach.
I raised my voice.
“That’s mine!”
I meant it. I felt it. That diary was the only thing I had that felt like it belonged to me.
But Thomas didn’t care. Margaret didn’t either.
“You don’t have anything in this house,” they told me.
“What’s yours is ours. We are the reason you have things” (Not word for word—but that was the message)
Hearing that… it hurt so bad I couldn’t even breathe for a second. I felt so stupid. So embarrassed. Like I wasn’t even a person. Just something they owned.
They started making fun of my writing.
How bad my grammar was. Margaret made a comment about it.
How they “couldn’t understand” anything I wrote.
Smirking off like I was dumb.
But I understood it.
I knew what I meant.
And if I didn't I could figure it out.
It wasn’t for them.
But that wasn't the point -
it was for me to express and let go
My way how I communicated with God when I had no one.
I remember standing there wanting to snatch it out of their hands and run to my room, but I couldn’t move. Everything in me felt small. I felt so little. Heavy. Wrong.
They took the only safe place I had.
The only place I let myself talk.
The only place I cried and tell how my day was and said how I felt. At least, I was smart not to write everything and pray in secret within my mind. I talked to Him in my head when I felt alone and hurting.
That night I just cried alone, the quiet kind where your face gets hot and you wipe your eyes fast so nobody hears you. And I remember thinking…
I can’t have anything.
Not even my own words.
They messed up my diary, which was falling apart.
I tried to organize it, but it was hard. I didn’t even know which entry went with what anymore.
I knew God knew what I said, but I wanted to hold on to it, but I let go.
Seeing it messed up made me feel numb and empty, and I stopped writing.
---
I remember what it looks like overall, but can't find a photo. I remember that inside it was blue, and I had a cocker spaniel in the corner. And I was into simple-looking diaries, and the locking key was silver.
