I wish I could say that I’m free but I’m not. I wish I could say that I’m alive but I’m not. I’m a hollow shell just walking through time. Every second of every day I’m a hollow mess.
My life ended when I was 12. Not literally. I still live and breath the poisonous oxygen around us. But it ended the day my father became friends with the man who ruined my life.
I thought he would be okay, as a human being, and I let myself get friendly with him. Friendly enough to let him touch me. Obviously in a non-sexual way. But I didn’t think to prepare myself for what happened when I was 14. I don’t think anyone can prepare for what transpired.
You see, when I was 14, a social worker came to my house while I was out with my mum and dad, and him, and she got my 16-year-old brother at the house, where she told him that she needed to speak to my parents urgently. Now thinking upon it 9 years later, it’s hard to imagine what else it could’ve been about. When my parents did nothing bad to my brother and I. We were loved and happy. Going back to that day, we should’ve realised that the social worker was coming to talk about him. Talk about what he’d done. But again, we were oblivious to that fact.
When she returned later that day, my brother and I were told to stay outside while she spoke to my parents. It was a daunting half an hour as we really didn’t know what was happening. However, fast forward to her leaving, we finally knew the truth. He was a paedophile. So for two years of my life I had been watched by a devil in my own home. I had stayed at his house. I had been walked in on in the bathroom by him. He had touched clothes of mine. But the worst of it was; I was threatened to be placed into social care because he was around.
You’d think that now at 23 I’d have managed to live with that knowledge and history but I’m still struggling. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t offered help going forward or that I still see him around and the looks he gives are haunting, I don’t know. I want it to end.
In 2010, just after I’d turned 16, I began taking a knife to my skin. Creating pain to deal with the pain inside me. That pain only lasted for a little while. It wasn’t long before I was hooked and looked for a way to deal with the pain fully. So I began planning my suicide. I thought of jumping off the top floor of the multi-storey car park; my fear of heights stopped that. I thought of slicing the vein side of my wrists but being a little on the heavy side screwed that up. My veins don’t protrude as much as a skinny persons does. I thought of so many ways to die but ultimately I couldn’t go through with any of them. I was scared. I was scared of the hurt I’d leave behind. The anger in my dads heart knowing that he was the one that brought him into his house but I don’t blame him. My dad wasn’t to know. He wasn’t to know that this man was a sexual predator. The pain my mum would have felt knowing she could’ve shielded me from this but again, I don’t blame her. I blame him. I blame him for all the trust issues I have, for all the fears regarding people touching me and for the all the tears I’ve shed since that day.
I supposed he’s not entirely to blame for my incapacitation. Maybe the school bullies had a little something to do with it. The rumours and name calling and even physical interactions by male students who thought I was easy. I could’ve shielded myself better, I could’ve stood up for myself. I could’ve done anything but I didn’t. When I reported the first lot in my first year of secondary school, I was known as the snitch. But it didn’t stop them. They kept going. At first my friends had my back but then they became the issue too. I was never the social butterfly to begin with but by them doing the name calling behind my back, it hurt.
I only stumbled upon the name calling by accident. I was asked to edit a friends Bebo profile, way back in the days before Facebook, and I accidentally touched the mail button instead of the profile one. There staring me in the face was jibs aimed at me. All because I uploaded a video to my own page of a singer they liked.
I’m now 23, and looking back it feels like my whole life I’ve been nothing but a big fat butt of a joke to everyone I’ve came across. Someone to easily manipulate into doing things. Stupid things.
theartofmadeline
stormborns
titsay
annaxmalina
blakekathryn
