By M.J.M
It hurts. After all these years I know it shouldn’t but it still does. I wish it would stop. I’ve been reliving these moments so many times in my mind, sometimes I don’t even know if it’s true anymore. And then I remember the pain, the shock, the horror I felt. It’s real. And much more real than the thing itself is the memory of it. The shame of it. After 10 years, the physical damage is well healed, but the shame and guilt aren’t. The constant fear that someone might discover my secret, that I might lose my job, my loved ones, for something I didn’t do, something I didn’t ask for.
The fear that people would judge me and despise me, that they wouldn’t understand why I’m making such a mountain out of this.
But it is a mountain. A big one, one that I’ve been trying to climb for the last 10 years and I still didn’t reach the top. And I keepgoind down, and down, losing hope that I might one day make it back up. I wish it would stop.
I wish I could go back in time and keep it from happening. Maybe I could’ve acted differently? Maybe I could’ve just said “no”? But I did. I said “no”. Only it didn’t change anything. Maybe he didn’t hear? But I said it loud enough, often enough, and I know he heard. He heard my cries of pain. He saw the blood. He saw the tears. He didn’t care.
Nobody cared. They saw the blood on my sheets, on my clothes, they saw the tears, they knew I wasn’t feeling good. They didn’t care. I stopped eating, laughing, living, all they said was “eat, drink, dress up, go to school, act normal, why are you being so weird”
But how could they know what I didn’t tell them, and how could I tell them when I felt such shame… And now I’m 24, all grown up, now I understand what happened to me, how can I tell them knowing the pain it might cause?
What if they told me it’s my fault, that I should’ve screamed or ran or fought, that I should’ve gone to the police, that I didn’t do all I could to prevent it? But I couldn’t scream or run or fight, I couldn’t do anything at all, I was too terrified even to realize I was being robbed of my innocence.
It’s been 10 years and yet I still remember every single moment, every single sound. And it has to stop. Because it’s not my fault, because there’s nothing to be ashamed of, because it’s my life and it’s time I started living it.