Catharsis
She runs her fingers through her hair, the joint dangling from her lips. She inhales deeply, waits a moment, and exhales through her nose. She loved doing that and she didn't know why. It wasn't classy but then again neither were drugs. She's usually a social smoker, but not tonight. Tonight she'd rather sit in her car in front of her house and listen to the rain as it pounds against the roof. She's got a lot on her mind tonight. A lot of things she hasn't let herself think about in a while. Like who she is, where she comes from, who she allows other people to see. The drugs help the process. It makes it less painful, numbs it until it doesn't hurt as much as it would thinking about it straight up.
One more puff and she's flying high. She grins at herself in the rearview mirror. There she is. That girl with the sardonic smile and sad eyes. The girl who is constantly in pain over things she can't ever change. With half a joint left, she feels she's wasting it, but still puts it into her ashtray. If her catharsis gets too hard, she'll want something to fall back on.
Where to start?
She picks the easiest thing to handle first. That person she lets other people see. The mask she has on at all times except for when she's at work. Because at work she is happy. Actual happiness exists there. But then she thinks about her group of friends. She loves them more than she could ever love herself. They're kind, and funny, and always there for her when she needs them. And she tries to be all of those things for them. But she also tries to lead them. Subtly but in a direction that makes her comfortable. She loves to be high with them, because it's easier to slip on the happy-fun mask they all expect. She can be girly (which is a rare feat unto itself), she can be quiet but smiley, she can be talkative. She thinks maybe sometimes she's narcissistic, but really she just wants people to think her stories are cool. Which in turn would make her cool and accepted. She knows that some of her friends, if not all, would accept her without the drugs and without the epic stories she tells. But she loves to put on a show. It's the actress in her.
But who she really is? Now that's a difficult thing to wrap her mind around. Sitting in her car with the air thick with smoke, that's who she is sometimes. The friendly girl is who she is daily. But who she really is, all the time, where no one can see? It's dark and it scares her. She's not suicidal or homicidal, not anymore. She lives with the depression. The dark fog that takes her heart and squeezes it tightly, that makes it hard to breath. The screaming inside that screams for release, or anything or anyone to come save it from the horrible place it lives, which is inside of her. That might be her heart crying for freedom from all the bad decisions she's ever made. Even her heart doesn't want to be with her. That's a hard fact to handle.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
She stays on the line of thought. Not letting it go. She can't because she's making progress. Growing to gigantic proportions in this cloudy car with the rain whipping at the windows.
Her heart is scarred and screaming for release from the pain. She'd been torturing herself this whole time with these decisions that were so clearly wrong but made anyway. She never cut herself. She never drank until she couldn't feel feelings anymore. But she'd been hurting herself none the less. Always feeling superior to the people she looked at as weak, who showed their scars on the outside. She may not have deserved a lot of the pain she'd been through in the recent years, but she had caused a lot of it herself.
Well, I'll be damned.
She always played the victim in those situations. Corralling people to her side as the bruised ego. She didn't deserve a lot of the after effects. The name calling or the snide remarks or the cruel things that came after. But she did deserve that embarrassment of what she did.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Moving on.
Where did she come from? Probably the most terrifying question she'd ever asked herself. What made her the person she is today?
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
It's all gone now, except for a tiny stub that can barely fit between her fingers. She places the roach back into the ashtray and closes it.
She knows the events of what happened to her because they happened to her. Thirteen. Catholic school girl a little over weight. Small bubble world with dad somewhere else. But he was there. For two years he played daddy. She'd even slipped and called him it once or twice. He'd smile and ruffle her hair. But the moment she became a woman. Well that relationship ended and another, more sinister one, began.
No details. Right now she couldn't afford a flashback. She might not be able to make it out of the car if that happened.
Picking up a bobby pin from her cup holder, she placed what was left in a chopstick like grip.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Now it was gone for sure. Her lips still felt the heat against them. Maybe she had burned herself, but at the moment she couldn't tell nor could she care.
Back to those days when she was scared shitless of the next time. When she would hold herself in little balls and escape much the same way she escaped now. She'd disappear into her head. Back then they were full of her favorite television and book characters. The girl would always, always, be reunited with her love who didn't need to save her because she'd saved herself. Those times were so happy no matter what her body was going through. And the stories would last months. She was in her head so often that she was comatose at times. Living in the worlds she created so easily and with very little thought. Had she written them down, people might have been amazed at that girls talent. But she never wrote them down. She never wrote anything down. She was too busy living with them, because living where she was, well that was hell.
Now she writes as often as she can. Whenever she finds the time between bad decisions, school, work and friends. But that is not who she is.
Fifteen. Almost Christmas. A Friday the 13th. Supposed to be the unluckiest day ever. But it wasn't, not for her. Cops. Everywhere. She was stripped searched to make sure she wasn't hiding any drugs. Violated again by people who were supposed to help. When asked why she wasn't in school, she lied. Because these people who were supposed to be there to save her...well they just added to her misery. But then her sister was there. The one person in all the world who could save her. She got her out of that house and somewhere safe. She took the girl back to their mother. And questions were asked. What has he done? And she lied. Her mother would hate her. He would kill her.
The weekend passed. She stayed out of her head and did things he said she could never do. She hung out with her sister watching her favorite shows. She played on websites he wouldn't let her on, not because they were bad, but because he wanted control. She listened to music and sang as loud as she wanted, finding her voice again after three years. But on Monday, her mom was going to bail him out. She couldn't let it happen, she couldn't go back to being a slave. To being out of school. To have pictures taken of her and her body hurting all the time. She just couldn't. So she broke down. And she told her sister, who punched a wall, made a few phone calls and took her to the police station, where she had to relive multiple times the years she'd spent under him.
He got out of jail with no help from her mother. He ran to Florida. Had a baby with a girl. Used someone else to get what he wanted. That was until the vengeful older sister found him and got him arrested.
Her turn.
Court room drama isn't like it is on TV. The victim and the perpetrator are far too close together. But she did it. She stood up next to the judge. She said what she'd been through. Not all of it, she couldn't remember all of it. It all ran together like a painting being rained on. But she told the truth, the truth she remembered, and nothing but the truth.
Judge's words ripped through her. Made her feel so very, very alone.
Worst case of child/adolescent sexual abuse I've ever heard. And I've heard hundreds of cases.
It was over. Legally it was over. But she lived with the stigma and the trauma every day. It was what the black fog of depression was made of. She tries to work through it. By herself and through therapy. Two very different ways with very same results
Not her fault.
She's not alone.
Survivor.
Because that's what she is. She was victimized, yes. But she walked through the flames of three years in hell, and she walked through burned and bleeding and crying and about fifty pounds overweight. But she walked through. And that was all that mattered. She was 22 now and it'd been six years.
The rain had stopped. The atmosphere of healing seemingly gone. The smoke in the car had dissipated. Grabbing her purse, she opened the door.
Inhale fresh air. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
She walked towards the door, rummaging in her purse until she found her keys. Pointless, her mom had left the door unlocked. Standing in the dark room, she reached down and picked up her black cat. She put her face into his fur and cried. Crawling into bed, fully clothed but too tired to change, she slept. And it was one of the first nights where her dreams weren't nightmares and the first night where she really felt...safe.
One more puff and she's flying high. She grins at herself in the rearview mirror. There she is. That girl with the sardonic smile and sad eyes. The girl who is constantly in pain over things she can't ever change. With half a joint left, she feels she's wasting it, but still puts it into her ashtray. If her catharsis gets too hard, she'll want something to fall back on.
Where to start?
She picks the easiest thing to handle first. That person she lets other people see. The mask she has on at all times except for when she's at work. Because at work she is happy. Actual happiness exists there. But then she thinks about her group of friends. She loves them more than she could ever love herself. They're kind, and funny, and always there for her when she needs them. And she tries to be all of those things for them. But she also tries to lead them. Subtly but in a direction that makes her comfortable. She loves to be high with them, because it's easier to slip on the happy-fun mask they all expect. She can be girly (which is a rare feat unto itself), she can be quiet but smiley, she can be talkative. She thinks maybe sometimes she's narcissistic, but really she just wants people to think her stories are cool. Which in turn would make her cool and accepted. She knows that some of her friends, if not all, would accept her without the drugs and without the epic stories she tells. But she loves to put on a show. It's the actress in her.
But who she really is? Now that's a difficult thing to wrap her mind around. Sitting in her car with the air thick with smoke, that's who she is sometimes. The friendly girl is who she is daily. But who she really is, all the time, where no one can see? It's dark and it scares her. She's not suicidal or homicidal, not anymore. She lives with the depression. The dark fog that takes her heart and squeezes it tightly, that makes it hard to breath. The screaming inside that screams for release, or anything or anyone to come save it from the horrible place it lives, which is inside of her. That might be her heart crying for freedom from all the bad decisions she's ever made. Even her heart doesn't want to be with her. That's a hard fact to handle.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
She stays on the line of thought. Not letting it go. She can't because she's making progress. Growing to gigantic proportions in this cloudy car with the rain whipping at the windows.
Her heart is scarred and screaming for release from the pain. She'd been torturing herself this whole time with these decisions that were so clearly wrong but made anyway. She never cut herself. She never drank until she couldn't feel feelings anymore. But she'd been hurting herself none the less. Always feeling superior to the people she looked at as weak, who showed their scars on the outside. She may not have deserved a lot of the pain she'd been through in the recent years, but she had caused a lot of it herself.
Well, I'll be damned.
She always played the victim in those situations. Corralling people to her side as the bruised ego. She didn't deserve a lot of the after effects. The name calling or the snide remarks or the cruel things that came after. But she did deserve that embarrassment of what she did.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Moving on.
Where did she come from? Probably the most terrifying question she'd ever asked herself. What made her the person she is today?
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
It's all gone now, except for a tiny stub that can barely fit between her fingers. She places the roach back into the ashtray and closes it.
She knows the events of what happened to her because they happened to her. Thirteen. Catholic school girl a little over weight. Small bubble world with dad somewhere else. But he was there. For two years he played daddy. She'd even slipped and called him it once or twice. He'd smile and ruffle her hair. But the moment she became a woman. Well that relationship ended and another, more sinister one, began.
No details. Right now she couldn't afford a flashback. She might not be able to make it out of the car if that happened.
Picking up a bobby pin from her cup holder, she placed what was left in a chopstick like grip.
Inhale deep. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
Now it was gone for sure. Her lips still felt the heat against them. Maybe she had burned herself, but at the moment she couldn't tell nor could she care.
Back to those days when she was scared shitless of the next time. When she would hold herself in little balls and escape much the same way she escaped now. She'd disappear into her head. Back then they were full of her favorite television and book characters. The girl would always, always, be reunited with her love who didn't need to save her because she'd saved herself. Those times were so happy no matter what her body was going through. And the stories would last months. She was in her head so often that she was comatose at times. Living in the worlds she created so easily and with very little thought. Had she written them down, people might have been amazed at that girls talent. But she never wrote them down. She never wrote anything down. She was too busy living with them, because living where she was, well that was hell.
Now she writes as often as she can. Whenever she finds the time between bad decisions, school, work and friends. But that is not who she is.
Fifteen. Almost Christmas. A Friday the 13th. Supposed to be the unluckiest day ever. But it wasn't, not for her. Cops. Everywhere. She was stripped searched to make sure she wasn't hiding any drugs. Violated again by people who were supposed to help. When asked why she wasn't in school, she lied. Because these people who were supposed to be there to save her...well they just added to her misery. But then her sister was there. The one person in all the world who could save her. She got her out of that house and somewhere safe. She took the girl back to their mother. And questions were asked. What has he done? And she lied. Her mother would hate her. He would kill her.
The weekend passed. She stayed out of her head and did things he said she could never do. She hung out with her sister watching her favorite shows. She played on websites he wouldn't let her on, not because they were bad, but because he wanted control. She listened to music and sang as loud as she wanted, finding her voice again after three years. But on Monday, her mom was going to bail him out. She couldn't let it happen, she couldn't go back to being a slave. To being out of school. To have pictures taken of her and her body hurting all the time. She just couldn't. So she broke down. And she told her sister, who punched a wall, made a few phone calls and took her to the police station, where she had to relive multiple times the years she'd spent under him.
He got out of jail with no help from her mother. He ran to Florida. Had a baby with a girl. Used someone else to get what he wanted. That was until the vengeful older sister found him and got him arrested.
Her turn.
Court room drama isn't like it is on TV. The victim and the perpetrator are far too close together. But she did it. She stood up next to the judge. She said what she'd been through. Not all of it, she couldn't remember all of it. It all ran together like a painting being rained on. But she told the truth, the truth she remembered, and nothing but the truth.
Judge's words ripped through her. Made her feel so very, very alone.
Worst case of child/adolescent sexual abuse I've ever heard. And I've heard hundreds of cases.
It was over. Legally it was over. But she lived with the stigma and the trauma every day. It was what the black fog of depression was made of. She tries to work through it. By herself and through therapy. Two very different ways with very same results
Not her fault.
She's not alone.
Survivor.
Because that's what she is. She was victimized, yes. But she walked through the flames of three years in hell, and she walked through burned and bleeding and crying and about fifty pounds overweight. But she walked through. And that was all that mattered. She was 22 now and it'd been six years.
The rain had stopped. The atmosphere of healing seemingly gone. The smoke in the car had dissipated. Grabbing her purse, she opened the door.
Inhale fresh air. Hold. Exhale through her nose.
She walked towards the door, rummaging in her purse until she found her keys. Pointless, her mom had left the door unlocked. Standing in the dark room, she reached down and picked up her black cat. She put her face into his fur and cried. Crawling into bed, fully clothed but too tired to change, she slept. And it was one of the first nights where her dreams weren't nightmares and the first night where she really felt...safe.