The Devil You Know

Since I can remember, I have always suffered from nightmares.

I would wake myself up several times a week screaming, clawing at the air. I accepted this as normal because my mother labeled these dreams 'Night Terrors'.

I was four-years-old.

It wasn't just the nightmares that threatened my sanity, it was those feelings. As far as I knew, I had always been afraid of the dark. I slept with a nightlight. It was perfectly normal... My bedroom door was another cause for anxiety. I always wondered, 'Who's behind that door, in the dark, waiting?'. My fears were deemed delusions. My family was unwilling to recognize the signs of a child being abused.

When I was a teenager, I began cutting myself. It was guilt. For what? My mother leaving my father. He blamed me, I couldn't understand why. I only knew I hated myself to the point where one day, I cut my wrist. I never made it to the right wrist. I woke up in the hospital, my wrist bandaged, being told I had died but had been resuscitated. I cried. Not because I was happy to be alive, but because I still existed. The scar reminds me of that time, running along my vein, never fading, only growing whiter as time goes on.

If I could have, I would've shed my skin. I hated this body, this life. I hated everything and nothing. I was confused in every aspect but one. Anger was my fuel. Without it, I was nothing. It was a deep river, boiling beneath my vacant smile. Why was I angry? Again, more questions that couldn't be answered. But anger was real, it was tangible, I could see it manifest in each window I broke, each door I kicked down.

I was brought to a shrink, I lied left and right. I didn't know what I was hiding, but I cloaked myself in bravado and made myself seem stronger than I was. In reality, I never stood up for myself. I was being walked over time and time again, and I allowed it. I felt I deserved it.

When I was fourteen, I was shipped to a Catholic private school. I befriended a boy, the first guy who had ever looked at me and had spoken to me.

First year students had to be back at the dorms by nine-thirty. At quarter after nine, my new friend asked me to walk with him, and so I did.

I had only been at private school for two weeks, and I didn't want to be in trouble already for not obeying curfew. The last thing I wanted to do, was go home, back to those feelings of inadequacy and rage. When nine-forty rolled around, I told him I had to run to make it back.

He grabbed hold of my hand and smiled. I didn't pull away. In the back of my mind, I thought, at last, my first kiss. It was quite the opposite. While I was distracted, in the moment, with his free hand, he punched me in the side of the head.

Frozen, that's the only word I can come up with. I was frozen, on the ground, staring up at him, wondering why his smile proceeded to get wider and wider, whiter and whiter in the darkness. It reminded me of the Cheshire Cat. I began to rationalize. Maybe someone threw a ball. He slipped and his fist fell on my head. All stupid thoughts...

Survival instinct kicked in and I began to back peddle, scooting my butt away from him. I had tried to stand up, my legs wouldn't respond. He towered above me, grabbed the sides of my head, and slammed it hard against the ground.

Again. Again. Again. Until the only thought left in my mind was, 'I'm late'.

When I came to on the side of the road, he wasn't there. My pants had been thrown off further into the ditch, and as I tried to claim a sitting position, I realized that I couldn't sit. At first, my mind couldn't understand why it hurt so much.

As the realization dawned across my face, I can picture myself aging, my eyes becoming a little dimmer, and my mind a little more jaded.

He had raped me anally.

When I finally returned to the dorms, it was almost midnight. The dorm leaders said that people had seen me off walking with a boy, and asked if it were true. I cried. Deny! Deny! Deny! I said I went for a walk and got lost. They seemed to accept it. I was only fourteen, and fourteen-year-old kids tend to do moronic things. No one commented on the way my walk had changed.

I faced him for the rest of the year, in the hallways, on the street, on the sidewalk of the dorm kissing his girlfriend. I stared at him every time I passed. I believe the bravest part on me, are my eyes.

As an adult, looking back, I scream at this younger version of myself to turn back around. To run, to hide. But this poor girl doesn't. She follows him into the darkness every time, and every time, I break down crying because I can't save her. Regret is poison to the soul, I am fully aware of that fact now. Regrets are what haunt me every moment of my being.

I attracted predators in my late teens. I dated abusers. I thought I attracted them. I was right. They saw a weak individual and preyed on those faults. I've had my nose broken several times. Permanent teeth marks on my cheeks from being bitten. All these badges of horror. Scars are my personal road map of pain.

Last year, all my fears had become overwhelming. I was, still am, afraid of strangers, of crowds, of getting close to anyone. At the time, I chalked it off as a natural defense mechanism. I alienated anyone I became close to. I'd push them to the brink and then cry when they ran away from my wrath. I tested everyone and anyone.

One day, I had had enough. Life isn't life if you're living in the shadows.

I went to a psychiatrist. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It wasn't only my rape as a teenager that was the cause. There were undercurrents, murky waters. The more sessions I went to, the more I began to become aware that pieces of my memory were gone. Stolen by someone who scared me so much as a child, that I refused, even as an adult, to go back to that place in my mind. I had gone to get help for my private school experience and recent near-death experience from a boyfriend, that I was left even more adrift with the thoughts of child abuse.

It was shortly thereafter, that my nightmares began to reveal to me pieces of a bigger picture. My mind had finally decided that now was the time to remember.

The nightmares transformed. Instead of waking up to feelings of helplessness and terror, I began to remember images. At first it was a shadow behind my door. I would dream of this shadow person all over the place, always hurting me. I told my therapist that I wasn't sure if it was real, or just me being over-imaginative. The fact that I was dreaming the same scenarios over and over again, meant that I had been abused multiple times in childhood.

The first time I remembered who this shadow person was, I stayed up for almost a whole week, afraid to sleep again. My moods were scattered, my soul shattered. I have this sick feeling of fear and this feeling to stop writing, to click delete on this story, to forget, pretend it never happened. It is absolutely staggering. But I stay the course, because I know I'm stronger than that.

When I went to speak with my therapist again --- to this day she's the only one who knows, and now, you, Brave Reader as well, will know --- I had a breakdown. I couldn't breathe, my body was rigid.

Twenty years of suppressed devastation, came out within seconds. This one person, put me on this path, but I refuse to keep walking along it today.

Honestly, I don't think people need to know the details of how my mother damaged me beyond repair. The thought of writing it, is revolting to me. Even writing this much, I find hard to bear.

I had planned to call my father. I had planned to accuse him of not doing anything, of turning a blind eye, of being a coward for letting this happen to me. All to save his marriage, which hadn't lasted anyway. I planned to scream, to vent, to emotionally assault him through the telephone, and by God, if I could have reached through it, I would've strangled him. How could he trade his daughter, for his wife? How could he morally live with himself, daily, knowing that he had failed to protect me?

The anger was the only way I knew of to cope as a kid. All those years as a teenager, the attempted suicides, the one successful suicide... The self-loathing, the 'Night Terrors'... My father had known, and had chose to send me to private school rather than deal with me, to help me understand.

But I didn't call him. I still haven't called him. Instead, I hold this demon inside myself and feel that some things, are better off left alone. What's done is done. My mother is gone, I can never confront her. I find it absolutely terrifying how those who were meant to protect me, and keep me safe from harm, are the original predators. Why call one up? Doesn't make sense to me.

I ask why a thousand times a day. Why am I being tested like this? Is it Karma? Did I wrong someone so badly, that being raped and beaten, physically and emotionally tortured, is okay for me?

The scary thing is, I'm not alone. And the more I travel down this new path, the more and more I realize this. There are others out there, just like me, others out there right now, in this moment, trapped and suffocating, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. And again, I feel helpless.

Amongst so many voices in this world, mine still seems so small. I can shout, I can scream, but these are internal pains that no one hears and this suffering falls on deaf ears. I tell myself, 'I'm okay, it's over'. It's only more lies, more denial. I can move on, but I can never forget.

So, I extend my hand, yet again, to you, Dear Reader, and I beg for your compassion. Compassion is what I feel is truly lacking in today's world. Not only for myself, but for those of us, all of us, who have become lost to the world, or fight against this world alone. I'm lucky, I honestly feel that. Too many become lost in that darkness in-between and I believe that if we reach out for each other in that abyss of hopelessness and helplessness, we can find daylight again.

Together.


WORD COUNT:1882