A Response to "Untitled" by Glasnost

When I was four, I gave my first blowjob. It was the middle of the night and I didn't want a spanking. I was so afraid I started pooping myself again. I didn't cry after he left. I laid there in my metal bunk bed. My mom left that man after he bought her breast implants.

When I was six, I was told to stay away from the weird neighbor who always lavished me in gifts. He took a lot of pills. It was hard to avoid him in my innocence. Back then I played in the yard in my bare feet.

When I was eleven I cried as I inserted my first tampon. My older sister was standing outside with her male friends. They were all laughing at me, yelling "you can't even take a tampon, little girl?"

When I was twelve, I gave my second blowjob. My older sister took me to an empty playground to visit a boy. She told me what to do. I was teased for the rest of middle school.I lost my virginity soonafter in my sister's bedroom to the neighbor kid that laughed at me. It felt like nothing. When it was over, my sister and my friend inspected my vagina. It was swollen and red. They stared, gawked, and laughed.

Then I was raped by a man in his thirties. It felt like everything, it felt like nothing. He solidified exactly what my body was for. I learned not to think about him.

When I was fourteen, I was violated by a step-brother. He intruded my bedroom and my showers for almost a year. He put his penis in me and all I sensed was the smell of burning pizza. I kept it a secret, dyed my hair black, and made hundreds of gashes into my skin. I stopped eating and when I ate I threw up. I would not wear shorts and lost every ounce of my self esteem.

When I was fifteen, I had my first threesome. The participants? My older sister and another step-brother. It was voluntary. It was easier that way. I mean, what else was I good for? Then I was hospitalized from a deep self-inflicted wound in my leg. My friend called an ambulance. My mom visited in the hospital, yelled at me, and then left me there. I wished my father had not abandoned me.

When I was seventeen, my mom pulled down my shirt in front of my boyfriend while she was drunk. She thought it was hilarious.

I overdosed on Mucinex and woke up in a shed with a boy my age. I know what happened. The truth is a nauseous thing but I felt that I had done it to myself.

My mother beat me into the ground in front of my younger sibling. I thought she was going to kill me when she picked me up by the neck and threw me against the wall. I struggled for air and my little sister cried.

I ran away from home to live with my older sister. She got me very drunk. I had my first foursome. I was homeless soonafter.

I became infected with mononucleosis and MRSA as I drifted from couch to couch. I was inebriated constantly. I moved into a shack in the woods with my boyfriend. I slept with the rats and no running water. He fed me and abused me. I loved him to death for saving me.

When I was nineteen, my boyfriend punched me in the face for the last time. I left him and moved again from couch to couch. Along the way, I numbed myself with benzos and liquor only to wake up yet again in a bed I did not recognize. I no longer recognized myself as anything more than an object. I did not like to look in the mirror.

Then I fell in love.

When I was twenty-one, my father was jailed for murder. I met him for the first time behind a cell wall.

Then I was told I have dissociative identity disorder.

Now I'm twenty-two, and I get to feel safe sometimes. I stay in the cradle of my home with the man who loves me because I am afraid of the world.

I'm so exhausted

but I'm pouring all of my soul into marching on.