Innocence

I've been born again. Awake, finally. These suppressed memories have kept me in a walking nightmare for all these years. I went from knowing nothing to knowing everything all at once. My heart has stopped yet beat again. I am choking yet breathing at the same time. What is coming of me?

I wake up. I see her. She is me at five. Lukewarm bath water. I wiggle my toes and wade my fingers through the water. Pretending I am a mermaid. I splash water outside the tub. My stepfather walks in, no knock. My splashing must have caused a disturbance. He stands over me. I feel like I cannot breathe. In my mind I have become the mermaid I wanted to be and suddenly this is not my world. I've escaped to a place where I feel most at home, deep underwater. I was a mermaid swimming through a tiny sea of gaiety that I once knew then all of the sudden I was pulled up from the bathtub. Vulnerable at best, what has become of this? Who is this man sharing the closed bathroom with me? Staring at me and all my secret places. The look in his eyes is like no other look I've been given from a man since. Those eyes pierced through me like an arrow hitting its target, so full of desire, an unspeakable and unimaginable desire. A desire that never should have been. And all of my innocence escaped right then. My mother is so angry, and I feel so ashamed. My stomach hurts, I feel so unsafe. I hear a crash of broken glass. Pure rage at its finest.

I'm just waiting for this nightmare to end.