Remembering the Past

The following excerpt is something I wrote a couple of years ago to help heal a wound inside of me. It's about my sexual abuse experience, so it may be triggering for some and may help others feel less alone.

Many wonder what the best feeling in the world is. For me, it’s the feeling of your feet in the sand of an abandoned beach. The cold ocean air blowing on your face and the raw nature surrounding you. It’s your only escape, until you realize you can’t escape.

Everything starts rushing back to you and the ocean breeze becomes the cold hard truth slapping you in the face. The tiny exfoliating grains turn into shards of glass, and you wonder if that is what they are meant to be. You need to run, but you don’t know it yet. You are so innocent and vulnerable in the dark, too young to know what is about to happen. You blink, and now the shards of glass are cutting your entire body as you fall to your knees. Years later, you can’t even decipher the source of the scars on your body. Did you do this? Did you make everything worse than it should have been? Would the act of staying quiet have been better?

It’s too late now. The scars have faded on the outside, but your eyes are still blood-shot and your face is on fire. Your cheeks burn from the salty rivers heading out to sea. You think you can finally escape as you inch closer to the choppy waters. The promised future seems bright, but the water instantly sets fire to your skin. There’s nowhere to go, everything hurts. The sand, the water, the air, yourself. Everything is there to hurt you. You force your eyes shut, trying to forget.

You look up and see a string dangling above you. You are so small that you can barely reach it. Suddenly, a disembodied hand pulls the string, turning on the light. You finally escaped, but now you are in a small closet. It’s fitting because it is a place where you will remain for quite a long time. In the closet, there is a broom, a vacuum, indistinguishable clutter, and the noisy exposed light bulb. You were promised everything, that nothing bad was going to happen, that you would be okay. In the moment, you were okay, too young to even know what was happening. The disembodied flesh took something from you, and you didn’t even know it yet. The dangling string is pulled once more, meaning that the show was over. But the show was just about to begin.

Over the years, you learn that something bad had indeed happened. But, you kept it in because you can’t disappoint the audience that relies on you to bring them happiness. You are their source of joy, and you can't let them down. You can't let them know of your own pain because it will cause them pain. Only hurting yourself would be better than hurting everyone around you.

You become two people, both incomplete beings that can't survive on their own. In your adulthood, you try to piece the two together to make one complete person. It doesn’t work. Too many secrets were kept inside with your hidden version, and no one accepts the true you.

Returning to the sand still seems like the only way to escape, the only thing that brings you joy. But, you now realize that you will have to leave everyone behind in order to be free.

Your family collects shells and they are trying to keep you in their collection. They still see you as the old shell that you are trying to leave behind. You have carried it around for your entire life, but it is now too small. You want to leave the shell behind and move forward, but everyone wants you to stay in your seemingly perfect shell. There are many days where even you want to stay in your shell.

You keep poking your head out when it is safe, knowing that it is a matter of time before you leave it all behind. Now, you have to hope that people don’t hold on to the shell for too long, not seeing where you have gone. The ones that don’t notice where you escaped to will be happier with the empty shell that you left behind than with the living creature that has decided to truly be alive.

So, what do I do now? Do I cut off the relationships with people that don't believe me? The ones that tell me to heal my relationship with my abuser? The ones that think the abuser shouldn't be ashamed, feel guilty, or held responsible? I don't want to talk to these people again, but these people are my family. I shouldn't abandon my family, but my family shouldn't have caused me this much pain. I shouldn't be expected to keep myself in these painful relationships, and yet I feel like I am the bad person for leaving.

My next worry is how all of this will affect my family. Will they be embarrassed? Will they finally see the consequences of their reactions? I'm the kind of person that doesn't turn back once I've been hurt and decide to leave. I may still be around the family members that hurt me right now, but I lost them a long time ago. The only reason that I maintained relationships was to keep the peace. I didn't want everyone to hurt, I didn't want them to have to pick a side. But, they have picked a side, and it isn't mine. So why do I still feel guilty walking away from them when they never stood up for me?

The time has finally come for me to stand up for myself.