The Girl After
Sitting in the driveway while I felt the hollow knot sink from my chest into my stomach until my whole body felt distant and simultaneously relieved. In that moment I could not decide if I felt as though a weight had been lifted off of me or if my bones were heavy as they preoccupied the last three years of my life.
The image of hands that I no longer recognize as they pull off the handle on those French doors has been engraved in my memory. Seeing a hallowed shell of a person and not knowing what is behind that tense and clenched jaw. Remembering my hot and sweaty body flushed with tears and going cold when the lights went out. Not knowing if I was metaphorically frozen or if my body temperature precisely dropped 20 degrees in that fractured moment. I felt as though my body was breaking a fever every moment I lost air, but the honest feeling was three years of vulnerability wrapped around my neck. I was not breaking a fever, I was being broken of trust. And while I was losing air, I was losing my existing figure of reality. There has been no salvation of how I formerly perceived my life.
Through every voice yelling, and my own sobs coinciding harsh exhales of air, I had beet red tops to my ears and ringing that faded as I began to breathe again. My fixation was on the click of a heeled boot, and every time I heard that shoe hit the ground I could feel my own heartbeat on the outskirts of my ears. I felt my entire head get hot as I sat with a lamp cord centric in my back while I waited for the surrounding noise to subside. Through the dark scattered flashlight-lit room and my teary eyes, I saw little that I recognized while I went to wipe my upper lip of sweat and tears. The room was unfamiliar and the gut-wrenching feeling deep between my belly button and spine had never felt so large and heavy. When I close my eyes I can remember being in that moment but in memory, everything is happening around me, nothing this bad is happening to me. As my body stays still but loses the lump in my back and the tension that is hugging the inside walls of my skin, I start to not recognize myself. I sat there so still, with no words and tears that evaporated from my stung skin, so lifeless, like the worst thing I had done to myself was love someone else. By the time every horrific action happened over again for the second time my cheekbone was stabbing me with a blade-like pain. A metaphor, as if everything that happened to me was self-inflicted as if this physical pain was inevitable. The worst betrayal to myself was ever revealing every inch of my mind to someone else.
Hours later, the grey medical blanket draped over my body will instill that vulnerability is not what strangled me. Arms that are powered by an absent mind. That is what took my breath away.
A clarifying second after the storm where I feel my body throb in slow motion as I walk down the stairs to still be blinded by lights that were pointed in the other direction. Guns were drawn and that unrecognizable hand holding a kitchen knife that did not belong in its grip. I felt the entire world pause except the air that touched my face. For that brief moment, the world was lifeless except for the person surrounded by action figures of authority in the driveway. The split moment where I recognized some sort of familiar feeling before I wrap the corner and never look back.
Sitting with my light-wash denim jeans stuffed behind my tucked knees I sip water out of a glass I would have never picked out for myself. The powerful feeling of fault washes over me and dissipates like withdrawals as my legs fold up on the bed behind me. I sat there and not once did I consider that the image of being held at gunpoint would be the last for me and that the last perception of myself would be fear and pain. I tried to authenticate every detail in my head so I can tell the man in the imprudently moved chair who sits in front of me. No blurry memories, just moments I blanked on, like putting a puzzle together with missing pieces over putting pieces together that obviously did not fit. The reality was not real for me the following hours so I watch a movie in desperation to bring myself back to my earth that was just shattered.
The next day I rot in bed as I gaze down at the floor where I was thrown the night before. I hold no resentment toward the room but the memory of a chain breaking in my hand and holding resentment to the lack of satisfaction when I do not see the chain there wrinkled on the rug in place of where I had laid, thrown on the ground. Not my black eye, or the marks on my neck and ears but that chain, something that is not a part of me but something physical. I thought about the silver chain and I tried to identify its structure in my head over and over all day. A necklace that now belongs to my experience. I still think about it. I wonder where the chain ended up and I miss the idea of it being disregarded somewhere kicked under the dresser or twisted up in the gravel of my driveway.
I sob and scream about the entirety of what led to that night. I am mourning and questioning what I deserve. I was punished for being scared, and that fear was once love. We attract what we think we deserve but I never deserved this. To be threatened by the hands that I used to hold. To have arms constricted around my neck, arms that used to hug me kinder than a slow piano outro of a perfect song.
I sat on the wall at the end of the street and I watch the ocean lap over the beach as I feel the coldness of the concrete crawl up my back. A singular tear rolls down my face and I wince as I brush it off my check bone. I sit there, alone, singlehandedly destroyed by the assault. My body feels hollow as if I have no substance other than my hard shell-like skin keeping my sunken heart enclosed as it sits where my stomach used to be. I can feel the bags under my eyes sit on the highs of my check bone as I watch a squadron of pelicans glide above the water’s surface. It felt as though the sand was desolate and the sunset lacked color through the clouds. I felt invisible to the flowers at the end of the street and I thought for a brief moment that I did not exist to the people I saw cooking through the window of the house next door. Every decision I had made for myself was taken from me the former night and I had no concept of who I was to myself or anyone else. All that runs through my mind is who I will be now and how will I continue to survive.
After a few days, I was back to sitting in my driveway, like I do, reflecting on everything you did to me. I never decided if any of this night happened. I may never admit this tragedy, because I do not want to go to war with myself. I do not want to feel emotional pain as strong as the grip of those hands. I deserve to be alone from that night and all I want is the memory of it to let me go. I was going to learn eventually that I deserve everything that I have begged for. You will learn eventually that you do not deserve me and everything I begged for. You frankly don’t deserve my words but I deserve peace of mind. To accept that I was never going to be enough and I wish I knew that before I was face to face with the fact that I was never in control. Months of me dreading you came to this moment and I never failed to remind you that I never believed you to be capable of anything you did to me. It never crossed my mind that I couldn’t stop what happened to me but that is only because of my own ignorance, for I never thought I would be hurt this bad.
June
It has been a month now. My 21st birthday has come and passed. The bruises have dissipated and the marks are gone. The elements that showed the world my pain no longer exist. I’m speechless to the world around me and yet I have so many feelings, it makes me feel lonely. The pain is lonely now. As if I will never be removed from the night, and I am destined to be haunted by the moments. People can perceive me because of what happened but they cannot perceive my damage. I feel so damaged and faulty because of what you did. I am fighting the fact that three years of my life, love, empathy, and most importantly vulnerability came back and almost killed me. I don’t want this to change who I am so much that the ones around me can see the effects of it but I also don’t want to be lonely anymore. I feel as though my strongest relationship will be the relationship I have with this memory. I have thought about it a lot as the long-term heartbreak and sadness set in and I’ve realized I feel lonely because it was only ever about me. You left me to be in the worst possible position of loneliness and darkness, but I guess that is what you wanted. At least that’s what you said you wanted. There was no one in your line of sight except me. I remember seeing still eyes glaring while nothing else was in vision. I remember feeling like a locked target. As my neck was gripped I felt three years of that forearm holding me. What I once knew like the back of my hand is no longer viable. That is why I feel lonely.
My knowledge of my own life has been debunked. And I am praying the day comes when I don’t feel this sickening burden of being your victim. Now I’m just sick and I know that I will never be the same. You took a fragment of my freedom away and you altered my identity with a new experience and new label. I spent three years giving to you unconditionally and I was punished for doing so. You told me you loved me but none of this that I’m feeling feels like being loved. Fuck you for being so selfish. And fuck you for making me so scared. I am scared of you. I am scared of the perception of myself. And I’m scared of how much this is gonna fuck me up. So fuck you. You ruined it, you ruined everything, and you ruined me. I know that I will never be the same, I know my new reality. I am yet so fearful that this was our only possible ending in your head, and for that in itself, I am left to resent you.
