That white light I found would slowly start to brighten up every aspect of my life and come the fall of ’07 I would have enough support to leave everything I knew behind. Or at least that was what I thought. When I left my home in the spring of 2007, I was placed in a home about 2 hours away from where my mother lived. I continued to go to the school I attended before the move happened. But come the 2008 school year I would have to leave all my friends behind and transfer to the nearest school. One would have thought that I would have lived happily ever after, and miraculously I would be healed of all my past destruction. If you did think that, then you were very wrong.
“People have scars. In all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret roadmaps of their personal histories. Diagrams of all their old wounds. Most of our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don’t. Some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cut’s long gone, the pain still lingers.”- Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy
I have no strength as if my body is being pressed to the ground by an unbelievable force of gravity. Like one of those dreams where no matter what you do you can’t get up? You can’t yell out, and when you try your words evaporate as they escape from your mouth. Flashes of images raced through my mind, my head bouncing off the wall, my legs kicking, my blood pulsing. “Shhh, shhh, shh…” I can hear him trying to quiet me. The carpet of the bedroom I shared seemed rough and coarse as it dug into my back or maybe it was just the broken perfume bottle that lay shattered across the ground. There was no use in trying to move, because no matter how hard I tried it seemed impossible. I turned my head towards the clock and watched as if someone wanted to torture me by letting that red number click to the next so slowly. In the distance I could hear my muffled cries, then “shut up!” as my head was slammed into the ground, and left to find something strong enough to lift me to my feet again. And then I woke up.
Waking up screaming wasn’t something the people I lived with were fond of me for. I quickly got up and rushed to the other side of my bed. I grabbed the closet door handle, and opened the door as quick as I could, and threw myself to the floor and shut the door fast as if someone was chasing me. I brought my knees to my chest, and covered my mouth so no one would be woken by my uncontrollable gasps for breath. I told myself I was in a safe place, no one could get me, and he was hundreds of miles away. But after opening up about my past, and with court right around the corner it was as if the wall I had built just wasn’t big enough to keep the memories from flowing over. But the only thing I could feel flowing was the blood that was tracing the creases around my knuckles on the back of my hand.
“What’s worse, new wounds which are so horribly painful or old wounds that should’ve healed years ago and never did? Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we’ve been and what we’ve overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That’s what we like to think. But that’s not the way it is, is it? Some things we just have to learn over and over and over again.”- Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy
RAINN is an amazing nonprofit organization that allows victims of rape, abuse, and incest to come out in a safe protected environment. They have a national hotline if you are in need please do not hesitate to call 1-800-656-HOPE or visit their National Sexual Assault Online Hotline which you can find at www.rainn.org (24/7 free and confidential) Also 1-800-273-TALK (8255): (Suicide hotline, 24/7 free and confidential, nationwide network of crisis centers)
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