Do You Want Some Water?

One time, all of my siblings had gone to my dad’s house, and it was just me and my mom. It was pretty late at night, almost 12:00 at night on a Friday. I was settled into bed, probably on the internet, when I hear a very faint voice coming from the living room.

At this point I immediately switch into survival mode, and very quietly make my way to the living room, which is only a short distance from my room. My heart is pounding in my head as I slowly open the door to the living room slightly, and peer out into the semi darkness to see if I can see anyone.

Nobody out there.

I still feel a little nervous.

The room is illuminated by the television that someone had left on, and as I slip into the room to go and turn it off, I hear the voice again, very faintly.

It sounds oddly familiar.

So I call out: “Is anybody there?” Hoping to get a response from my mother, perhaps beckoning me from her bedroom. But then I hear in response, very distinctly this time, the voice again: “It’s-a me, Mario!” 

Somebody had left the Wii on, after playing a video game, and it was just the main menu voices talking. 

I didn’t get murdered. 

I hate all these people talking about “2013 is gonna be my year, baby!” I like the optimism, but its so irritating.  nothing about today changes anything. you’ll tell yourself you will do something, and that this year it will all be different.

New year, new you?

Nah.

reality is we all know its all a facade. 2 weeks later you’re back to your same routine. You forget all about that low-carb diet, that gym membership; that promise you made to call your mom at least once a week, to change your underwear at least every three days… And you find yourself living the same life you always have. I used to like the idea of “new years resolutions” until they turned into “things- I-half-heartlessly-told-my-self-I-was-going-to-do,-not-really-intending-to-actually-do-it.” If they were things you really planned on doing, you wouldn’t wait until new years.

Whatever, some people actually stick to their new years resolutions, that 0.005% who have that moment where choirs of angels descend from heaven with trumpets and fairy dust and tell him in harmonic voices that he needs to change his ways or he might become the scrooge of New Years past, present, and future. And when he’s done crapping his pants, he figures he has to make a change. But the rest of us will give up. it’s human nature to change, but not at will. Because we usually like the way we are, to some degree, and a gravitation away from that routine we so loyally cling to in our day-to-day lives may cause an internal rift in the space-time continuum, and upset the very stabilization and equilibrium of our lives! So do yourself a favor. Don’t make impossible to reach resolutions, start small.

Go you.

when other people do it: 

when I do it:

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When I was 13 years old, I was raped. 

I remember what happened quite vividly, though I would prefer to forget. I have tried, countless times, to block out the memory, but it’s always there. behind every laugh, and every smile, I can smell the stench of alochol on a dirty shirt, feel the sweat of a stranger on my skin. I can feel him watching me from the back of my mind, with that hungry intent, driven by the anger he felt. 

I remember all the moments leading up to that point: kissing my mother goodbye, skipping and humming-  thinking about the boy I liked who sat two people ahead of me in english- David. I imagined running my fingers though his curly, black hair, and kissing each of the light brown freckles on his face. I smiled and went to school, groaned about the homework, laughed with my friend Emily at lunch, and went to her house after school, to ride bikes and sneak her brother’s CD player to listen to music that we liked, but it had a lot of bad words in it. 

Then I walked home. By this time it was around 7:30-ish, and I was singing, quietly, one of the songs I had heard on the CD. I remember thinking to myself that my voice was pretty awful, and that I should never become a singer. It was eerily quiet, very few people out and about, but I was not a girl who was easily frightened. After all, I was 13 and invincible.

 I crossed the street, and ran into a large man who seemed to appear from the shadows, who smelled so awful I could only assume he was a homeless man. In the dim streetlight, I could not see him very well, but his hair was thin and tangled, his face, unshaven and seemed to have a thick layer of dirt encrusted into his face. He looked at my face with a strange look, almost like he was contemplating, calculating…

“Excuse me,” I said trying to be poilite, side-stepping the frightening man, to continue on my way. 

Then he grabbed my arm. I cried out in terror and he covered my mouth with such a foul-smelling cloth, every breath was a struggle. My heart pounded in my head, and he shoved me back to an alleyway where he forced me onto the ground. I thrashed my arms and kicked my legs, cried and begged him just to let me go, but he only kicked me in the stomach and told me one more sound and he would kill me. He pulled from his deep coat pockets a rusty pair of scissors. I saw them gleam menacingly in the gray light filtering through the dusty alleyway. 

Then I realized it. He didn’t want to kill me. He would have killed me sooner. I came to the realization, and I lost all air from my lungs, all sight, hearing, and feeling was gone, and I crawled back into the tiniest part within me, to shield myself from the pain.

He would rape me. As soon as those words were processed within my head, that was the moment I accepted it. There was nothing I could do, but I tried anyway. My eyesight blurry from tears I struggled. I fought.

He reached for my zipper, I weakly pushed his hands away, and quietly whispered for him to stop. Please, I said. Please, please, stop.

He pulled my jeans down to my ankles, my underwear with it. I saw my flowery undergarments, the ones I had begged my mother not to buy, “because they are too childish”, I had decided. It was laundry day today, it was the only pair I had left.

I looked at his face- Into his eyes. he climbed on top of me, his pants gone. in that final moment, he looked at my face. He almost seemed apologetic, he looked at me with sorrow, pain, and pity.

“I’m sorry I’m doing this to you, but I have to, I just have to…” his eyes said, but then all the rage came back, and all of his apologies were nothing, this man stole from me, he ripped my innocence away, with no ceremonies or second-thought. With no regrets, he raped me.

And that was that.

i gave you hope

you gave me nothing

i drove you to suicide

and you told me to pull the trigger

i took back what i said

you took back what was yours 

you took away my freedom

I took away your soul

i burned our little house down

you spent our entire savings

i called you a liar

you called me a lunatic

i wanted to destroy

you wanted to build

i gave you fire

you gave me a concussion

It was a rainy day.

The wind forced the little drops of water onto the window, and I watched the droplets as they chased each other down the glass, collecting at the bottom. I thought about everything, and yet nothing at the same time. I thought about the past week’s events and felt the goosebumps rise up on my arms. The week’s therapy had helped. I was finally starting to live again. But no amount of therapy could have ever prepared me for what happened in that one moment.

The phone rang.

my sister peeled her eyes away from the chattering t.v. and looked at me. She put the T.V. on mute, then slowly stood up from the couch and made her way to the phone. She picked it up and put it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said casually, examining her nails.

then after a moment her eyes widened. I immediately felt a sense of panic and fear in the air. and I knew- even though she glanced at me for a fraction of a second- I knew who it was. It was him.

My heart began to race, as her conversation turned hushed, urgent and argumentative. My breathing became staggered and I felt as if my lungs were full of lead. Finally, she slowly turned to me with the phone in her hands, reached out to me. I forced myself to take the phone. I felt as if I had just signed away my life, and I could feel the lump in my throat forming.

I held the phone in my hand for a moment and hesitated. I could see my sister looking at me, her eyes wide and severely concerned. She nodded at me quickly, and tried to smile assuringly, but it looked more like a pained grimace. I looked down at the phone then raised it to my ear. 

“Hello?” Said the voice on the other end, muffled and worried. “Hello? Violet?”

The sound of his voice.

My lips began to shake.  Tears began to well up in my eyes and I couldn’t hold back anymore. My hands began to tremble, and soon my whole body was shuddering with sobs.

I could hear the stunned, excruciating silence on the other end of the line, as my body convulsed and crumbled. 

“Violet…Violet please, I- I’m so sorry, Violet, please, please, talk to me-“ 

I could bear it no more. The phone fell from my fingers and I could hear his last words echo though the ear-piece as it landed on the floor: “I love you.”

But it didn’t matter. My face fell into my hands and the emotions overtook me. My sister swooped in and snached the phone off the floor.

“Don’t call again.” She hissed into the phone. I heard her slam of the phone, and then her hurried footsteps as they shuffled toward me, then she wrapped her ever-caring arms around my shoulders. 

She said nothing, just sat in silence holding my shuddering body and waited- waited for what she was always waiting for: the rain to stop.