Do You Want Some Water?

So I’m watching Say Yes to the Dress (which i’m ADDICTED TO) and I always cry when the brides find their dress and they look so beautiful and happy, but  It kind of makes me sad because I’ll never have that opportunity. 

 when I was upset as a little girl, and I was crying in my room because of one thing or another, my mother would bring me a glass of water. So eventually, whenever I was upset, I didn’t know if it was because I was really sad

or just thirsty.

I realized at some point he had taken my hand in his.

He looked into my eyes with such pain and despair, I could hardly look back into them. I knew he saw the shame in my eyes, and it destroyed me. He looked down and turned my hand upwards, tracing the blue veins in my wrist with a shaking finger. He slowly brought my hand up to his chin and kissed my palm gently, though It felt as if he had presses a lit cigarette into my hand instead. The sting of guilt, and the knowledge of what I had done overpowered me in that moment, and my shoulders began to shake; my stomach convulsed and twisted in pain. So much was I overcome with emotions that I began to sob uncontrollably, and I tore my hand away from his grasp. 

His eyes widened with terror and his heart rate monitor spiked, the beeping seeming to grow louder and more frantic, as he reached for my hand, arm, clothing, anything, but I backed away from his bed.

“Don’t leave,” He said quietly. “DON’T LEAVE!” He screamed, thrashing against the buckles that held his limbs loosely down.

Three nurses streamed into the room, speaking fast and reaching into drawers and cabinets, while trying to hold him down.

I couldn’t take it anymore, “I”m sorry,” I whispered but my apology was lost in all the chaos. 

Two more nurses arrived and I slipped out. I ran down the hallway, my face wet with tears. I could still hear him screaming after me, as I escaped through the double doors of the hospital, and never looked back.

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.

It’s like this.

My mom is dead, and I can’t bring her back. I’ve pleaded with God, or whoever is running things up there, to bring her back. I even tried screaming, bets, negotiations, and even threats, but nothing has worked, and she’s not coming back. There’s nothing I can do or say about it, and even though it destroys me, there’s nothing I can do. 

I see my friends who complain about their moms when they ground them or make them upset or disappointed, and all I can think about is how much I wish I had a mother to complain about. All I can do is lay in my bed and try to remember her- her smile, her smell, her eyes, but it seems to be slipping away, like i’m losing her, and i can’t remember it as vividly. then I start to cry because I’m scared i’ll forget, and if I forget her, then maybe she’ll forget me.

Everything is blurry, and undistinguishable. my dad is so depressed he hardly leaves his bedroom except for work. He shuffles like a zombie out the door, managing to barely get dressed, and somehow makes it home, throws his keys onto the counter and locks himself away in his room until dinner. He hardly sleeps… sometimes at night I hear him sobbing all the way from my room, and often I wonder if he hears my cries as clearly as I do for him…

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

“One word to describe you?”