Nobody seemed to be able to understand that I can still cry from the incident. They wouldn't seem to care how the exposure left my heart gaping with misery. They would just as easily have brushed it off like the dust that forms on their minds from neglecting their access to integrity. Some people may wonder why I never told the truth, some people may wonder why I even bothered keeping it a secret. But it's because the memories I have aren't scratching themselves against the walls in their minds, they don't feel the blood trickling over old scars that never fully healed. They don't see his cold skin pressing against mine or feel the wet, dirty floor beneath me. They don't see the light that shone under the door from the outside world, or the chipped paint my skin was being pinched against. And the last thing they would remember was the feeling of the breath being sucked out of me and the pain that gripped the center of my being, they don't feel how he tore me apart.
Some morbid nights, I fight the battles that are always warring inside of myself. I fight the cages that rattle and the keys that jingle in front of my face that taunt me. Those cages tell me they will never allow me to break free from the memories of him murmuring in my ear, his agitation that settled on his face that I can never seem to remember, how when each of his fingers squeezed my body, I felt as if new bruises were forming themselves, but those bruises never healed. They stayed underneath my skin, pressing themselves against me in times when he runs across my vision and the memories take over and haunt me. But he wouldn't have cared.
I always felt like no one would care about what happened. That they might say, you weren't raped, so why do you still cry over it? or, he didn't force you, so just move on. But I never saw it that way. I saw it as my 13 year old mind was hanging from its bear fingers on the cliff that lead towards limbo when he came and he pulled me up from the grasping hands of the shadows that danced at the bottom. It was when he promised me that he'd always be there to catch me when I fall and when he stayed up late at night talking to me for hours that I deceived myself that he was different, and that maybe he actually did love me, just like he said. But fate wasn't so kind as to let me breathe in the chilling moments when I thought I meant something to him.
Instead, fate played a deadly game that had left me lost when I stepped into these same cages part of me has been trapped in for the past two and a half years of constant grieving. But yet, do they still not understand the reason behind the tears I still shed over him?
I cry because I can still feel the sheets that smelled overused, I can still feel his hands running over my body and how I felt so clearly in the back of my mind that this is the only thing he wanted. I cry because the paroxysm of his body pressing into mine tortured my head and the pain coursed through every nerve in my body, and all of a sudden he stepped back and relief flooded me, until he stepped forward and tore me open again. I can still feel the second time when he hurt me, when he truly pressed me against the corner and how even though I tried saying no, he pressed forward anyway, bribing me that everything was ok, that he needed me because he was hurt. And yet again, I let him hurt me. I let him because I didn't know where else to go, I didn't know how to step away and insist on him growing up and facing reality, because not even I could do so. I was never taught how to speak up and how to find the strength within myself to keep walking over the broken steps that seemed endless in front of me.
But what they never took the time to try to grasp wasn't only the event itself, but the aftermath. They seemed to forget that he not only hurt me physically but by leaving me alone to deal with emotions I'd never dealt with before. Nobody knew he started talking with one word rather than two. Nobody knew that after two weeks, I never saw him again. Only one knew of the tears I wept during a pregnancy test because I couldn't handle the pressure of waiting weeks for my monthly period to arrive that would satisfy my anxiety. What would I have done if I had a one year old baby cradled in my arms at this very moment? What if, in the event that something was altered, that baby carried the blood of AIDS within her system and was lucky to live this long? How easily could my life have been so different if even one thing was changed? Nobody thought think of that. Nobody thought to think that I was afraid of him, afraid of his name, his face, that face I could never remember but that I'll never forget.
Does anybody know he woke the sleeping beast within me that started speaking a legions worth of powerful words that strengthened my embodiment within my kindled spirit? Only for that, do I thank him for corrupting my childhood.