Running Screaming

Prologue

At 21 years old, I learned a very important lesson... I couldn't remember having many happy memories. Most of the ones I had were painful, feeling like the fucking black sheep of black sheep. No one gave a shit. I suffered as a child, a victim of favoritism. My two sisters took priority, myself feeling pushed to the back burner. I was always grounded, leading to being socially awkward and having general social anxiety.

I was abused as a child, having been touched in places I shouldn't have by family and family friends. The depression and anxiety grew. I developed RAD and any attachments I made were unhealthy, having faith in people I shouldn't, crossing my fingers as I hoped for a normal life. No one cared. Not one, when I fell pregnant at 20, over 23 hours from home. I was in a town where I had no one. In a place where I was forced to rely on people I thought I could trust.

I believed in them. I believed in the good in people. Because despite being burnt... Despite being hurt so much... Why fucking not? But I learned that that trust destroyed my life. There was no good in people. People only look out for themselves. They only care about what benefits them. What can they gain access to? And my naiveté cost me one of the most important things in my life.

That moment... When they seized my child for something they speculated I might do... The feeling of forcibly having something so precious ripped from you. The last of my innocence and wonder just... Just fucking gone. And that raw, gaping hole in my heart... I wanted to disappear. I would do anything... Anything in my life to reverse it. I would do anything to fix the regret... But I wouldn't undo meeting him... Even if it killed me because I would lose everything I hold dear now.

Pain.

That one thing I was so used to... Carrying her for 9 months, my child turning out with a birth defect... And the feeling of being inadequate before I could even try to be her mother... The trauma, the crying and the screaming for something I wanted with all my soul for years after... And not a fucking person blinked. No one knows... The hell I endured for the next 4 years was something that I could never have imagined.

That loss... The feeling of being unable to breathe in such a decimating grief that left me emotionally dead for years. There was no spark... I fought and I lost. But this...This was the worst part of it. This was going to lead to emotional scars I would still be trying to recover from years later. That broken 21 year old woman... If I could reach out to her, If I could have met her before it happened... I would have told her she wasn't alone. That she shouldn't blindly trust.

And that the good in the world? She wouldn't find it there. That all she would find at the end of that tunnel would be pain, heartbreak and immense suffering. But that woman? Yeah, she wouldn't have listened... She thought she knew. We thought we knew what we were doing. And yet... When we learned the truth, we still didn't walk away when we should have...

Who would have thought... No one could know...

And In the middle of the night... In the middle of the day... Every single day, over 7/10 women have experienced domestic abuse. Many many women... I didn't think I would ever be one of them... I would never have understood where my life would have led. This is the story of all I went through... And all I survived.