Running Screaming

The Past Reflective

There were a lot of things that were not okay in my life. More than what when right it seems. I had no idea when I was headed down the paths that I was on that it would lead to the amount of pain I would be in, even to this current day. The memories are like whispers, haunting me. The whispers in the shadows, they keep me awake at night. And through all of this, through the pain and the misery, I endured. When I wanted to quit... When I wanted to die... I endured. 

At 20 years old, I was so sure that I would be able to find the love and the purpose I had been lacking in my family with someone special. So in May of 2013, I started hooking up with a boy only two years younger than I was. He was cute enough, seemed like a sweetheart. I was in a really bad place in my life. I had had a taste of freedom from an oppressive family and ran as far as I could away, behaving in a wild manner, dressing in clothes I knew my family would never have let me out of the house in. I was in a serious goth and emo phase. Where my long brown hair used to be, I had practically cut it all off and dyed it black so that it barely reached my ears, wearing fishnets and leather chokers, wearing my clothes cut so that they hung off of my skin and skirts so short you could see almost everything. 

I felt free, not wanting to live in reality as I dove into the internet and decided to forgo any real friendships because nothing felt safe if it was real. But sex? Sex felt real. Sex made me feel alive. And as I look back on it now, things were not as clear then as they are now. I would not have predicted that by July of 2013 I would end up pregnant. Nor that I would feel fed up of where I was living and move in with the guy I had only been dating for a month and a half. I made so many stupid decisions. I thought that because it had not yet happened, I was unable to have kids. And that was such a big mistake. But worse, worse was the idea to trust these people. 

Sure, I had been through a lot up to this point, but had I stayed, I would probably not be where I was at now. I would also not have grown up. At 20, I was very much like a child, not ready for any kind of responsibility. In that 9 months, I moved houses a total of 6 different times, had no job and was constantly sick. In October of 2013, I discovered that my child was going to be born with a birth defect that left her stomach, large and small intestines outside of her body through a hole in the umbilical cord that should have sealed up earlier on in my pregnancy. 

"Amara, something doesn't look right. Let me go get the specialist. I'll be right back," the nurse had told me, pausing the ultrasound over top of where my baby lay. I was so confused at the time. 'Didn't look right? Was my baby going to be okay? I was supposed to find out the gender today,' I had wondered silently to myself. My boyfriend, Andy looked across the room at me, concern also written on his face. He was only 18, what would this mean? We had absolutely no idea, and when the door opened back up and my doctor came in, nothing could EVER have prepared me for her next words. They ran rent free in my mind for the next 22 weeks like a broken cd, causing me to doubt myself, causing me to hate myself, and I fell into a state of depression.

The statistics of children being born with the condition Gastroschisis, which was what my daughter's condition was called was really low. It could have been the result of a fall... And not even 5 weeks into my pregnancy I had taken a tumble down the stairs, passing out after seeing a patch of black aura run across my vision. "It's my fault. She's in pain... It's all my fault!" I managed to choke out as he told me the details of what was going on with her. That had been the day we found out the gender... Supposed to be a happy occasion, but it was enshrouded in darkness. I went home that day, cried my eyes out for the next few weeks, my pregnancy now high risk, so I had increased the visits to the doctor from once every 4 to 6 weeks to every 2 weeks. 

They would give me depression screenings, and I always pretended everything was okay, babbling nonsense to people to get them off of my back. Whatever sounded good, really. The white walls were driving me crazy, but I tried to find solace and comfort in Andy's family. His mother and father had been divorced from the time he could walk, probably before that I think, and both were remarried. I tried to get along with his mother, and I thought we were fine. I thought everything would be okay. And then, early December of 2013, I said something... I think I annoyed him a little too much... Had had a seizure earlier that night and my brain was not too clear, I had never had them until I had gotten pregnant... 

And for whatever reason, though I will probably never remember what I said, Andy whipped me around and slammed my 6 months pregnant body up a chair, bending me backwards until pain shot down my body and between my legs. I was screaming, tears dripping down my face as I try to remember what I had said to warrant this kind of treatment. His best friend Jason's grandmother peeked her head around her bedroom and yelled at him to get off of me as I felt something hot drip slowly between my legs. "STOP! YOU'RE HURTING ME!" I cried, wincing as he shoved me one more time before letting go. 

Slumping to the floor, his friend Jason stays quiet as he watches his best friend walk away from me. My sniffles sounded, echoing in the room, and I could tell through the red haze of pain that he had no idea what to say to me, or about what he had witnessed that had just happened right in front of him. As I slowly got up and made my way to the bathroom, I pulled my pants down, hoping that maybe I just peed a little, but finding patches of blood instead. Breaking down in sobs, I tried to justify the treatment. He had never been harsh like this before. Maybe I did something to deserve it. We would go to sleep and we would wake up okay tomorrow. It would never happen again. 

I was lying to myself.... 

I lied to myself so hard.

 It did happen again. Over and over, and I just let it. This.... This was only the beginning of the 5 year long journey.

(A/n So this is obviously the beginning and Amara Danvers is much younger here. There will be a progression of time as things happen. If there are any triggers I forget, tell me and I will add them later.)