The World Through My Eyes: Poems, Short Stories, and Journals

Every Scar Has a Story (Short Life Story)

Trigger Warning: This piece features physical and verbal abuse, self-harm, and sexual assault with immense detail.

The human body is a cemetery of physical harm throughout its lifetime. Skin is the outline that shows the stretch marks from growth, the accidents, bruises that appear out of the blue, and haunting self-inflicted scars. Time dissipates the memory of the abuse on your body. The yellowing of skin as a reminder of past decisions, the scab that falls off with the slight touch of water, or the dried blood underneath your fingernail. Every incident had a story of how you obtained the mark that is imprisoned on your skin.
Unfortunately, most of my scars come from external forces that I was born into, sports accidents that were never fully recovered, or a blade across my skin. Remembering my childhood is a mix of construed lies that I told myself to cover up the reality of the truth. It takes hours to fully remember a childhood memory without the illusions of false pretenses. But the pain I felt haunts me in a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Growing upraised in a family that is rooted in Appalachian values dipped in Southern Baptist views, breeds an influential toxic environment for learning life lessons as a child. My family consists of both parents who supplied our livelihood through working constantly, aunts and uncles that showed true admiration because they never had kids of their own, and a grandmother who led the pack of hillbillies. My only sibling is an older brother that has autism; moreover, my grandmother raised us both.
We lived in a double-wide trailer on a piece of property in central Virginia. On the land that I called my home, there was an additional unused trailer home, three outbuildings, a greenhouse, a garden, and galore of flower gardens throughout. Mossy grass, willow trees, fruit trees, and a forest surrounding the outskirts of the property. One of my family's values is to have a strong work ethic. From the time I started walking, I was allowed to outside to play, explore, and do hard physical work. The first scar that I vividly remember is on my left pinky finger, I sliced my finger from a hack saw while clearing a fallen tree in the driveway, I was three years old.
I swear, my brother should have had the middle name 'trouble'. When he was younger, he would throw physical fits that consisted of punching, biting, and hitting, if something had triggered him due to his condition. More than likely, I was his subject for taking out his anger or frustration. He started physically hurting me when I was five or six years old, it lasted until I was seventeen. Hence, for discipline, there were hands, stitches, and belts for the worse punishments from either my parents or grandmother. The sound from the cracking of a leather belt filled the air with breathtaking screams at times. The swishing of switches from force hurt less but left a heavy impact on the skin. If the switch broke, we had to go out to the apple tree to pick up the replacement. If it wasn't healthy enough, we had to go out again to pick a new one that would last longer. For fun, my brother and I used Weeping Willow fallen branches as whips, sometimes the fun turned to pain from a forceful lash. Besides the whipping from discipline, the verbal abuse echoed off the walls of the house, arguments that broke out from talking back to saying mean remarks. This violent discipline showed me a path for physical pain to cope with situations.
To escape my home life, I would immerse myself in education during elementary and middle school. My reading level was at a high school student by the time I was in third grade, my mathematical and scientific skills were advanced, and my memorization skills were impeccable. I'm surprised that my cognitive function was not affected during this period by the domestic abuse. However, I would not talk to my peers, I isolated myself because I couldn't trust anyone but adult figures. The bullying at school started by the time I was in fourth grade, it started as comments to physical incidents. People would trip me, push me to the ground, and try to fight me. It was the first time I got called a faggot. I would not defend myself for years, verbally or physically, because I was used to it at home from my brother. During middle school, I was in advanced classes but struggled with my peers. I knew that people were jealous of my academic accomplishments, athletic accomplishments, and my physical size at that age.
My parents decided to help me when it came to social interactions with other people. They pushed me to try out for hobbies, then athletics followed soon after. I started with gymnastics, but I was too old and big as a kid. It was my dad that realized I had a cannon as an arm. My brother and I would throw a football and played Wiffle ball at home when we got along with each other. My dad asked me if I was willing to play little league softball to try it out. I excelled at it, and picked it up naturally. I placed 6th in the nation at ten for the softball toss event at Hershey's Track and Field Youth Trials. During little league, I went to state tournaments three years in a row, it launched my travel softball career as well. I went to my first national World Series at ESPN Park in Florida at thirteen playing for a 16/18u softball team.
I started to feel normal at this point in my life, I had everything going for me. My whole life shifted when my grandmother died of cancer in 2013. My family was torn apart by the loss. My aunt and brother decide to move to southern Virginia in 2014. My parents decide to follow my aunt, and we moved. Unfortunately, my aunt had to move back to central Virginia the moment all of us got down there.
Before high school started, my first move was to join the football team before the first day of school. I cut my hair and changed my name to Fred. I came out of the closet accidentally on my second day of high school. The culture of southern Virginia was not accepting of LGBT+ at this time, especially in this small town I just moved to. Immediately outcasted before I had a chance to explain, the bullying started shortly after. After getting into the wrong crowd of upperclassmen, I found a solid group of weird outcasts like myself, mostly seniors. I met a girl named Sami, we became best friends immediately, and we clicked right away. Sami lived on the same road as me and we were a grade apart. However, she was toxic, she introduced self-harm to me. To cope with the pressure of moving, my home life, the bullying at school, and athletic expectations, I turned to using self-harm as a mechanism. My first cut was on my left arm, I carved a 2mm horizontal line that stretched three inches. The sensation was painful, but adrenaline took away the pain from the physical and mental aspects. It got so severe that I attempted suicide by cutting my thigh in search of an artery. Only to my surprise, my dad found me outside in the cold before I left a pool of blood on the garage concrete. On December 27th, 2014, Sami called 911 for a well-being check after I left a suicide note for her. The next morning, my dad took me to the garage with rope and a gun and told me I had three options. I chose to talk about what was going on, my sexuality, the bullying, and I was struggling mentally to cope with social situations and daily life. I got into crisis therapy soon after, but it did not stop the self-harm. When I got back into school during the spring, the bullying and judgment became intense.
After my first high school softball season, starting as a freshman on the varsity team, colleges started looking at me for recruitment. West Virginia Tech, Radford University, Virginia Tech, and hundreds more followed. I went to college softball camps, toured major universities, and spent summers playing on major travel softball teams led me to many opportunities to travel and explore the United States. I was on a travel team that ranked 8th in the nation at sixteen. I relapsed into self-harm to help cope with the mounting pressure to perform in the same summer of 2016.
My junior and senior year of high school was a short period of my life where I was trying to discover myself in a positive manner. I excelled in school, teaching the classes I was in, and performing my best on the field. I had a couple of true friends that helped me when I was in school, but they never got to see what my home life entailed. The physical work at home became harder, the tension between my parents increased, and my brother was still abusive, but it turned into sexual harassment and assaults. I relied on self-harm heavily to keep me going.
In my senior year, I decided to attend Bluefield State College on a softball scholarship. I had my best high school season that year, I made the first-team all-state softball team. After I graduated, I reached out to my old ex-girlfriend to help me get a job to pay for school, I started at McDonald's that summer with her. I got to Bluefield in August of 2018, I stayed at an abandoned hotel that the college called the dorms, it was off-campus living with residents in the same place. That's where I was introduced to alcohol daily by the older college students. Throughout the semester, I used alcohol mostly to cope with the stress. One October night, I blacked out and was sexually assaulted by a male college student at the dorm. Afterward, I didn't tell anyone, I relapsed back into self-harm which lasted until the end of the second semester. When softball season rolled around in the spring, I was either tipsy or hungover when I played. I don't know how I did it, but I placed 12th in the nation as a division II softball player, and second-team All-American.
The summer was filled with working long hours at McDonald's and a hectic home life that became a toxic environment. My dad started an affair, without my mother knowing that he was cheating. My brother spent the summer with my aunt, working for a gated lake house community detailing lawns and shrubbery. My mother constantly worked and stayed at home to take care of my other grandmother.
The second semester started in August of 2019, I moved into a trailer with two new roommates. I had to adjust to living with people who were complete strangers to me, it was a new experience. I noticed in late August that something was wrong with me, and I dove back into heavy drinking. I was starting to isolate myself in the house, my mentality was completed destroyed. I came home one weekend; I was triggered by my grandmother and relapsed. I had a complete mental breakdown and told my mother everything about my personal struggles, I was hospitalized and entered rehab. I tried to go back to school after I got out; not even a month later, I ended up back in rehab for the second time due to intense self-harm. I dropped out of college after I got out of rehab. I got into some short-term outpatient therapy to help recover from substance abuse and suicidal ideation. I went back to college in January of 2020, my grades were dropping, but I stayed afloat for the softball season.
Of course, in March of 2020, COVID-19 hit, and I moved back home. By April, I decided to drop out of college again. I started working at Mcdonald's as soon as possible to make some money to help the family and myself. I worked for six months, and I was promoted to manager. From then on, working became my life, I averaged over 120+ hours for a two-week period. My friend still worked there, she asked me if I wanted to move in to escape my home life. We started dating shortly after I moved in, and she introduced me to marijuana. I used drinking, weed, and sex to cope with the stress of my job. After months of extreme workloads at my job in June 2021, I quit after a realized I was burnt out, developed an eating disorder, and relapsed back into self-harm. I broke up with her a week later I left my job, it was an overnight decision, if not I would have stayed in a relationship that was unhealthy for both of us. I moved back home, I was heartbroken from my first true relationship and terrified that I had to live with my brother again. I applied to Alice Lloyd College and got accepted in the last week of June.
In July 2021, I was triggered by my brother. My brother has been working on his driving license, he was driving and had an accident when I was in the car. He had a fit, cursing, threatening to kill himself and us with him. After this incident, it caused me into a manic episode. I stayed up for 5 days straight with hardly any sleep. I was traveling on the roads to be with my dad and his girlfriend to escape my brother since I was scared for my safety. While I was with my dad, we had a verbal fight, which caused me to tear a muscle in my right leg. He finally realized that I need professional medical help. We drove back home, and I went back to the hospital and got into a rehab facility. I was traumatized while I was there and had to leave immediately. I went back home and spent days in complete isolation. It took a week for me to get out of another manic episode. I focused all of my attention to get ready for attending Alice Lloyd College for the rest of July, preparing for my return to college.
In August of 2021, I started at Alice Lloyd College, and I felt right at home. During my semester, I faced some hardships, but I've made so much progress. I live in Carrick, a dorm that is so old that the mold doesn't even want to be here anymore. I lived with three other roommates in a small room that is based on a 1978 summer camp cabin, bunk beds, and all. Throughout the semester, I have met so many new people that are beyond interesting and I started to make friends again. From an academic perspective, I have flourished again, and my grades have impressed and motivated me to keep up with the amount of coursework. I have already finished my finals, I passed all of them and all my classes. I am so proud that I have done this well. From an athletic perspective, we had a fall softball season, and I noticed that I have lost some of my stronger techniques, but that had not hindered my ability to play. During the season, I didn't start as a position player, but I was always in the lineup. I have hit two home runs and played multiple positions on the softball field. I am so happy that I did this well playing softball after I retired from it after two years.

Overall, I think moving my life on Purpose Road had changed my outlook on life, I am finally planning on what my future career will look like and I have started setting new positive goals. I have never felt so normal in life, I don't feel like an outsider or an outcast. I have an amazing support system available to me and I am back in stable therapy with a system that won't fail me. In my final words, I am happy that I have been resilient and stayed alive. The possibilities are endless and in my grasp this time. Now, I finally have control over my life.