I often think about the fact that me and my rapist are the exact same people
but one of us made it and one of us didn't.
we were sad children, COLD children. the lack of our parents love and appreciation for new life bit worse than my Montana winters and his California autumn ever could. and those were our favourite seasons.
each home was equal. a baby's cries for help forever filled the air, and only the roaches crawling on every surface would respond. my skin looks great against a roach infested, mint green apartment. someone was screaming, not for help like the baby but out of rage. there was no food. well, there was rotten food, but there was no food.
there was, however, 2 little kids sitting locked away in a room to rot. me and him were the oldest. his brother C and my sister A are equal too, I think. the babies crying are A and M. we all sat screaming or rotting.
oftentimes, he would speak to me about our future together. we were each other's fucked up refugees for dealing with abusive, drug filled, parentless homes and sad life sob stories. it creates an unhealthy dynamic.
but anyways, our future together. god, readers, you'd never understand. he'd tell me we'd give our kids calm, drugless, devoid of screaming homes, full of food and with a severe lack of roaches. often my uterus would twist and turn itself into suicide between these tired hips because imagining letting him into me felt, somehow, sinful. and imagining that I'd even dare let him put a parasite in me even worse. our home together would be calm and full of food but their mother would be forever quietly screaming, writhing in bed next to father like a dying bug, like a hatching caterpillar that immediately dies. their father and my "partner", Richard, he would stay still.
he would stay still next to me. they would watch me writhe and scream silently in that shared bed like I'm on fire and burning to death and they would know their father took something from me. Richard would know he trapped me. All of us, even me, would know that someone I really was all along was more desperate to hatch out of my charred and violated body more than ever. didn't matter how long it took me to realize. he'd always be watching, waiting, running his finger along my broken organs to determine when is the right time to make his debut and rip himself out of an old friend's body like the horrid creature everyone would have thought he was.
you'll never understand, you'll NEVER understand. I knew that if I stayed with that man I'd end up killing myself at 40 with 3 doting children and an even more doting husband waiting for me to walk out that bathroom only to walk in to my brain and spinal fluid spilled on the floor like paint. I paint the tile, the bathtub, the mirror, the toilet, the shower curtain, my memories sputtering and fading with each piece of my head splattered on various surfaces. they'd never be able to use that bathroom again.
oftentimes, now that I've escaped and really worked on healing and redefining who I am, it's terrifying that I thought like that and also thought that it was normal to feel like that. I sacrificed my everything for him and now it no longer shakes me to my core to speak about it. I won't have to be a poor mother trapped in a loveless marriage and a bare minimum family hiding my true identity. I'll be a lovely husband, I'll spend all my days writing and loving, and I'll be waiting in the kitchen with my own husband and a cup of coffee for our children. children made out of years of love and dedication, not out of obligation. I will never sleep alone wiggling to get out of my own skin.
I will sleep clinging to my husband. and our oldest will sleep clinging to him. and our youngest will sleep clinging to me. and tiny kittens will be clinging to everyone's back or feet. and it will be June. and I will be happy
Princess, if you're out there, or somewhere lost in me or Richard or anyone else, I'm safe now. it's all over and we'll never have to suffer again. and thank you for holding me close in your heart for all those years until I was ready to come out. it turns out I never bursted out your chest like a parasite, you got too tired and opened up your frail chest like a fragile door and I stepped out and finally laid you to rest. and rest you will. I'm ready to take on this world head first but thank you for keeping me safe locked behind your ribcage and caught in your throat while I worked up the courage. we were never each other, but you were kind to me, and I love you.
and we're safe.
