Broken

Chapter 1 - What A Young Girl Should Not Know

I was born into a loving family, or so I thought. My mother named me Darya, which is Persian for "sea". She was from a coastal town, and spent a lot of her childhood on the beach, or on her father's fishing boat. I remember in a letter she once wrote me, she said that she named me that because I was "the only thing she loved more than the sea". The sea for her was an escape, an escape from the harsh realities she faced as a child - her mother had turned to the drink, and could get pretty abusive if she was agitated in any way.

Anyway, my mother met this man called Steve, and she fell head over heels in love with him. I've seen pictures of them when they were young, and I'm not gonna lie, he was a handsome man in his day. They got together after a while, and then my mum found out she was pregnant with me. Steve's parents forced Steve and my mum to get married, even though they had kind of grown apart (things got complicated for them somehow). So, they had a very rushed wedding in a registrars office, with their parents and their best friends there as witnesses.

I was born six months after the wedding, and that was when things started going downhill. My mother began to suffer from PND (post-natal depression), as she was struggling to grasp the concept of motherhood. Due to this, she lost her job as the manager of a top company. This meant that there was less money coming into the house. My father, Steve, was a freelance house painter, however, he was being put out of business by chain companies. As he was getting less work, he turned to the drink, just like my grandmother. Only difference was, he wasn't only violent, he would be sexually abusive, verbally abusive, basically you name it he did it.

At first, it was only my mother, but when I got to about three/four years old, he turned on me. He would rape me whilst I slept, he would beat me to a bloody pulp if I did one thing wrong. I was terrified. I was in so much pain, physically and mentally.

One day, he took it too far. All of his work equipment was seized by the council, as he was up to his eyeballs in debt. Most of our funiture in the house had been seized too. We were left with one bed, a table and two chairs. Steve took what little money we had left, blew it all off gambling and drinking, and finally rolled home at two in the morning. My mother had started to pack some clothes for me and her, telling me we were going somewhere where we would be safe. But Steve caught us. He beat my mum so badly that she was left on the floor, barely conscious. Blood was pouring from her head, her arms and face black and blue. And then he turned on me. He grabbed me by the shoulders. Now, bearing in mind that I was four at the time, and my bones were still developing, and that he was a very strong man, my shoulders and collarbones were shattered under the pressure from his hands. He pinned me to the bed, and stripped me naked. My mother watched on helplessly as he slid inside me, pleasing himself as he sped his actions up, eventually reaching his high point. I could hear my mum crying and screaming for help, but he kept kicking her to shut her up. After he had finished, and I was left in unbearable pain, my mother bleeding to death on the floor, he cleaned himself up, and headed back out. I cried for my mum, but she couldn't get to me.

I guess a neighbour or someone heard our screams, and called for help. Ten minutes later, sirens were blaring, lights were flashing, and there were paramedics and police in the house. They burst into the room to be greeted by the sight of a naked four year old and a bloody pulp of a twenty five year old woman.

We were taken to hospital, where we were treated for our injuries. Whilst we were there, mum wrote me a letter, explaining everything. She wrote everything down, her backstory, how I came to be, how we ended up in the predicament we were in that day.

The police continuously asked my mother for a statement, so that they could lock the animal that was my father away. However, due to the immense amount of fear that had settled into mum's head, she refused point-blank. The doctors insisted on keeping us in the hospital until a suitable place was found for us, where Steve couldn't get to us. But he did. He found out where we were. He came. And he only had one thing on his mind. To put an end to it all.