All of My Trust, all of My Self [My abuse story]

Just altogether shitty

The next couple of years from that point were hell. I started remembering more and more things.
How his hands felt, burning into my skin. His teeth and tongue, his fucking awful smell.
He told me that what he was doing was "allowed", made it seem convincing enough that I'd let him do whatever he wanted because I trusted him and he knew that. I was a little girl and was just happy that I got to hang out with someone a lot older than me, because I thought he was smart and cool and I saw him as a big brother. I even told him that many times.
I never thought anyone that I felt that close to would do anything to hurt me, but I was wrong. I really need to stop trusting that side of me. The side of me that forgives anyone just because they can always be a "better person".
Because, even though what he was doing to me hurt, both physically and emotionally, if he said it was "okay", I guessed it must have been because I never believed he would lie to me and I thought that if I didn't let it happen then he would hate me.

He even hurt me in the house when my mum and his dad were downstairs. As if he knew I wouldn't tell on him.

All of this knowledge had become too much. When I thought about the abuse in my head now, I could see it clearly. I could feel it. I'd scratch at my skin because I could still feel his hands on me and I'd cut open my skin in hopes that hurting myself would stop these phantom hands from grabbing me.

It was then I turned to drugs and alcohol. I had a group of friends, a pair of enablers though they had their own issues, too.
We would walk for about fifteen minutes to get to a shop that would sell us cigarettes and alcohol. I didn't want to smoke or drink at first but I was squishy and vulnerable and it didn't take much to convince me to have my first ever cigarette, and with alcohol it was the same. My first ever experience with alcohol, we drank cheap shit from the shop that was pretty much just cancer in a bottle. The type that rots your stomach.
I'm addicted to nicotine now, I smoke several times a day. When I drink on the rare occasion, I still catch myself bingeing when I don't really want to.
We used to drink alcohol pretty much every weekend, and it would almost always end with us crying. After school we'd drink by the canal even though it was still a school night.
I'd carelessly smoke drugs without any idea where they came from, I tried doing pills but they had no effect so I never tried them again. I'd even just chug cough syrup and different types of medicine just so I could feel it burn in my throat.  I deprived myself of meals and sometimes even water.
I attempted suicide many times throughout the span of two years.
I was found trying to cut off my own airways.
I overdosed.
I cut my wrists.
I skipped school several times just to search for a bridge to jump off of, but the land was too flat for high bridges.
I even ended up hospitalised at some point.

I was slowly but surely destroying myself. I suffer from fits of shakes and twitches now, god knows what brought it on, but I broke my body down and I deeply regret every moment of it.
Never do what I did.
Talk to someone. No matter how scary some topics might feel, it's not weird or wrong to ask for help when you need it. 
If I hadn't have nipped that behaviour in the bud before I got into more serious types of drug abuse I probably would be dead now.
I was still suicidal, though, and I didn't know where to put all of the energy that was building up. By then I was constantly being bombarded with flashbacks.
I couldn't concentrate during class and was having breakdowns at school so often they had to transfer me to a special needs school. I stopped leaving the house unless I needed to and lost contact with quite a few of my old friends because all I wanted to do was sleep.
Even though I had nightmares, it still felt safer to keep my eyes closed. Even when I wasn't tired I preferred to rest with closed lids and lose myself in fiction. At my new school I daydreamed more often than not so teachers talked to me a lot to make sure I stayed grounded.

I found my therapist at that school, apparently she had been chasing me down for a while and wanted to talk to me.
I didn't want to talk to her at first, I never really trusted anyone and therapists were the worst for me. They always relayed what I told them back to my mum and I was terrified of her finding out what happened to me. So I kept my mouth shut.

When the therapist asked for me at school, she told me that she could tell straight away that I was suffering from trauma. My heart stopped at that, I seriously didn't believe she just came out with that out of nowhere and so bluntly. Was it seriously that obvious? Did anyone else know? Did my mum know?
I think I actually asked her if my mum knew. She said no, it was a silly question but I was a little bit scared.
The therapist didn't know what happened to me or who did it, but she knew why I was feeling the way I was and it was a weird but comforting feeling.
She told me that I could talk to her if I needed to and that we could do things at my pace, and she let me know that she could help me.

I felt odd when I left the office. Nobody had ever used the word "trauma" when referring to me before, I rarely even heard it used anywhere. I knew what it meant but it was hard for me to believe that's what I was experiencing, although it did make sense when I thought about it. It's something people only really talk about when referring to victims of war or when using it as a joke.

But it sounded like she knew what she was talking about so therapy didn't sound so bad. I was willing to do anything to just feel normal for once.