V like Violation

It is slowly starting to get better, I am slowly starting to get better. This whole story was really eating me up from the inside, but it looks like I finally got rid of the demons resting inside of me. I finally made peace with myself. After ten years of hardly getting sleep, of always putting the guilt upon myself.
I know I shouldn’t blame myself for what happened but I do. I can’t help it. I blame myself for everything. But let me start at the beginning:

I was born at the tenth of July 1997. This day everything in the life of my parents changed. My father never wanted a child. He never wanted me, and he never made an effort to hide this fact. From sayings I know that he started drinking alcohol on a regular basis when I was about one year old. Apparently, it only got worse and worse from then on. He had the same demons as me, but I feel like his were darker, bigger, and even more willful.

My earliest memory of him is on my third birthday, knocking his hand, rolled up to a fist, in my mothers stomach. She didn’t even scream. She looked like she was used to it. Like she knew how to handle it. That day I noticed the dark blue circles around my mothers eyes. Now, being seventeen years old, I know that those were the reason she never left the house. The reason why I always had a nanny take me to my friends, bring me to school or music lessons. Why I never was allowed to bring home a friend of mine. I wasn’t scared of my father back then. I was only three years old, I didn’t know it was wrong of him. Of course, one gets a feeling that it can’t be correct but which three years old child would actually tell their drunk father to stop hitting their mum.

Not that I knew that he was drunk all the time. I didn’t know until I was around six years old. The violation never stopped. My mother never said anything. She just took it all in, never showed her pain, never made a sound. She was very brave back then, still is. One day, my mum took me aside, took all her braveness together and tried to explain to me what’s actually going on in our so called family.
She told me my father never wanted to get me, he wanted her to get an abortion. But she didn’t listen. She gave birth to me. She told me I am the most beautiful thing she has ever made, ever hold in her hands and ever layed her eyes on. I didn’t understand that, I still don’t. She clearly never saw the beauty of the world. She told me he started touching the alcohol bottles around a month after I was born. He couldn’t stand the screaming. Apparently, he called me an “annoying piece of shit”, an “useless meatball”.
The tears still gather in the corners of my eyes when I think about this, even after so many times. My father was annoyed by me. Me, who is carrying around his own DNA. Who is a piece of himself. Who was made by him. He’d rather drown out the noise of my screaming through the alcohol than trying to calm me down in person.
Mum also mentioned that he started abusing her when I was one year old. He then already found a new love for his life, the bottles. He started slapping her on the cheeks, knocking his fist into her stomach, and pushing her against shelves and walls.
I don’t understand why my mother never told anyone about this, or didn’t leave him earlier. I always asked myself. Why did she stay? What was so important to endure his abuse? When I asked her this question a few years ago, she lost all colour in her face and looked at me with a shocked face. She said: “You Ella, I stayed for you. I wanted to protect you. I wanted you to have the best possible life. Your father might have been an alcoholic, but he earned money, and he got us food, clothes, everything we needed. I gladly took a few hits for you. That is what you call motherly love.” I was shocked by this statement. This is definitely not my definition of motherly love. One shouldn’t risk their own life in order to save another. I wish she would have left Leeds just a few years earlier. But no, it had to come to the point it actually came to:

On my seventh birthday my father hit my mum in the stomach, once again. Tears were streaming down her blue and purple bruised cheeks. I decided it was enough. I got between them. I tried to stop my furious father. It was a mistake. I earned what was meant to hit my mother. It knocked me out for a second. That was the day my mum decided to leave. To pack the bags and leave England. To move away and start all over. The best descision she has ever made.

We moved to Germany when I was seven years old. I had to learn a whole new language but I was willing to do that, if it meant to finally bring peace in our lives. I did well learning german, and quickly found friends in the new country. Everything seemed to be better there. Until the guilt started to arise in my mind.

I was told that after we left Leeds my father finally realized what he had done. He stopped drinking and started to get his life and himself under control. But he couldn’t stand being alone for long. After one year of living without his ex-wife and daughter, my father decided it was best for him to end his own life.
The day I got these news, the demons took over my body. For me, it was sure why his life was the way it was. Because of me. I was the mistake he never wanted. I was the reason why he started drinking, and finally, I was the reason why he committed suicide.
I tried fighting them for so long, but was too weak. I felt down for so long. I still am not in the best mood but I am getting there, I suppose.

After ten long years in Germany I still was full of guilt but my mother got better. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her skin so clear and lightly brown, her hair so blonde, her eyes so blue. She decided to move back to England. London, this time. I was seventeen at that time. I still am.

So here I am now, standing at this grave. Trying to figure out what to do or what to say. I don’t know. It is weird to talk to your dead father, who when alive, hardly talked to you, and when he did, his voice only knew a forte. I am trying to make peace with myself. I will leave my demons here today, here at the grave. I don’t want them anymore. They have gotten enough from me.

From now on, I will be happy. I will be guilt-free. This, will be the new me.