"my silent year"

i can't remember everything. i only remember little bits and pieces of what happened to me. they come to me at night, sometimes, when i'm trying to sleep, or sometimes they come when i am with my lovers, or sometimes they come for no reason at all, when i am feeding my cats or washing my dishes and looking out of the window into my garden. i'll try to put it all together and tell it here, and maybe it will bring me closer to being free. i'll warn anyone who's going to read this: my story may bring on strong emotions, and it's also going to be graphic because i don't feel like i will have told my story if i don't tell all of what i remember.

i was young and the world was fresh and the apples were always ripe, it seemed. the sky never seemed to be unblue, and the animals never seemed unfriendly. i was the kind of little girl you see on tv who has big elfish eyes and long curly hair that she wears with ribbons. that was me, but i had my dark hair instead of blonde and my tomboy streak too, which separated me from the tv girls. because of my love of the outdoors, my father built me a beautiful elevated playhouse in the backyard that was so wondrous and perfect i couldn't believe it belonged to me. it was my secret place. there was a deck, seven feet off the ground, on which i could lay and watch the skies and a shelter on stilts with lattice windows and a sturdy roof to keep out the rain. i decided right away that the only people who would come into this playhouse had to be invited in by me.

he was nine years older than me. i was five or six, though somewhat advanced for my age, and he seemed a man already compared to my childishness. our names began with the same first letter, one of the unusual three (q, x and z), and he was my first crush. i didn't know what it was i felt for him, but i was jealous when he would play with my brother instead of me, and i was angry when i saw him with his girlfriend. i imagined falling from my playhouse to the ground and having him come running and scoop me up in his arms and save me like men so often saved women from harm on tv and in books. i would gaze out the window at his house across the street and think about how wonderful he was and how much i wished he would play with me.

and then one day he came over to see my brother who wasn't home, and i asked him to come into my room, and he did. we sat there for a long while, on my bed, while i was embarrassed about my teddy bears and he was looking around my bedroom. then, a hazy memory tells me, he turned to me, bathed in sunlight by my window, and narrowed his eyes to slits. his tongue became like a serpent, playing games with me, telling me lies. i could tell what he was saying was a lie. i can't remember his words, just his expression, and his tone. then i remember he told me to touch him. i was confused, and in a corner, and i didn't like his face. i didn't move until he grabbed my hand and pressed it to the zipper of his jeans. he gave me commands in such a voice that i couldn't tell him no because i didn't know where my parents were and i didn't know what to do and i only knew that he was dangerous at this moment. he smelled like hot asphalt and rotting fruit, and his hands were so ugly as they gripped me. i obeyed him until he began panting, and then he shoved me back against the wall and turned away with his shoulders shaking. he was gasping and cursing beneath his breath. after a few moments, he got up and went away.

i didn't understand. i was so confused and bewildered and frightened by it all, and i still loved him. i still looked out at his house with the willow tree in front and the forest green window trim and the manicured lawn, and i still thought about him every day, and for a few weeks i didn't see him. i think i forgot the day in the bedroom by the time he came back.

the next thing i remember was a day in the summer. the day in my room had been during the early spring. my mother had hired him as a babysitter for my younger brother and i. when he got there, i was so happy to see him, so excited, so eager and innocent. he told us we were going to play a game. first we played hide-and-seek in the yard, and when he found me he pressed me against a shrub and rubbed himself all over me, so roughly i could feel his fingertips digging into my ribs and back. he was groaning, breathing in my ear. i was frozen, everything was moving in slow-motion, and i left myself and i could barely hear him groaning, i could barely feel him pressing his body desperately against my fragile form. i was away with the birds, and i could hear their songs. i was at peace. his hands were moving down my body, i was more angry at being distracted from the birds than i was frightened by him this time. i think because i couldn't see his ugly face or his awful hands, and he wasn't speaking in his vicious serpent voice. he was breathless, and sounded frightened himself. cold air struck my exposed belly, i shivered, and heard clearly my brother shout that he was tired of playing this game. the man who was not a man dug his fingertips into my hips to hard tears sprang to my eyes, and he cursed me, and he grabbed me by the arm and yanked me up, and i was surprised because i hadn't realized that i had sunk to the ground. my pants were muddy.

when he discovered my brother behind the apple tree and sat us both on the steps, told us to shut up so he could think, we both did so respectfully. he walked a few paces and looked down at the ground, kicking a stone. he was shaking again, his shoulders. i was staring at him, i could see his outline quivering against the clear blue sky. he turned, and his voice was snakelike. "we'll play house," he said. "i'll be the daddy, you'll be the mommy, he'll be our son,"

we went to the backyard, to my playhouse. i said we could play there. as soon as we got up into the treehouse, he told my brother to go to the front yard and gather acorns, and they would be our food. he said that was grocery shopping. then he took me into the playhouse and said in the snake voice that we were going to have another baby. he asked me if i knew how babies were made. i said yes, which i thought i did but didn't. he said okay and pushed me down on my back, on the hard wood floor of the playhouse. there was something hard against my leg that i didn't understand. he pressed his mouth to mine and for a brief moment i was overjoyed. he was kissing me! he was kissing me like in the movies and the books and he must love me too! then there was something wrong. he was drooling on me, and his tongue was slithering across my tight-lipped mouth, but i could taste his hot, awful mouth and i could smell his rotting fruit smell, and he was pressing his body against me over and over and over. i heard my brother yelling and i heard him snarl "go away" and my world filled up with stars because his face was pressed too hard against mine and i wasn't breathing. i couldn't breathe and i felt like i was going to die. i wriggled beneath his crushing weight but he didn't even pause. his tongue slipped over my rosebud lips and my wrinkled chin and my soft cheeks and he grunted and held me pinned like a butterfly under glass with it's wings impaled. i was so afraid i wouldn't live. i struggled harder, and my elbow somehow hit him, i think. i opened my eyes so wide it hurt, after realizing that they had been closed, and saw the light through the lattice hit his face and he looked so angry at me, like he was going to kill me. his jaw was shaking, his eyes bulging. his ugly hands were clenched. he was the vampire i had invited in, and now he was going to suck my life away. i felt it. he was going to murder me. i quaked and breathed and gasped and whimpered, and at last he shoved me and my head hit the floor. and i didn't love him anymore.

those are the clearest of the memories i've dug up from inside my head. it's been eleven years since i moved from that house, since i moved from him. i haven't seen him since, except in pictures where all i can do is stare at his awful hands. i refuse to have my bed face west. it's only faced west once in my life, and that was then and this is now and i'm doing all i can to separate the two. i'm sixteen now, and i'm trying to move on with my life but i feel like my boots are filled with rocks that cut my feet and weigh me down. keeping the secret inside was impossible to do forever, though it worked for nine years.

i've only told a few people, and some of them have tried to help and some of them haven't. the ways in which some people react is the worst. some people tell me to get over it, they tell me it was a long time ago and i shouldn't dwell on the past. people who say that are so far from understanding that i just can't respond to them. it's as if they think that's an original idea of theirs. they don't think that for the eleven years i've been carrying this weight around on my shoulders i haven't already tried to get over it? because god knows i have.

other people tell me it's okay now, i'm safe, and that's meant nicely, but it's bullshit. i don't mean to sound spiteful or ungrateful, but they don't understand. no one can really understand my feelings (even other people who have been through similar tortures, because we all react differently), and they don't know what the nightmares are like. my lovers from the past and present have never understood why i suddenly have to stop making out, and i can't go any further. everything in romance is a big challenge. i'm very overly-romantic, to make up for the ugliness i see behind my eyelids, and i want so badly for people to love me that i become clingy and i have breakdowns. and i have the strangest qualities. i don't mind it when people touch my breasts, what makes me nervous is the fact that they can feel my heart beating. i can't handle the kind of huge, passionate kisses everyone is so used to seeing on tv. everything has to be soft, and slow, and patient. so far i haven't even been able to get to the point in a relationship where i can tell any of my lovers, and i certainly haven't been able to trust anyone enough to make love.

some people i've told about it actually tell me it's not such a big deal as i think it is, like it's all in my head or something. some of them have said that i was too crazy for them to deal with. some of them have called me a liar because i told them i was a virgin and when it comes right down to it i don't remember enough of my silent year yet to know if i am or not. i don't know if i ever will know for sure.

i always feel alone to a certain extent, even when i'm surrounded by friends. i'm grateful that they haven't had experiences like i have. i'm thankful that the ones who know and who remain my friends do their best to help when i'm in the midst of a breakdown. but i'm lost, and i want to be found. my spirit is as dirty as the palm of my hand, and i am ashamed. i sometimes wish i was one of the other three girls in this statistical group of four. i see victims and survivors, and i know i'm still a victim, and i have a long way to go before i will consider myself a survivor. the world once loved me, but now it has forgotten my name. i'm out to tell it my name once more.

-butterfly (i have chosen butterfly as my healing name because i am in the process of emerging from my chrysalis, my cocoon, and when i do, i will fly, and he will be earthbound)
 
 

I've e-mailed you a few times before but now I feel it's time to tell my story. My name is Melissa (and you may print that) and I'm a fourteen year old girl. And I'm a survivor.

I was ten when it happened. Our school had a month long field trip to the YMCA... everyday we would go there and take swimming lessons. My best friend at the time was a boy named Howard. I remember having the most humongous crush on him... everything he did was pure magic. I loved how much bigger he was than me, how much stronger, how much more courageous. How great he made me feel. How we would sit next to eachother in our fourth grade class and talk when the teacher wasn't looking. We were young, we were rebellious. We were friends. God, that phrase stings now. But onwards... our school was having it's month long YMCA trip. Howard and I were put in the same team. I remember being so happy when our names were announced, one after the other... "Howard G., Melissa L..." I ran up to him and gave him a high five. He just smiled sweetly. I still remember that smile.

You know the phrase "love is blind"? It sure is. It's blind and stupid. I didn't notice the slight comments... the one that I remember most was him telling my friend Ben that "yup, Melissa is a well-guarded woman..." and then he looked at me, or maybe at my chest, and said "no offense". And I took none. In fact, I remember smiling at that. Fuck, I was so stupid.

The last day of the trip. I wasn't wearing my normal bathing suit... no, that one was in the wash, so I was in my mom's leopard-print suit. It was a size too large. I was always the last one out of the pool. Always. He always waited for me. Usually, as the plan went, we'd walk up to the crosspath to our seperate changing rooms, and then we'd part. But that's not what happened that day.

It's all in slow motion in my mind, like some old film that no one's watched in a while. It's choppy, and some frames are cut out. And I can see myself like I'm just an onwatcher. It's amazing the things our brains can do. I got out and he commented on my bathing suit, I told him that this was my mom's, but she never uses it and we're gonna get rid of it after today. He seemed so very happy at that. I grabbed my towel and we walked out of the pool room. We passed the main desk, where I handed in the band I used to keep my hair up. He was near me the whole time. I asked him why... we usually part a lot earlier. He shrugged and asked if it was okay to escort a lady to her room? I blushed... I can still feel the heat on my cheeks, and nodded. The stupidest mistake of my life.

We kept walking until we got to a bathroom. He said he had to go, but to wait for him. I nodded. But then... he grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside the room. He pushed me into one of the stalls and locked the door. I started asking him what he was doing, but then he pulled out a knife from his swimming trunks pocket. Stupid me... he had been covering it with his towel! I was scared now, and I kept stammering "H-h-h-h-howard..." until that knife went next to my neck. He told me that if I was quiet, I'd be okay. Then he asked if I understood. Stupid me. I nodded.

The film gets choppy here. I remember his chlorine scented hands, those cold, cold hands, taking off my bathing suit... just ripping it off. I was afraid. I was scared. I have a slight memory of his telling me to take off his shorts, but I think I fumbled and he slapped me and did it himself. He pushed me further to the ground --- my head hit the toilet seat. Then his body... his cold, chubby body... was pressed against mine. He looked at me, and I can see the fear on my face, and he smiled and told me, those brown eyes of his shining, not to worry, since this wasn't going to hurt a bit...

I went numb. The blood ran down my leg. I wanted to scream but that blade at my neck wouldn't let me. I had no idea what was happening. I knew what sex was, but I didn't know this... I didn't know that the man pressed his large, huge thing into the girl's area, and I didn't know it was gonna hurt, and I didn't know it was gonna bleed, and then, my next memory is of his standing up, taking the knife away, telling me, "good girl", and handing me my towel. He got up, put his knife away, pulled up his pants, and said he'd meet me on the bus, and he left. I got up and vomited. I do remember that.

I wrapped the towel around me --- thank god for beach towels --- and walked into my changing room. I ignored the teacher's cries of "why are you late?!", and I grabbed some paper towels and stuffed them between my legs. I put on my clothes slowly, with trembling hands. The teachers wanted to know if I was okay. I told them I had "gotten sick" and vomited... they all looked at me with pity and helped me onto the bus. I saw him there. He just smiled. I wanted to get sick again. I saved it for the school.

My mind closed the memory for the longest time. Three years, to be exact. But then, last year, it started coming back. And here I am, still putting pieces together. But this explains everything... the constant dreams of being raped by a guy in a bathroom, my habit of locking doors and then having to make sure they're locked, my compulsive disorder with making sure all the items on my nightstand are placed nice and perpendicular to the table, and my awful bedwetting habit. And my incredible feeling of worthlessness. Everyone tells me that what's happened has happened, and there's no need to fuss over it. What the fuck kind of advice is that?! I lost my virginity at the age of TEN. To a boy I THOUGHT was my friend. (And I found out days after this happened that he had a girlfriend and I was nothing but meat to him...) How am I supposed to "FORGET" this?! I need to heal first... I write lots of poems and songs about "it"... but the healing isn't close to over. It's barely begun.

I'm fourteen years old. I've been a victim of depression for the last two years. And now this. How am I supposed to get "over it"? Is there some magic cure? And if there is... will you give me the biggest bottle I can get? And can I overdose?
 
 

About nine years ago, something happened that has affected my entire life in ways no one would ever imagined. I don't remember the last time i was happier for more than maybe an hour at a time. People who know me...they don't remember me being happy either. I'm 14 now. Some days, i feel like i'm 50. I feel like i've been here a long, long time...like i've seen a lot more than anyone should ever have to. When i was young (back around the time of the rape(s) ) i lived with my grandparents, my older brother, and my older sister. My mom was in and out of the house constantly. My grandmother is neurotic. I think maybe that is where i got my anxious tendencies from. She also has no spine. If anyone did anything wrong in the house, she would never stand up to it. Never. My grandfather, on the other hand, was a strict authoritarian. I don't think he ever heard the saying 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. It was his opinion that children should be punished before they've done anything wrong, i think. The littlest, tiniest offense equated to a paddling. But that's not even the part of my 'childhood' that haunts me. (i write childhood in quotes because childhood is a very poor name for it.

ever since i could walk, i've been treated like an adult. it seems to me i have been watching out for myself, making my own meals, watching my younger siblings, being home alone by myself, etc etc as long as i've been alive. my grandmother used to make me go on these walks with her when i was like three...she would then proceed to tell me about her horrible marriage and what a bad person my mom was. what is even more sickening is that no one saw anything wrong with treating me like a little adult. in fact, that is what they told me...'You are a little adult, trapped in a child's body'.) I have never, ever told anyone what i'm about to write. It is terrifying for me to even type it. It makes me so sick that i just feel like vomiting. One night, i woke up. I knew something was wrong. There was something wrong. I didn't open my eyes...i never do when i first wake up. Never. Back then, i think it was laziness...now it is a self-defense thing. But anyway. It took me a few minutes (it was probably more like seconds...but it seems like an eternity now) to figure out what was wrong...there was someone in my room. Someone, in my room, touching me. I was not in school yet at that time. I did not know what 'rape' or 'abuse' or 'molestation' meant. But..i knew that this was wrong. My rapist performed oral sex on me..i think he also put his fingers up inside of me. I tried to roll over...made noises like a person having a bad dream (little noises. i didnt want him to know i was awake. if he knew i was awake, he might catch me. and if he caught me, he might hurt me.)...but that didn't stop it. I don't know how long this attack lasted...god, i don't even know if it was the only time. In fact, i'm almost sure it wasn't (my sister remembers hearing me screaming, but not wanting to do anything for fear that she would be killed or raped herself. she didn't know what was happening...i didn't tell her until i told everyone else.) As he was leaving the room, i sat up in bed and opened my eyes for the first time. I did it slowly. Like i was just waking up. I immeadiately recognized the guy in my room. It was my older brother. I played dumb. I played dumber than dumb. I asked him why he was in my room sleepily. I will never, ever, so long as i live, forget his response. He told me that he was 'looking for batteries'. I didn't tell anyone, of course. I knew that it was wrong, and i didn't want to get in trouble, i guess. I was young...strange things happened a lot. I let it recede into my memory. Into the back of my mind, where everything else i don't want to remember is. I don't know when it came back...i sort of vaguely remember seeing a video about abuse in school one day. It was a poorly done movie. It had nothing to do with the kind of abuse that happened to me. Some girl's neighbor wanted her to make a video with him wearing a teddy, or something. I don't know. But i guess it struck me then--this happened to me. I might have been in 5th grade then. Maybe 4th. But still, i did not tell anyone. Instead, i spent a long time figuring out why it was my fault. Why i was a bad person because of this. Why people would get mad at me and disown me if i told them this. I guess i got worse and worse. Things snowballed. I was overweight and ill-kempt. I had no friends. I didn't want to live. So, one night during the summer between fifth and sixth grade, i got me a knife. And with this knife, i cut open my left ankle. Only two or three times, and not too deep each time. Seeing myself bleed was enough to scare me...so i didn't kill myself. However, i became a self-mutilator. All that summer, i cut myself when i hurt, if that makes any sense at all. I told myself, 'This is what you get. This is your punishment for not being a good little girl.'

That went on that entire summer. The next two years, i was an off and on bulimic. And then this year, things crumbled. In March, one of my friends died. I think it was the one little thing i needed to push me over the edge. I started hurting myself again. Worse than before, this time. I scratched my arm open with my finger nails. A lot of people have seen my arm and gone 'DAMN! how could you do THAT with your nails?' All i've got to say to that is, 'How could my brother do what he did to me?'. I'm now starting to see the hurting myself in two ways. First, it's a reenactment of the pain i felt. I didn't properly deal with it then. I want to do it all over again...i want to be furious then. I want to go back to that night and scream my head off and have my brother sitting in jail where he belongs. But that is over now. The second way I see it is as a sort of tally of my abuse. For every time someone hurt me, for every memory i have of being beaten, of being abused, of being treated like a little adult, of being called names, of having every little bit of my self degraded into nothingness, i have tried to hurt myself. And you know, if i were to be covered in head to toe with scars, there wouldn't be enough of them to cover all the times i have been hurt. So, finally, in late march, i was messed up badly enough to end up in the mental hospital. I was there 10 days the first time, i think. It seems like years. In the long run, i think it helped. In the short run, it drove me insane. I missed my family, and even more, i missed my friends. We got one five minute phone call in the evening and one in the morning. We were only allowed to call our family. I called my best friend who lives in Colorado (i live in pennsylvania) with my calling card twice. Luckily for me, i never got caught. Two of my other friends from the internet sent me stuffed animals that i treasure and still sleep with to this day. I realized then how important people were to me in my life...and how important i was to them, to some extent i guess. But all of this didn't do much for me. The most that came of it was that i told people about the rape. I figured that i didn't have much left to lose, and that if they were going to hate me and disown me, well, it wouldnt put me in any worse of a spot than i was already in. Also, I stopped scratching myself pretty much, but that didn't end the hurting myself. About a month and a half later, i bounced back into the hospital for another 5 day stay. The worst self-injuries were yet to come. When i got back out, i started burning myself. I would take coins and stick them on my ankle (still my left ankle) and then get a lighter and heat them until the lighter would stop working or burn my hand so badly that i couldnt hold it anymore. How many times i did this, i don't know. Maybe 20 times. Maybe 30. A lot of times. I'm in therapy now. I have been since about February. Maybe it was January. I don't honestly remember that. Finally, two months ago, i found some sort of inner strength inside of me. In August, one of my very, very, very best friends died. He was hit by a car. He was one of the people who knew about my self-mutilation when he was alive, though i never told him my reasons behind it. He hated it...he wanted me to stop hurting myself. He was someone i could call when i was down and he would always make me cheer up. He was encouraging to me in whatever i did besides hurting myself. He was someone really special. His death hit me hard. But it also made me realize that if i couldn't stop hurting me for *me*, i had to do it for him. He deserved that little respect, at least. I slipped about three times after i decided i owed him that much. I'll admit that. I haven't got any sense of pride left anymore. On Wednesday of this week (it's Friday today), i had my two month anniversary for not self-mutilating. Right now, i don't know where my life is going. But i know that i am alive. I know that i don't have to live in pain for something that is not, never was, and never will be my fault. And i think i am beginning to find the courage to not live in pain anymore. Right now, I think that maybe, somehow, by some twist of fate, Everything is Going to Be Alright. thanks for listening...god, i feel better having said that. If you post this on your page, you can put up my email address with it (zero@enter.net)...no one should ever have to suffer something like this, and definitely not alone...and well, i was given ears to listen :)

--z.b.