Young Writers Society

** Trigger Warning: SA, VA, and PTSD. Read with caution. **

Behind this smile

There is a dam breaking,

Full to the brim with insecurity,

Doubt, and uncertainty,

Where demons devour themselves

Under the surface,

Deep enough where no trace

Can be seen.

But why is it deep?

Why is it hidden?

Strangers and lovers

Plaster it with profanity.

CHAPTER 1 - The beginning of madness

Let me begin by saying, this is not meant to target anyone. Nor is it meant to bring shame on anyone. This is my mind speaking to itself, to sort through the hundreds of interwoven tendrils of confusion, trauma, embarrassment, doubt, fear, and shame. And in the act of writing them down, maybe then one day it will all make sense to me and I can proclaim I am not broken, I am a warrior and a survivor.

I love my parents. I do. They have given up much of their own lives for me, but I still wouldn't call the first eighteen years of my life a good childhood. Situations beyond our control took what was a happy little family and shattered everyone's core. My father was diagnosed with Parkinson's when I was two, and the complications that define it destroyed the strong and proud southern man, leaving anger, rejection, and spite in its place. Toxic expectations of masculinity had been ingrained into him by his father, and when my dad was no longer able to work, he was treated with disdain and insulted. He was told "You're not a real man. How dare you let a woman take care of you." My dad fell into a hard depression, and rage and alcohol came with it.

He never raised a hand on me, but he did raise sharpened words at my mother and guns to himself. I remember lying in my room, curled up under my pillow, blankets, and teddy bears, pretending to sleep while they screamed at each other in the middle of the night. I would hear my dad berate himself, calling himself worthless and undeserving of this hell, and berate my mother, accusing her of belittling him, conniving against him, treating him with no dignity. She would cry and scream, begging him to stop accusing her, to not leave her, to not hurt himself.

There are two nights in particular that are burned into my memory, every vivid detail so ingrained into my head that sometimes it feels like I can relive it. The first one was at two a.m., and I was in my little white bed in my room. I was holding my music box pony, and I heard feet and shouting just past my door. My door was open. I looked up and saw my mom standing squarely in my doorway, hands gripping the wall. My dad was on the other side of her, leaning a little and rambling on in what I know now to be a drunken stupor. He tried to push past her, and my mom wouldn't budge. I heard her distinctly say, in a tone of voice I never heard her use before - a tone of defiance - "You are not going to touch her!"

The second one was in the early evening, around six or seven. I had been playing in my room when they started to fight again. I was a little older this time, and I was starting to speak out against their fights, begging them to stop. Mom would yell at me to go to my room. But this one was different. She started to shriek. My grandmother ran over from her house - thankfully we were on the same plot of land and Nanny had heard them from her kitchen. Nanny grabbed me and told me to come with her. They all thought I didn't see my dad holding a knife at his own throat. They thought I didn't see mom slap him and take the knife away from him. But I did. I understood then that he hated his life.

I used to fear my dad because of it, but as his disease progressed and he became more dependent on us, including me, I quickly learned that he was not the only one who had problems with anger and manipulation. My mom was as spiteful and hateful as he could be. The less my dad could talk, the more she would start to do the things he had accused her of five years before. By the time I was ten, I had come to understand that my parents were equally controlling, manipulative, and hateful. Love was not a word that was said openly but expressed in secret, usually through me. Before I was even old enough to have my first bleeding, I became the middleman between them, to be used to convince them that they did in fact love each other but didn't know how to say or show it. And in becoming the middleman, I also became the confidante, trusted with each of their darkest secrets, promising to never share then with the other.

I shut down on myself, learning from them at an early age that love has expectations and exceptions, and that only silence can be trusted. I started keeping my own secrets and throwing my pent up energies into drawing, writing, and eventually singing and acting. I would dispel the frustration, fear, distrust, and exhaustion by taking on another person's life, even if only temporary.

Home was not the only source of my pain and suffering. School was no safe haven. In second grade, I was locked in a bathroom and held down by my hair until I washed the hands of three big black girls. I was picked up by two black girls who were two years older than me, to be thrown, and I grabbed onto the monkey bar to get away from them. I fell and broke my arm. I was hit in the face with a tennis ball because a black girl wanted to see if my glasses would break. I was coerced into a sloppy, wet kiss by my cousin; he threatened to tell the school that I stuffed my panties, a horrible lie, if I wouldn't kiss him with my tongue.

Middle school and the first two years of high school were the worst. There was this group of boys who were all a year older than me. They took it upon themselves to make my life a living hell. Every chance they got, they would corner me, push me back and forth between them, call me names, take my bag and dump it, make me run into lockers, and bow up at me as if to punch me. Yet every time I would go to the teachers or principal about it, I was told that I'm too dramatic and that they only do that because they like me. It felt like no one cared, so I stopped speaking up. I was ashamed and embarrassed, but I was also afraid. Being afraid and having no one to talk to and feel safe with put me deeper into my own secrecy.

But secrecy only made my problems worse. As we got older and developed out young adult bodies, my "affectionate" cousin got bolder. He began to use blackmail and emotional coercion against me more often. He would threaten me with nasty rumors or to never be my friend and playmate again, or he would threaten my father's health since he knew the whole truth about him, in order to get me to kiss him, show him my breasts, or be his personal cheerleader and arm candy at his sports events. I never told anyone about it, not even my aunt, who had become my confidante, and "the talk" was never open for discussion in my parents' house. My secrecy enforced my naivety, and it cost me at the end of ninth grade, when he asked me to come over and help him study for a biology exam only to pin me down on his bed and help himself to my body for twenty minutes. The only thing that kept him from violating me completely was the natural flow of a woman.

Because he was family and someone I had trusted immensely, despite the warning signs of his behavior, the assault shattered me. I kept it quiet for years, his threats and excuses ringing in the back of my head. "Stop crying, it's not like I'm r*ping you.-- You're so beautiful. Your make-up did this. You do it good. You're just so beautiful, I can't help myself.-- If you tell anyone what happened, I'll deny it. I'll tell them you're lying and you want me, you incestuous wh*re.-- If you tell anyone, I'll come for your dad. You know he can't stop me. I should thank him for the weights. You know he can't stop me, and you can't either."

I think that was the point when the confusion and conflict in my head began. I stopped wearing makeup, unless my mom begged me to or unless I was doing a pageant. I began to read erotic novels, watch more risqué shows after bedtime, and kiss boys, trying to make sense of what had happened that night in his bedroom. I began to wear the stereotypical blend of denim, blacks, reds, and metallics of the goth groupies. I threw myself harder into reading, writing, drawing, designing characters that lived and survived and overcame the traumas I had been through and couldn't make sense of. I became clingy with the few friends that I had, but I couldn't bring myself to tell them my truths for fear that they might betray me too and use my fears against me.

And in keeping it quiet, it made me more observant too. I paid attention to people's eyes and lips, learning to read their intentions despite the eloquence or pleasantries of their tone and language. I stopped trusting people. I also blamed myself for everything. I blamed myself for my parents' toxic relationship, because I wouldn't pick a side, I wouldn't speak up for them both when I knew they were both wrong. Because I let them use me as leverage against each other. I blamed myself for my distrust in males, because I wasn't strong enough or brave enough to fight him off. I blamed myself for the unwanted sexual attentions of others, both friends and strangers, because I was too pretty and sweet. I started telling myself I wish I was ugly, then they'd leave me alone. I blamed myself for losing the only friends that I thought I had, because I respected my parents and God too much, feared drugs and sex, and wouldn't give in to their pressure at the illicit - and very secret - parties late at night. I blamed myself for my emotional shut down and confusion because I didn't trust anyone enough to tell anyone the truth, and I began to lie to myself. I began to tell myself that all of the bad things that had happened to me were deserved, because I was a horrible human being.

If only I had known then what I know now. My last twelve years would have been much different, and I might be in a better place for it. But there I go again, blaming myself for the terrors and pain, the humiliation and suffering. Even though I'm aware of it, it still hasn't gotten to be any easier.