When the Lights Go Out.

Somebody had to be the first one to say it's over. Somebody had to break and tell the truth.

People ask me all the time why I left my family or rather why I had to leave them. It’s always that lingering question that causes an uncomfortable silence because I can’t say it out loud. I’ve told my story many times in the last two years and each time I wish I could have been strong enough not to. I wish so much that I was one of my sisters because why did I have to be the one that had to walk away? Why did I break the silence and finally tell the truth? Maybe I am weak and maybe they are strong. But essentially I made my choice to walk and turn my back on my entire family to simply speak the truth. Imagine that? You say one sentence of what actually happened and suddenly the people you love turn their backs on you and make impossible for you to return.

Somebody had to try and be brave and somebody had to take the blame. Somebody had to leave, I just hate that it had to be me.

A lot of people have repeatedly told me how brave I am for speaking out and not hiding away. How brave of me to do the ‘right’ thing by law. But I feel like a total idiot for reporting. You see if you end up losing your entire family, including extended family, I don’t think you’d think it was a brave move. Because if you lived a day in my shoes you would not feel brave. The moment you awaken you are hit with abandonment and loneliness. You have no one. And you spend your days holding crumpled photographs willing the people inside them to come back. Tears all over your childhood teddy bears. It’s not brave to report your family. Well at least for me it was incredibly stupid. And now I’m forced by family members to take the blame for my actions. Lets forget the person who abused me, because abuse doesn’t happen in a happy family. No of course not. The girl is mental, isn’t she? She must have made it all up. What a complete nutcase, yes? What an elaborate lie.

I had to walk away from that revolving door. It only takes me right back to where I was before.

When I lived at home I was in and out of hospital for Paracetamol overdoses. I was the revolving door patient because I was desperate for my own mother to care if I died. The problem was that she clearly couldn't care less and so I kept taking more and more tablets. Each time I sustained liver damage so bad that sometimes doctors feared for my life. That would have been a blessing. Living in a house where you might as well have been invisible was soul destroying. This loneliness filled the most heartbreaking moments of my life. The abuse was nothing to that feeling of not being loved and not being cared for. I nearly starved myself to death in front of my own mother and she ignored it. My arms were covered in dark red scars and she completely turned a blind eye. I was that loved and that wanted by her. She didn’t fight for me. No one in my family did. Sometimes I wonder what made me so unlovable. What did I do wrong? I tried to be perfect and in doing so I destroyed myself. 

When the lights go out and I struggle with the silence. 

At night I struggle to sleep because the silence is too deafening. I usually cry myself to sleep most nights because I miss having people around me. I think a lot of people take their families for granted and I did too. You only realise the loss when it’s taken away from you and the other people have the control as to whether it will ever return to you. So I spend every day hoping they will make contact. Hoping this is all one terrifying nightmare and I’ll wake up one day back in my butterfly covered bed. Nighttime is my riskiest time of day. I tend to dissociate much more at night which makes me more vulnerable to acting on my suicidal thoughts and urges. In the day I seem to manage from the outside but still my head is tortured by a choice I was forced to make. The abuse came first but guess who’s alone in the dark? Guess who lost everything the day she asked for help? The one with the bruises and the pain between her thighs. The girl who lost her virginity at 10. That’s me. It’s not a fair deal but it’s all I’ve been given. This is why someday soon I must leave. And it’s not a reflection of anything people could have done to save me. I think I’ve always known that trauma will be the death of me. Don’t blame yourselves.

It’s going to be okay soon and I will be sleeping safe and sound. 

This might well be the last article I write and I suppose it’s only fitting to make it short and sweet. I know I will be okay soon and I don’t want anyone to worry about me. I’ve always appreciated the support I’ve been given throughout this ordeal. Me going away isn’t a reflection of poor support. It’s a reflection of the life I have had and the abuse I have sustained over large periods of my life. It’s a refection of my family giving up on me because I stood alone in the truth. And maybe one day they will change their minds but I’m not waiting for that to happen anymore. I know I will never receive the family I wanted but I love them all the same. It’s not their fault, it’s mine. I’m a complication and I’m the faulty gene. I’ll be okay. I promise.

When the lights go out.