Yellow Tulips.

I sit here, alone. Everything around me is silent but my mind is screaming. Whirling. His face. His hands. My body so tense it's starting to ache but I'm used to it. Because he's not here but he's actually here. Trauma is a cruel deceptive lying bastard. It's fucked up. Excuse my language but my mind can't be quite so eloquent right now. It's much too busy forcing me to remember his fingers on my spine and his teeth biting my neck. It's preoccupied with the gasping my lips release as I feel his hands circle my neck. Strangling my screams and silencing the last part of me willing to fight. You see people who have never been abused will never completely understand that fighting is incredibly difficult. Freezing is sometimes the safest bet. I know, lying there and letting an abuser rape you sounds hard to comprehend. I usually stare at what's above me. I picture a beach or the woods or anything because I can't focus on his hands. Where they are travelling. What they will do. What the rest of him is planning to do.

Being an abuse victim is very hard to live with. In fact dying is usually attractive because the abuse might have stopped or be less frequent but the torture of being awake and living life is something I've tried for years to string into a sentence. Nothing can describe it. You can't compare it. It's just there. And people try so very hard to help me and sometimes I can smile. I can joke. I can even laugh. But it never lasts. I used think that if I could just grow up and become an adult I would be absolutely fine. As child you kind of believe things change instantly when you age. You think it will be incredible being independent because tears don't fall from adult's faces. Foolish but I was a child who believed in fairytales and princes saving the day. Don't judge. I've tried pills. Alcohol. Blades. Starvation. But I have reached dead ends every single time. I've been chronically suicidal for many years and I'm not sure why I'm still alive. The overdoses would have killed anyone but I'm sat here breathing heavily following yet another flashback. Tears blurring my eyes and making this even more difficult to write. What would you do if you were me? 15 years of abuse and it still feels never ending. I can't help be feel that if I was an animal I would have been put down many years ago. I get angry sometimes when I hear of people dying because I'd give anything to switch places. To take that for them. That might sound messed up but that's how my mind works. My incredibly abused and tortured mind. 

I envy the awkward and average-looking girl I used to be. When things weren't so desperate and cruel. My thoughts race but slow as soon as they settle on a memory of him. And I long to speed them up again but it's like the remote isn't working properly and I can't do anything but watch and feel and silently pray this time it ends quickly. Just like in real life, though, it's never fast. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. I lose time to flashbacks and my days appear to crawl yet speed passed me. It's a strange experience and sometimes I fail to remember life before any of this. Over half my life has seemingly vanished before my eyes. Almost like I've blinked and the ten year old squeezing her teddy is now much taller and covered in thick scars. Her mind changed from light to dark. The circles under her eyes growing purple like the bruises which take forever to heal. She's aged too fast and missed out on the important parts of growing up. I wish I could help her. I'd tell her not to fight him because that means it's longer and more painful. I'd tell her to keep focusing on that ceiling. To not look down because it's not happening. If she can't see it, then it's not real. That this man might be important but what he's doing isn't what he's allowed to do. It's okay to tell that teacher because she might listen. Don't bite your tongue. Say the words because time is running out. Silence will win in the end. Shout. Scream. Do something. Anything. Please don't grow up to be like me. It's not your fault but he sure did make it feel that way.

Yellow tulips are a perfect representation of my experiences of abuse. The bright petals which only dare bloom in the light. When my abuser won me like a trophy I felt all my layers of brightness start to scatter slowly towards the floor. They dropped so gracefully because it took more than one act of rape to drop all of my petals. And they stay grounded and calm. Waiting. Lingering until they naturally fade and shrivel. The first few years involved him removing every little bit of brightness I had collected as a child. The memories of laughter and dancing around my room. Being tickled. My golden curls grew and then dropped heavy along my shoulders. Those are another representation of trauma. You see, from the age of 16 I have straightened my curls and I currently have urges to automatically straighten my hair all day. I can't let myself look in the mirror because I can't be reminded of the ringlets that were tangled around his fingers. He used to loop them in and out of the kinks. The most gentle and innocent act he's ever made. I always buy yellow tulips because I am clinging onto some brightness. I can't let the petals fall. But I've grown to learn that life isn't about clutching onto every experience of brightness. That eventually the memory fades making room for more. It's not about losing it but more appreciating it and then being able to let it go and keep moving forward. I might still hide my curls from everyone but maybe one day I won't feel so terrified to leave them be. Because his hands won't always be there. One day I won't have to think of dying tulips. I will be able to appreciate their beauty but allow those petals to fall because soon they will bloom once more.