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i_love_freddieTrigger warnings for this one: Child abuse, rape, violence.
I can't remember a time when there was no violence. My memories of the early years were hazy, but there was violence... not against people, that I know of, but most definitely against objects. Even as young as three or four I remember the shouting. Crashing as things were thrown. Tears.
And then I was 6 and I remember... standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at my mother slumped on the bottom step in her red t-shirt that was meant to be white. I remember the ambulance men taking her away while I screamed for her, and the huge police officers who tried to ask me where my dad was. The next day, refusing to leave my grandfather's side, I helped him wash her blood from the wall.
For the rest of my childhood, I remember the drunk and violent fights. The screaming and crying. The threats. I remember my stepfather saying to me: “I am going to kill your mother.” I remember the holes in the wall. I remember the sound of shattering glass.
I remember that shadowy figure who came into my bedroom, naked and erect.
I remember being left alone at school, with no friends and no allies. The pushes and kicks and slaps. The names – nasty names that I still hear in my head. The spitting. Most of all, I remember the fear of not knowing where the next attack would come from.
Then I was a teenager, and no longer immune from the violence myself. I remember the drunken rages, the verbal abuse. I remember my one prized possession being smashed in front of me. I remember the slaps, the hair-pulling, being pinned against the bathroom wall by my throat.
When I was 20, I met my first boyfriend. I remember how he grabbed my arm and dragged me down the street, leaving finger bruises on my flesh. The time he slapped my face because I dared to answer him back. And most of all I remember that night I told him “No” and he violated me anyway, leaving me bleeding and traumatised on the floor of a shared bathroom.
Long before I knew what terrorism was, many years before I was even able to comprehend that violence was a wide-spread problem across the world, I was already numb to it. I had to be to survive.
I still remember.
I can't remember a time when there was no violence. My memories of the early years were hazy, but there was violence... not against people, that I know of, but most definitely against objects. Even as young as three or four I remember the shouting. Crashing as things were thrown. Tears.
And then I was 6 and I remember... standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at my mother slumped on the bottom step in her red t-shirt that was meant to be white. I remember the ambulance men taking her away while I screamed for her, and the huge police officers who tried to ask me where my dad was. The next day, refusing to leave my grandfather's side, I helped him wash her blood from the wall.
For the rest of my childhood, I remember the drunk and violent fights. The screaming and crying. The threats. I remember my stepfather saying to me: “I am going to kill your mother.” I remember the holes in the wall. I remember the sound of shattering glass.
I remember that shadowy figure who came into my bedroom, naked and erect.
I remember being left alone at school, with no friends and no allies. The pushes and kicks and slaps. The names – nasty names that I still hear in my head. The spitting. Most of all, I remember the fear of not knowing where the next attack would come from.
Then I was a teenager, and no longer immune from the violence myself. I remember the drunken rages, the verbal abuse. I remember my one prized possession being smashed in front of me. I remember the slaps, the hair-pulling, being pinned against the bathroom wall by my throat.
When I was 20, I met my first boyfriend. I remember how he grabbed my arm and dragged me down the street, leaving finger bruises on my flesh. The time he slapped my face because I dared to answer him back. And most of all I remember that night I told him “No” and he violated me anyway, leaving me bleeding and traumatised on the floor of a shared bathroom.
Long before I knew what terrorism was, many years before I was even able to comprehend that violence was a wide-spread problem across the world, I was already numb to it. I had to be to survive.
I still remember.
