LJ Idol Friends and Rivals - week 4: Terrorism

[i_love_freddie]

Trigger 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.

Comments

[murielle.livejournal.com]

Powerful piece. Hard to read, but for the right reasons.


"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."

There is so much truth in this paragraph.

Very well written.

[rayaso.livejournal.com]

Fiction or non-fiction, this was a powerful entry. Very good job.

[eternal-ot.livejournal.com]

Wow! Powerful indeed...and heartwrenching ...well written.Great take on the prompt!

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

I wish this were fiction, but I have the feeling it is not.

This should not be any child's life, nor any grown-up's life. I hope that with time, for you it isn't.

[m-malcontent.livejournal.com]

Powerful and haunting.

[uf0s.livejournal.com]

this is extremely well written but so gut wrenching. i too hope that this is fiction, but i get the vibe that it's not. i can - unfortunately - relate to a lot of what's written here.

[dee-aar2.livejournal.com]

Huggssss ... Whether this is fic or non fic .. this truly must have been difficult to write .. and if it is non fic ... then really difficult to live through as well. You have written it so well I could almost feel the emotions and the resulting numbness of the narrator. And the closing line ... Powerful . If this is non fic ... I hope you have gotten stronger and broken out of the abuse chain ...

Well Done ...

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

So powerful and sad, and I am so sorry this happened to you.

[prog-schlock.livejournal.com]

The line between personal and political isn't entirely dissimilar from the line between personal terror and national terror. The effect is, of course, almost exactly the same regardless of the source of the terror. The things people have to turn off or on to survive are sometimes shocking. I've been reading a lot of articles about victims of severe early childhood abuse and all of the evidence I've read suggests that kids literally (in the classic sense of that word) never recover from it. It completely molds their personalities and makes just about everything harder for them later in life. What I appreciated about this piece is that it reflects this - once its happened, its part of you and you're impacted forever.

I have no logical reason for this, but this is the song this entry made me think of: