Fourteen years ago, I was entering a new Millennium.
I was a broken girl.
A mere nineteen years of age.
I was celebrating with friends.
There was drink and music and a fancy dress.
I don't recall much, only two photos of that night, sparked from a disposable Kodak camera.
I scribbled out his face, using a black pen.
I did the same with the Polaroid picture I had of us all.
The "crew," those who claimed to be loyal and best friends.
We were all in the image, and I took his face and made it go away.
At the same time I scribbled out her head.
She was the best friend that turned full circle on me.
She made life hell.
She made me never want to be anywhere near any of them.
Both their faces were removed.
Like in the show Revenge, where as she revenges those who did her father wrong, she writes them out.
And I did the same.
Little by little, only my face remained.
No one believed how he was with me.
I never even told them the full story.
Just minor details, and I used to be laughed at, the crazy one telling lies running from the truth.
But what went on behind those doors, will only even be known by us.
And of course the therapist who recalled the details with me, to reform and rejuvenate my tempered mind.
Secrets I shared with her.
In the room, which had a white noise switch, so only us and the walls knew the verses sang.
I'll spare the reader the details of the nights ***** and beaten, another poor girls cries through the night.
And as dusk turned til dawn, on this treacherous love affair, I ran.
And the running took me home, and although safe, he was a presence there for almost a year.
Outside he was waiting, the door bell ringing, the phone blowing up.
I would cry and rip the cards and love letters he so wrote.
I would be on bended knees pleading for release.
I wanted to take it all back, all the screaming, the shouting, being muted and used and abused.
It was so prevalent in my head that I eventually lost all conscience.
So detached during such attacks, no memory really remained.
It was scattered and fallen, and my body mirrored the deterioration of my mind.
Thinner and thinner, I escaped all womanhood.
I shrank, to the point I shopped in the children's section.
It pleased me because I felt safe, it pleased me because he could no longer hurt me.
But that night he did. And I purged in the bathroom for the first time, after he forced me to my knees.
He even had the audacity to come into the bedroom after, and express his concern for the waif I now was.
I told him I was fine.
Decades later, that "fine" response remains.
I dealt with his force and pain, the pain he pushed and locked on me.
And yet every new year, I am reminded of what went so terribly wrong.
Three months down the line, celebrations into 2000, he is thrown out by security.
I actually can't even remember what he did.
I guess he did enough for others to see that he was wronging me.
Yet I always questioned, how could something that felt so right, be so wrong.
I asked my mum earlier; "do you think he is married with kids?"
"Yes!"
"Do you think he hurts her?"
"Yes!"
All my answers cleared.
Here I am, 2013, alone.
Single since the start, and single at the end.
I hurt.
I am tired.
In many ways, I am thinking that a little pain, for a life time of sleep, could be worth it.
Goodnight.

© Sia Jane