Today I feel defeated. I feel like a small fish in the big ocean. Everything I do fails and at the moment my head is going full speed with "pictures" from my past. I call them pictures because that is what it looks like in my head. Like a slideshow. I think these pictures are eating me alive. It feels like there's a hole where my heart is supposed to be.

When I close my eyes I see darkness. A dark room. In this room is a crib, and in that crib there I lay. The crib bars surround me. I am crying. I cry because I am hungry or because I'm wet or lonely or maybe because I want my mother. I cry for all of the millions of reasons that babies cry. Until my door opens and the sound of his boots walking closer and closer to my crib gives me something else to cry about.

When I was born darkness cast its shadows over me. The devil himself kissed me on the cheek. That devil was my father.

I do not know how old I was the night that my father left my room but I know I was younger then two. This is the first memory I have of my life. I also remember his smell and his hands and that when he left I felt broken, hurt,shattered, exposed and confused. I do not know what he did to me exactly. This I cannot see. Maybe I am not ready to see it. But I know this incident changed who I was supposed to become.

This makes me angry! That my father the one who was supposed to love and guide me through life is the one who could hurt me in this way. When I see other girls with their dads, girls who complain about how "daddy won't give me money" or "my dad is so annoying" It literally makes me sick to my stomach. They have no idea what they have. I grew up with a dad who had two faces. He was charming and handsome and loving and made me want to be his daughter. Then night came and he was evil. Thinking of nighttime daddy makes my skin crawl. He played his game well and everyone was fooled. I was just a tiny bug caught in his web of lies. Only now 40 years old can I start to realize that what he did was wrong and was not my fault.

How could he look at me a small child and see anything ******? Babies are warmness, smiles, laughs, and play. What kind of person would want to destroy that? I guess no one can ever answer these questions for me. I have to accept this. Anyways explanations will not solve or fix what has already been done. Nothing will. I am a victim of ******. THERE I SAID IT. Acknowledging it makes it real. But that does not heal me. I am a broken bird with tattered wings.

How do I fix my heart with these huge gaping holes in it? Do I pretend I am okay and patch them up with fake smiles and laughter? What if the patches fall off and I am left feeling defeated again? Do I spend thousands of dollars talking to therapists about all of my many problems hoping that 10 years later I will somehow be "normal" whatever that is? I will go with the first option for now. Pretending I'm fine and putting a smile on my face. If I smile I seem happy and then no one will know the pain inside me. Some know what happened but think I am "healed" so they do not ask questions and smiles do not lie right?

Sometimes I wish that someone would see past it and try to save me. Take me into their arms and let me cry and give me what I crave so much. Human contact. The right kind of contact that reassures and tells you your safe and loved. I feel alone and without purpose. What I know is today I feel defeated. Today I feel alone. Today I remember things that I did not remember yesterday. Today I have flashbacks where I feel like a little girl again. Where I feel like his hands are rolling over my body now. His eyes creeping up on me now. But it is not happening now. It is not real. This is what happens today. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be better.

I am trying to heal. I am trying to move on. This is a slow moving hard process.

nine years old
such a beautiful girl
sparkly eyes
long, dark hair
and still haven't lost her
zest for life.

she gets tucked in at night
and is sung a lullaby
everything is quiet and happy
but only up until this point.

in the eye of the storm,
her covers are ripped off of her
her pajamas torn apart
her face is filled with
tears
sweat
fright.

****** in the dark
she sings him a lullaby
scarred for life
devastating
and who would have thought
it was her brother all along?

It is mine and mine alone...to fight…talk…cry…scream…hate…hold...and hopefully someday face and accept. How could I have possibly believed that someone else could understand...

I feel like I am so many different people disconnected from each other wrapped tightly inside this lost little body with no escape.

                                              I am a mother
                                              I am a wife
                                              I am a friend
                                              I am a professional
                                              I am so much more…
I am an ****** survivor…she is the part that is wholly separate from the rest of ‘Nita’.

I have never faced her, accepted her or anything that happened to her, she was not me…now she has grown into this big all-consuming monster growing inside of me. And the bigger she gets, the louder she is, the faster I have tried to bury her and push her away. But she is now way too big and I am way too old to bury her anymore. And I have to figure out a way to be okay with her being a part of me.

Why do I continue to run and fight who I used to be and who I am? Why am I so scared and so ashamed? Why do I continue to live in doubt and hopelessness? Why can’t I trust anyone? Why can I not understand and accept her? If this is what I so desperately wish for, what I have worked so hard for the past 5 years, why can I not just DO it? Why? Why can’t I be okay with ALL of me?

I am rambling tonight because I do not feel well and I am afraid to keep all of this inside of my head for fear that tonight could end with the unaccepted being punished. And there is no ‘support system’ in place right now to help me with that. There is just ‘me’, logical adult Nita, trying desperately to remain in charge. I catch myself not breathing, and it feels like I have to talk myself through a few breaths before it becomes subconscious again. And yet even when I concentrate on my breathing, I cannot breathe deeply, I cannot let all the air out of my lungs. Why? Is that because I am afraid and untrusting that air will fill my lungs in the next breath? Not only can I not trust another human being, I cannot trust my own body to breathe?  

I am not crazy. I am not weak. I am alive and I am lucky. I am alive…so now what? Is this where I say, “Yes, I am an ****** survivor~ time to move on.” And then I walk away? I keep trying that. I am an ****** survivor. I am an ****** survivor. (I suppose that is a step forward, I still can’t say the words out loud, but I can write them now.)


               I SURVIVED THE ABUSE ~ IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON…

But I need help with the second part. I mean, I have moved on, I am an adult, I am not helpless. I can function in society, and the majority of the people in my life probably think I am a product of a normal childhood. But it has affected so many parts of me, parts of me I am possibly not even aware of yet. That is the only way to explain the nightmares and the triggers and the strange reactions to what most people consider normal situations. I try to keep track of these moments, events, feelings, and I think I am doing better, right now…and yet I also feel like I am waiting for fate to stomp on me and squash me like an ant.  

I wish I could talk to people in my real life and trust that they won’t look at me in shame, embarrassment, or worse, pity…but I cannot. Nope – my past is mine…and I am left here alone now – to fight with it, talk to it, hate it, deal with it, cry with it – and maybe someday accept it.

And I will do it alone because it is my past…no one else’s.
How I could I have possibly thought that someone else could understand.

I lost my innocence when I was small
It was what had caused me to build up walls
The older one you are supposed to trust
Made me cry with his pubescent lust

Just five years old when it began to start
Eleven when he had a change of heart
The smell, the room, the feel of the bed
Are the very things that stay in my head

I could not tell for who would believe
That this boy would do this to his niece
Not all can understand my shame
Or even know where to place the blame

The small girl with blue eyes and blonde hair
Or the pre-teen boy with an arrogant air
At five you don’t understand that it’s bad
But you always know it makes you sad

I have since came to terms with what happened to me
An innocence lost that will no longer be
Nevermore will I hide this shame
I will forever refuse to hide his name

I have confronted my demon from my past
It is his disgrace that will now last

Small, blonde, blue eyed girl kindergarten age, but not yet six
Brown haired eleven year old boy going through puberty
She trusted and was innocent
He betrayed and committed a grave sin

The upstairs bedroom with the twin beds
A bed with smooth sheets and curtains closed
A single light bulb burning bright in the ceiling
Outside behind the garage with car parts and a burn barrel

Memories a five year old shouldn’t have
Actions an eleven year old shouldn’t take
She didn’t know it was wrong
He coaxed her to keep it a secret

Innocence forgotten, walls erected
Shame she felt as time went on
Terrified to place blame
Years passing, it all stopping

Sadness knowing what transpired, never telling
Afraid of accusations of lying
An uncle a young girl should love and trust
Instead she learns to loathe

Discovering she was not at fault
No longer will she be ashamed
Confrontation is a step towards a demon destroyed
Soul soothing, enabling the skeletons to be released

His denial is his shackles of shame
Innocence lost never to be recovered