When I was young, I was very slow as described from my tutors. I didn’t pick up on things as fast as other kids and sometimes I felt bad about that, but I learned to just accept that sometimes, I take a bit of time.

But, there was one thing I wish I did understand before I was 6 years old. When I was 6 I was taken advantage of, not majorly, but I was still taken advantage of, when I thought it would end, I sadly stumbled into another situation where another completely different individual did the same. I found it tough to talk about to my close family, because I shut them off quickly after that.

It took me 10 years to talk about what had happened to me with them and others. I was afraid, sheltered and admittedly began outcasting myself because I was manipulated to believe it was something ‘normal’ when it wasn’t.

When I had finally confessed to my family, my Mother stood at my side through it all and I was grateful to have a woman like her in my life.

I am quite open with what had happened to me solely due to all the years I was not ‘open’. So I promised myself I would work on getting better and to this day, I’ve been getting better. If anything, saying it, does get it off your chest and I think telling someone was mostly the best part for me in the recovery process.

I learned about other’s situations inside and outside of my family and I’ve come to learn and love each and everyone of them for their stories, bravey and honestly, it just melts my heart how we can just see strangers on the street walking past us with happy expressions and we would not know they’ve been through hell.

The reason for the name ‘Mr. Man’ is because it did genuinely take me years to adapt into allowing males to actually go near me, be alone with me and sometimes even just touch me due to the situations I had been through. The name is simply a nod to how most of my harrassers were male and when a genuinely sweet man comes along wanting the best for me, it becomes a pain to have to explain to them why I might not be a 100% comfortable with being alone with them.

This has, however, improved, I now can be alone with certain male individuals and feel safe, this is most likely the biggest step in my recovery since telling someone. I am very happy to have all my friends who support me along the way.

I think the thing that hurts is how I have friends who are male, who do want the best for me and sometimes when getting to know me, they misinterpretate my discomfort as something of their wrongdoing when in reality it never was their fault; It was just a few bad people in the pool of good and they sadly reached to me first.

So this poem does have a quite ‘Deer in the Headlights’ vibe towards it for how some people when they are in vulnerable positions just simply freeze or are lost in confusion to know what is really happening.

I also try to tell my story as much as I can regarding my childhood, because I hope it inspires other young people to tell others their stories of child related issues with either mental health or people being creeps on them. People don’t realise at times how damaging it really can be on someone’s life – but it’s never too late to change those negative feelings, I know so many people who have changed their lives for the better, even after bad people stumble into them.

Never cut yourself short, you are always deserving of any kind of love.

This was inspired by Ballade forms of poetry. It was interesting to try something like this with a distorting feeling towards it, so I do think I worked my way a little outside of the structure for the last paragraph as I felt it was suitable.

For Italia

All the best things I ever learned were from a certain neighborhood...

Feedback welcome.

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