I went to take a shower and scrubbed my body over and over. I wanted to get rid of something I did. Like I could scrub it off my body, and than everything would be all-better. Memories are not dirt though you cannot scrub them away, and I have tried. PTSD can be triggered by a memory, and suddenly you feel like you’re out of your mind. You feel like running, and running until you meet water and jump in. You just want it to go away and never come back.
This winter I was able to go pick up some things from the police station. I only picked up my camera. The officer had a list and I had to initial on each item that I did not want it. Some of the things were not even mine. Some of those things belonged to him. I still remember all the little paper bags lined up in my hallway each one numbered just like they were on that list. They numbered my trauma and categorized it like they were library books or a CD collection. I remember the plastic light blue gloves on the Police officer as he lined up those paper bags, and made his list on his clipboard.
I was asked if I wanted my sheets back. Seriously? I would never sleep soundly on those sheets again. I could barely sleep on that old thin mattress for a while. Obviously my insomnia problems are still with me. How do you sleep when each memory triggers another of a different time, and a different place where something happened that never should? I could of burned those sheets, but I signed off on them staying there. I suppose they would throw them out.
I look at the sheets on my bed now. I think I hate these sheets as well. Just a reminder of my own foolish thoughts. Just a reminder of me being too trusting. I wonder when I put myself in someone else’s hands and its a mistake what does that mean? Am I the fool for trusting again, or am I just a strong enough person to not let the past keep me from trusting? I do not know the answer really. I would like to think I am the strong one. I would like to think a lot of things about myself though.
I have always been different, and I have always been judged and misunderstood. I am good with that. I can live with that. No one wants to face the truth of who I am, because than they would have to face a reality that anyone can be abused, and anyone can be raped. So much easier to think its my fault and leave me alone with my pain.
Now I am going to change the subject for a bit, and talk about how I am different. I have always been a bit of a kinky girl. When I was a kid I tied up my Barbie’s and made Ken spank them. Nobody seemed to notice that. I always loved tying things up, and when I got breasts well I thought they were awesome! I liked tying them up too. Just in my room when no one was looking cause somehow despite never being given proper talks about sex I knew it was taboo, and I would get in trouble. I did all this stuff anyways. I grew up and eventually would become part of the BDSM scene and often would be considered a Switch. A switch is someone who might like to be the top or the bottom. Later I found I preferred being the bottom. I liked the control of it. Now you might think that strange that even to this day I think you have more control as a bottom, but you really do. When you’re the bottom or the sub (as some might say as well.) you get to choose who you give yourself to and you can make it stop with a word. Your giving that person your trust and letting them take the reins but you can take it away as well. The top just gets to do what you want them to anyways its not real control. Maybe that is why I still like it after all I have been through.
Now back to what I was saying before about memories bringing up more memories. I can go all the ways back to being in high school and these two boys on the bus and myself were the only ones left. They usually just left me alone, but this particular time one of them slid next to me and slid his hand up my skirt, and I froze. The other boy sat on his knees in the seat in front of me and faced me. He just watched. While the other one shoved his grubby hands under my panties. He just watched it happen, and I just looked out the window and tried not to think about it. They were in control. I never said yes, and I suppose they would say I never said no.
One of my first major boyfriends was this bad boy with long dark hair and a coke problem. He said he loved me so much that if I left him he would kill my friends. He would hurt them. He had some issues. Some things happened between him and me I cannot speak of due to my family. Things that link him and I forever and ever. One time when he was tweaking away he asked me to go pick up his stash and said the money had been taken care of so I went to go get it for him. He did not tell me how he paid for it, because I was the payment. I am not going to talk about what happened but the best friend I ever had came and got me when he found out. The one I let get away.
Years passed I dated some great guys and some really abusive guys. I did a lot of dumb things. I am going to skip over some of the abuse its not that it did not mean anything its just not part of this story. I got married and it did not work out. I than dated one of my great loves. During that time we had some spats. Once after a really bad fight I went to the movies at night by myself. I walked there, and I remember I was wearing my faux red leather jacket I just bought. I had not any money for a long time, and recently had more and was so happy to get something nice for myself. I saw "Memories of a Geisha" which in a way was ironic I suppose. I walked home and was raped on the ground. I took a short cut. I barely saw him cause it was dark but he wore a big cowboy hat and I stared at it the whole time. That is what I do. I find something to stare at. I never saw that jacket again cause he took it, and the police found it and kept it for evidence. I never picked it up.
Now comes the story of that great love of mine. He made me very happy for a few years, and than he started drinking again, and little moments of memory seemed to be slipping his mind, which just made him angry. I was losing him, and in his place was someone else. I broke it off with him after he ended up in the hospital one night claiming to be suicidal. A good friend of mine had a fight with me in the hallway of Brattleboro Memorial she screamed at the nurse not to let him go home with me. That he would end up killing me if I stayed with him. I was so upset at that argument that I told him to move into the extra room. A few months later he walked around my house with a knife saying all sorts of crazy things. The police came, and I hid in the closet while he fought with them. What happened to the one I loved? Where did he go?
The man he became found me again a few months later and he would not let me leave the house, and it was complicated and the Reformer (the local paper here) got the story all screwed up. He thought we had never broke up. He thought we could play those kinky games and he never saw me cry. He could not see. He never heard me tell him to leave. He could not hear. He needed help. The police came and they lined up all those little paper bags in my hallway.
I have dated since than and never found anyone much to my fancy. I slept with a few but I did not give them that control. That was for me to give someone. That was my prize to give away. Recently I gave it away. He did not know how actually hard it was for me to do it or how scared I really was to do it. I put my trust in the wrong man and I feel dirty. Not that good kind of dirty, but more of a why did I give it away when it was mine. I could have just had normal sex or just a normal date, but something about him made me trust him. Something said he would never ever abuse that control. I do not think he meant to. That does not change how I feel right now though. It does not make it easier for me to sleep. I want it back. I want to turn back the clock and have never given it away.
I want my control back.
