Night time is the hardest. Because my body knows it should be asleep, but my brain won't get the hint. So I lay here, clutching the same teddy bear I've been sleeping with for almost 10 years now, praying for sleep to come. But I can't.
I have to go through the list of people who don't love me first. And then the people who pretend they want me around but don't really. Then the list of reasons my boyfriend should break up with me. After that its the bonus round of every horrible thing I've done or said in the past 23 years. On a really bad day it includes all the fights I've had with anyone ever. But lately it includes living a very new trauma.
A month ago I was sexually assaulted. Nothing, not selling the bed it happened on, not therapy, not upping my meds, can make me forget what it felt like to wake up with a man's hands down my pants. I will never forget as long as I live the feeling that I meant so little to the world that someone thought they could insert themselves into my body without permission. I can't stop seeing it. I can't stop seeing the look on his face when I wouldn't give him a hug before I kicked him out of my house. As if I was in the wrong. And then his dismissive apology "so that thing that happened....yeah that was weird". If I was a worse person I'd name him. I'd tell you all who he is, I'd whip the crowd into a frenzy and start a witch hunt. But I don't want that. I want peace. I want to stop seeing it in my mind. I want to forget it. I want to forget that I'm now a number, one of the many faces in the crowd, another college aged girl that fell asleep after drinking and was taken advantage of. The worst part? It was in my own home, and on the other side of me was my best friend. Also asleep. How sick do you have to be to do that to someone with such confidence?
And so now, when I can't sleep, I run through that list I mentioned before, and then the laundry list of reasons why I deserved it. Not the "oh she led him on" reasons, but the "I'm a bad person and this is karma" reasons. Is this somehow the universes form of balance?
It happened and then I had to go be in a show with this person. Two weekends of shows with someone who believed they had more rights to choose what happened to my body than I did. Two weekends of shows sitting next to them in the makeup room pretending I couldn't still feel their fingers invading me. Two weekends of shows pretending like just showing up wasn't a monumental feat for me. By the final show my body shut down. I had the worst panic attack I've ever experienced, I passed out just from standing up, I hit my head, I was puking, and I tried to not go. I couldn't say more than that I was sick. I was talked into going, I was accused of having a hangover, and all the while I was holding back this immeasurable rage and pain that I couldn't tell anyone about. I don't cry in public, and that day I couldn't hold back tears as I got into hair and makeup. The stage used to be my safe place and that whole afternoon I felt like a prisoner in what used to be my home.
Since then I've been the absolute worst. I've been clingier as a girlfriend than I've ever known myself to be. I feel like my strength is gone. I'm scared to be on my own. I'm scared to sleep. I'm scared to drink too much and then fall asleep. Sometimes I'm just scared to drink. I don't trust anyone or anything. I feel like I'm watching myself go through motions, not living them, just seeing someone else control the ship while I watch. I'm trying to put on brave face. I'm trying to be happy for everyone. I'm trying to sleep normally, but I can't. He stole that from me. He took the little amounts of joy, the little amounts of normalcy, the tiny bit of hope I had, and he crushed it with one action. And I don't think I'll ever be the same.
I'm so fucking exhausted.
Last night my heart broke in a way I didn't think was possible. Not since I heard the words "they found a body and its probably your dad". But for the past 12 hours I haven't stopped shaking. My heart has cracked. I am broken.
