How

A Story by Maria Elise

I understand now why life has been so crazy for me in the last year. Everything I have done and accomplished is simply a way to repress the memories and disturbia that quells inside my heart and brain. It has all been a distraction and there is nothing left to cover these feelings they boil underneath my skin. I feel like they're poking and prodding inside of me begging for me to think of them and to kill whatever stability I feel I have left. I feel them slipping underneath my veins and pulsating within my brain and I can no longer ignore the fact that this happened to me. I do not have the tools to deal with it and I do not have the strength to try. I feel my conscious attempting to protect me by repression only for these memories to surface violently at yet another inconvenient time in my life. I always seem to know what to say except for when it's about myself and how i feel for I am at a loss for how to help myself. I need help. I need to admit it. I was molested at the age of five and it is killing me slowly like a cancer that has manifested too long for treatment. Even as I admit this i still deny it and it does not stick that this is reality. The tears well up as every part of my being screams no and I still cannot identify with that sad little girl who felt so alone and incapable and I think it's because I've come so far as a person. I am pretty and smart and I have a girlfriend and a great friend group and am nothing like the outcast I was. So it's hard to identify as a person who was sexually assaulted as a child-- a f*****g baby-- when I feel I've already moved on from it without having to deal with it. I need therapy and I need to understand but how can I do that when i could never vocalize this? The only way for me to convey these emotions is to write it down in the notepad app on my iPhone and show it to someone. I am too weak to speak and too weak to seek help because that would make it real. My inability to deal with emotions is why I have been writing so much, why I have been drawing so much because I need to find release but am too weak to let the words flow through my mouth. Words are power and words are solid and you can never take back those words. I have never said it out loud. I don't know if I ever will but I know I need to but I can't. And as I look into your eyes I see the question: "what is wrong?" And I can't say anything so I just grunt. I am at the mercy of my weakness. I contemplate showing you because I know you understand. Maybe I will. Am I strong enough to at least share these feelings with someone else? I will read this over and over to decide if it is worthy and it may never be. I do not want to burden you. Do I feel attention seeking and is it wrong to seek attention? What will come of showing you this? You already know. Why? And how did this turn into yet another piece about you?

You know it's always been simple. I don't want to be sad? I'm not. But this isn't something I can just sweep under the rug. If I show you I will not cry and that will worry you and I think that's what I'm afraid of. Does that make sense?