Untitled

**** ROUGH DRAFT OF VERY FIRST SECTION ****

It was one of those nights when I might as well have been paralysed and helpless. To an observer, it would look as if an invisible creature had me pressed to my bed, but I could see that very creature, and it was very much real.

A storm raged outside outside my window, but the chance of a tree slamming through my bedroom seemed like encouragement at that very moment. My childhood monster, the man who haunted me day and night, hung over me. The look in his eyes was startling, a blend of rage and glee, the visage of an assailant. The intent to attack was to be reckoned with, as he swiped across me, with the same dirty fingernails and that overly familiar smell of alcohol in his deep breaths.

There was no use screaming. “Nobody will hear you”, he said, “and nobody will believe you.” It remained as true as ever, in every pursuit of mine. The easiest course of action was to lie back and take the punishment, if that is what it was.

He never made clear for what reason it was being carried about. I was just told I was a bad girl. Deserving of it, somehow.

Now, I knew what he meant all along.

Waking up from a nightmare must be one of the most complicated processes to be completed within an instant. Just one flash, a moment where your very soul seems keen to escape from your skin, and you are lying in your bed, in the archetypal, suburban home of an Irish, lower-middle class family. Although, as you must know, terror is far from gone.

In a cold sweat, I sat up and choked on my own tears. Slowly getting my breathing under control, I tucked my knees into my chest. I must have stayed like that for at least twenty minutes. That was dissociation: to try to describe it would be as worthwhile as a mathematician putting hours of effort into an equation to calculate the value of zero. Alone as I was, all I felt was shame and exposure.

I was up at the typical time of eight in the morning, but school was cancelled that day, according to a text I received. The average teenager would be jumping up and down in excitement. It wasn't a case that I liked school, I was simply not affected by the news. Besides, we had known all week that Limerick was due to be hit particularly badly by a storm (my friend Emma felt that was natural selection at its very best), so of course we wouldn't have had school. We'd be bloody lucky if the school was still standing.

My endeavour to get breakfast was met with an expected interruption.

“Gooooood morning, Lauren!”
Sighing, I turned to look at my mother. I always seem to match her jovial mannerisms with my own brand of subdued, slightly sarcastic greetings.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Oh, Lauren.” She chuckled. “Why must you be so gloomy? Cheer up, love!”

“Mom, I think we both feckin' know why I 'must be so gloomy', don't we?” I subtly mimiced her voice as I shot back a sardonic answer, and her bright, 'it's Friday' smile changed to a grim frown.

“Were you okay last ni-”

“No, Mom. I'm never okay any night. I never will be okay any night. I don't even want to try at this point, alright? Leave me be.”

Slamming my bowl into the sink, I forcefully closed the door like a disgruntled rich kid before running back upstairs. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, and glanced around my room. It was the same room he attacked me in, for the last couple of years. I had to change everything around when I rediscovered my memories, however, to make sure not one remnant of what I needed to make myself forget remained.

The evening I revealed it to my parents suddenly flashed before my eyes.

One dark and murky evening, a month before my Junior Cert exams, I walked home after supervised study in school. Pathetic fallacy somehow seems to exist in real life as it does in fiction. If you were in any country but Ireland, you'd have thought it was as far away from summer as possible. The truth was spoken only once in Frank McCourt's "factual memoir" Angela's Ashes, and that was when he said "Limerick became known for piety, but we knew it was only the rain".

That particular evening, I just stood in the rain. Quite literally. In the empty car park by the supermarket and the Chinese takeaway with broken neon lights, I stood on my own and zoned out for a while.

I was in the open grounds of the rundown basketball court by our old house. Cracked tarmac was all that separated me from him then. I was vulnerable, unprotected, nobody to scream for. He was cunning, more than delighted to take advantage of my parents leaving their four-year-old out of their sight.

That's why I remained quiet. I remained quiet as he approached me, used me and took away every last piece of human dignity I had.

Rain didn't fall on that day, but, since then, it had been incessant. A constant deluge, evil drops of sorrow.

At that point, launching myself back into 2014 me, I ran home. Hoisting my schoolbag onto my back, I sprinted through the urban sprawl and identical housing estates, until I reached my own little semi-detached and unlocked the door with my own key. It was then or never.

"Mom. I have something really importan-"

She was sitting at the kitchen table already, head in hands.

"Mom?"

"I found the notes, the memories. I knew it all along. I knew I'd failed you. I knew I'd...I," She cried, and cried more. I walked over and held her gently. "I'm sorry, Lauren."

"It's okay, Mom. You did nothing wrong."

We talked for the next hour, about all the incidents I had remembered. I felt uncomfortable describing the fine details of some of the horrific atrocities he carried out, and I noticed that Mom felt awful when I divulged into them more than the basic idea. She felt like the worst mother in the world right then.

Decisions were made. I was to go to therapy, when the exams were finished. HSE waiting lists were so long that I wouldn't be allocated anyone until at least a month and a half anyway. Mom sat there in front of me for the evening, twitching and shaking.

"You know you can come to me with anything, right?" She leaned over and touched my hand gently. I squeezed it.

"Of course. I always know that, Mom." I smiled at her, pretty faintly. She smiled back, in a reassuring, affirming way.

Sometimes not sleeping at night lends itself to prolonged, deep naps during the day. No nightmares, no terrors, nothing but deep sleep. It's a relief to sleep safe and well.

In that particular instance, I must have been asleep for a couple of hours, because it was ten when Mom called me.

"Laurennn, wake up!"

I rose from the bed, rubbing my eyes. Usually, sixteen-year-olds who wake up with headaches at ten o'clock are rich kids who had been out partying, drinking or getting laid the night before. Extroverts made me laugh; why socialise when you can spend your days not being noticed, sitting at the back of the class and avoiding others in the corridors?

"Wha-why?" I groaned.

"It's therapy day! Dr Patel can fit you in early, at half ten, because he had a cancellation." She beamed as if it was something we were both looking forward to all week.

"Fiiiiinnneee."

Feeling slightly groggy, I changed out of my pajamas into my usual all-black outfit. I always claimed that this preference wasn't an emo statement, but down to the fact that dark colours suited me and my dark brown hair, dark brown eyes and pale-ish skin better. Still, there was no better reason black suited me than the black I felt internally.

I hopped into the passenger seat of Mom's blue 2003 Toyota Yaris. Rain splattered the windscreen as she drove out, passing a large tree which had been knocked the night before. A wild, Irish wind nipped across my face when I climbed out of the car five minutes later. Mom and I were the only people in the dingy reception of the counselling centre. It was a symbol of the taboo surrounding sexual abuse; the only means through which to get help in town were distributed by a poorly-funded charity. We remained in the waiting room for ten minutes, in a tense and repressed silence.

"Erm, Miss Lauren Bridges, yes?" Dr Patel appeared in the doorway, grinning. I got up, smiled faintly at Mom and followed him upstairs to his office.

"So, yes, Lauren, um, how have you been doing?" He spoke in broken English, tainted by an Indian accent. You wouldn't think he'd been living in Limerick for sixteen years, as long as I had. Then again, you wouldn't think I was anything but a normal teenager, and you wouldn't think he was anything but the kind of guy who talked to thirteen-year-old girls on Omegle. To me, that was why people should never prejudge.

I shuddered as I spoke. "Not good, at all." I felt the tears forming in my eyes.

"Ah, yes, but that's what I'm here for, yes?" He grinned a bit more. It was the type of grin that induced discomfort. Some people just can't do a proper, reassuring smile.

"Um," I stuttered, and felt salty tears run down my face. "I don't know what to say about it. I...I don't know." That was when I started heaving and tears came out everywhere. I was lost for words, a lost cause. Sitting in front of the city's only rape counsellor, who couldn't help me, and blubbering. I had gone past the point of help. After a certain amount of time, you can simply no longer be rescued. You drown, in floods of your own sorrow.