Töte Mich

#3

"This body, it hasn't been mine since those nights. Surely, I was inside it but it does not belong to me anymore. It's like those horrible nights opened me up and filled my being with mud. This body is used and dirty and shouldn't belong to me. It shouldn't be what I am left with. It shouldn't be the one I see when I look in the mirror." - 1/18/17

The morning after, for me will always be something that haunts my memories. There's something about it that's full of discreet ruin; you know what happened, but you don't want to admit it.

You're laying in your bed, almost completely numb, trying to keep some sort of balance between your racing heart and your plodding lungs; which are both fighting desperately to keep you alive. There's two different sides of you waging this futile war against each other.

One side is over-compensating to deal with the trauma. I haven't felt my heart slow down once. Its almost like last night shoved it into overdrive and now it's stuck; continuously, erratically beating. My brain hasn't stopped spinning. Its seeking desperately for answers, a reason, a motive, something to explain his actions.

When my brains not searching for answers, it's stuck on a small disturbingly clear loop; my shattered psyche created to fixate upon. The memories from last night. Everything from the moment he started kissing me to the moment he freed my hands. Over and over. The clock is ingrained in my brain.

8:43:57... 8:43:58... 8:43:59... 8:44:00...

Shaking wrists and trembling fingers scratch at my legs trying to claw him out of my skin. The feeling of him refuses to cease; it's almost like him being there, in me.. It filled me with cement...

It filled my veins, it filled my lungs and my brain and I just needed it out. I can feel it coursing through my veins and I'm powerless to stop it. I can feel my heart slowly beginning to fill, and I wish for nothing more than to cease existing.

He has infected me.

His hands ghost over my skin; inching me closer toward utter devastation. "No! Stop!... This hurts. This hurts!'. The memory flashed behind my eyes. "Get out! Stop!" I screamed before running to the bathroom and having a series of dry heaves wreck my body.

Tears streamed down my face and I placed my head on the edge of the white porcelain bowl. I closed my eyes as I tried to keep my body from having another fit. It was deadly silent, the only sound was my heavy, monotonous breath echoing inside the bowl. The breathing that I wished so desperately would cease.

The man who's tearing my tower away brick by brick is succeeding. I can feel my foundation cracking under the weight of my tower and I'm running out of bricks to stop it.

I'm pleading with the man but he's fixated on getting what he wants. He does not care about how long it took me to build my tower. For he does not know about the years it took me to build myself that strong, and that tall. He does not know of the nights I spent alone tirelessly working to build myself up. But in one night. In one course of action; he was tearing it all down.

My tower is cracking; the bricks are so close to detaching and giving way. I try to breathe and remain the tall standing building I once was.

But how can I build myself up if I've got nothing left to support me?

Then there's the side that is under-compensating. My body is numb, trying desperately to numb the pain spreading through my body. My limbs are heavy and I feel like I could pass out at any second. I can feel myself detaching from reality. I can feel my heart shattering further with every beat.

As I laid there, everything I knew; lost, nothing to gain, completely ruined by heinous and careless actions. I felt the weight of last night truly bear down on me.

It's almost like you don't believe it. You see it but you refuse to acknowledge it's there. Its almost like you can feel your world hanging by a thread, but you don't believe it. It's so much easier to be comforted with a lie than be hurt by the truth. Before I never understood why, but now I do.

He raped me.

No one understands those words or the weight they truly carry. He made me endure something no one should ever be subjected to. I'll never ever be the same. He ruined me. I'm useless, filthy, disgusting, I'm nothing anyone would ever want. I'm ruined.

I could feel the cement hardening.. Deep inside my lungs. "I need another shower". I whispered to myself. I crawled over to the shower and turned only the hot water on.

'If I can't scratch him out, I'll burn him out...'. I dragged myself under the scalding stream and I welcomed the deep burn that graced my back. The sharp sting.. I needed that. My body began to tremble the more the water doused my body. I ignored the deep burning and grabbed my rag and soap.

The feeling of the initial rag to the skin of my arm was soft; as the rag laid on a mountain of frothy soap bubbles. As I dragged the cloth against my skin the soap washed away with the water, the rag was left to wash my skin. I pushed down harder desperately trying to rid my body of any trace of him.

'Back and forth.. Back and forth.. Back and forth'. I dragged the cloth against my skin. It started to burn as the fibers of the cloth dug deep into my skin. But not deep enough. It wasn't getting the dirt. I wasn't becoming clean. I pushed harder and my skin grew more and more irritated with each deep hard swipe of the cloth.

If I could rip off my skin. If I could just rip off what harbors him; I could clean myself. Rip it off and clean under the surface. I moved onto the next arm and ignored the protest of my already frail body...

Eventually the hot water had run out again and my skin was none the less still dirty. I just wanted to be clean. I very delicately dried off my burnt body. I slipped on a new pair of underwear and grimaced at the feeling of the elastic scraping my skin.

I stared in disgust as I looked in the mirror. I couldn't stand to see what he had ruined. I didn't want to see. All I saw was him. Disgusting, ugly, filthy, ruined.

A sob ran through my body I tried to run the brush through my hair; when it caught on a knot in the back, I screamed in anger; ripping the brush from his confines in my hair and throwing it against the wall, denting it slightly. I couldn't breathe. My eyes welled with tears as a memory flicked behind my eyes.

I stormed into my room and opened my desk. I grabbed a pair of scissors. I grabbed a wad of my hair and cut it off.

'Cut it off. Cut it all off'.