83. Isabel
Isabel
The day I lost my virginity was the day I lost myself. The day it was taken from me changed me in ways I never recovered from, never came back from, never survived.
The pain after being raped is almost worse than the event itself. At least the rape stopped. The thoughts never stop. They play on a loop to torture me. Every time I think about it, I feel it. Every time I feel it, I want to die.
I woke up this morning from another nightmare. They happen a lot…and even more when he’s been around.
He came over this weekend. He always comes over like he’s invited, like he belongs. Like he belongs in the room with my brother. Like he belongs in my body.
My palms grab at my sheets and slip from the sweat they’re covered in.
I always have the same nightmare. Different angles, same weight.
He’s smiling, and my body is small. The world slows down and then gets too loud.
I can’t breathe. I don’t know how long I’ve been crying by the end of it.
I wake up with my throat sore and a taste of copper filling my mouth…
just like that night. I hear him telling me to be quiet, putting his hand over my mouth until I couldn’t breathe.
I feel like I’m going to pass out, from the lack of oxygen and from the pain…
from the reliving the worst day of my life.
I used to wish I could tell Bash. That he would scoop me up, and everything would be fixed again.
That he would find his friend and break him as badly as he broke me.
That he would be the one who made it all make sense again.
And then I remember how his fists have looked after fights.
How close he’s come to getting in trouble for newer, smaller, stupid things boys say at school.
How the blood in his voice could drag him into a jail cell for love, for rage… for me.
I can’t let that be my gift to him. I will not hand him a weapon he can’t put down. So I shut my mouth. I swallow it. I tape the scream into the hollow of my chest and try to live like everything is normal. But there’s no normal. God, I miss normal. I miss thinking I would always be safe.
At school, they call me names like they’ve never experienced this level of pain before.
They come up with stories because the truth would crush them too, and their version is more fun to throw around.
Boys say I spread my legs for them when I don’t.
Girls say I sleep around like a whore. They take what a boy secretly lied to them about, and toss it at me, and call me disgusting.
I keep quiet. I’m always quiet…and quiet is an insult to them. They want to push me until I fight back.
You begin to believe the words that hit you the hardest. The same words he told me while he was destroying my life…while he was hurting my heart more than he was hurting my body…and he was fucking hurting my body.
He destroyed my head too. It didn’t even work the same way anymore.
It didn’t want to wake up every morning because that meant we would just have to repeat the same cycle again—wake up, act normal, pretend I’m not on the verge of a panic attack all day, every day, pretend I don’t feel the constant pain even though it isn’t actually happening anymore.
The only place I can be honest is on paper.
I keep an old journal in the bottom drawer of my desk, the one with stickers peeling on the corners. It’s where I put the things that scare me to say out loud. Where I can write his name and not be terrified.
This morning, I take the journal out like it’s the only friend I have left. I crawl back onto my bed, and hold it like it’ll somehow change reality for me.
My handwriting is choppy because my hands are shaking. I want the end, but I’m sad that I want it. I wish I didn’t. I wish things were different.
I write to my parents, telling them how much I love them, how much they’ve done for me, how much they mean to me.
I tell them how sorry I am that I wasn’t enough sometimes, that I was so broken, and that’s why I couldn’t stay, that nothing they could have done would have changed my outcome… my ending.
I try to write to Bash, and have to keep starting again because even in writing I get choked up on his name.
You are my heart. You have been my whole life.
Please don’t try to fix this the way you fix everything by breaking faces.
I don’t want you to ruin your life and hurt someone because of me.
Please promise me you will not be the one who does something stupid for my pain.
It won’t make it better. You have given me everything that matters.
You tried. You are still trying. I need you to keep trying.
I love you. Forgive me, then forgive yourself for things that aren’t yours to carry.
You were always my protective big brother, that never changed.
This didn’t change that. I knew you couldn’t have protected me from him.
I don’t blame you. I looked up to you so much.
I loved you and I’ll continue to love you wherever I go.
I try to detail out everything that Grayson did to me…get it out one last time so I at least can leave this world in peace, knowing he won’t have any.
I feel sick and at peace in the same breath. The words are heavy, but they’re mine. Saying his name takes some of his power away. The ink is small, but it’s louder than the pain for a moment.
I used to pray a lot, and the prayers were always a string of bargains.
Please take it. Please take the noise. Please let my brain stop running the movie and rewinding the worst parts until I vomit.
Now I pray that heaven will be more kind than this life.
I pray that somewhere in the quiet, there is a place I can breathe again.
In the margins, I write smaller notes to myself. “You didn’t choose this. You were taken. You are not dirty. You are not broken for being harmed. You are not a liar. You are not what they say you are.”
The decision is less dramatic than people think. Just a wave of fear and relief tangling together. The hope of relief being louder than the fear of what happens next.
Everyone is already gone for the day. It’s the weekend, so Mom and Dad are at work, and Bash is at soccer practice.
I boil a pot of cinnamon sticks, orange slices, and apples on the stove to make sure the house smells like my favorite time of year when they come in.
It feels small and ridiculous, but I do it anyway, because someone should look back and think I was comforted before I left.
I light a candle, pull my sweater on, leave the window cracked because the slow draft feels like a soothing hand on my heart.
I pray once more. I’m tired of bargaining.
I am tired of the loop of memory that becomes a song you can’t turn off.
My head is a drum with no beat just panic.
My body remembers the shape of hands and the way the room smelled of cheap cologne and iron.
My body is louder than my reason. It won’t quiet.
I’ve tried everything that doesn’t kill me and it keeps killing me anyway… I’d rather just actually die.
I am not brave. I am exhausted. I am so tired of being scared in the place where I should be safest. I’d rather go somewhere that’s actually safe. I hope I get there. I hope you let me in God. Please don’t hold this against me. I couldn’t stay here any longer.
If there’s a final mercy, it’s this, the idea of rest. The idea that a place might exist where memories do not replay like broken records.
Where the sounds at two in the morning doesn’t make me feel like I’m going crazy.
Where my brother’s laughter isn’t overlapped by memory of the wrong man’s hands.
Please understand, I didn’t leave to punish anyone. I left because my brain is bad and my heart hurts and I couldn’t take one more night of waking up like that.
I pull out the bottle of pills I took from the bathroom weeks ago.
I don’t let myself second guess it anymore.
I’ve tried, I’ve tried to stay. It’s the same result every time.
I don’t want to try anymore. I take as many as I can at once, pushing them down with water and then take more…
until there’s nothing left. Until I know there’s no chance I can come back.
I’m not courageous. I’m not making a speech. I just press the pages close and let sleep come that feels different than the nightmares. It is not a fix, not a cure. It is not a miracle. It’s only the end of the noise.
If there’s a heaven, I’ll wait there. If there’s anything at all beyond this, let it be quieter.
If there is a heaven, I’ll save some seats for my family, the one right next to me for my brother, my best friend. I don’t know how time works in heaven, but I hope it won’t feel long until I see you again.