Trauma: This Is How You Will Hurt

This is how you will hurt.

It will be a sunny day and you are still in your room, your curtains drawn to keep the light out, your body shaking under a blanket that just won’t warm you up, but then again, you haven’t felt warm since the day it happened. It is like he took every bit of warmth from your soul, and the only way you will ever feel warm again is if the entire sun grew inside of you.

Your mother is knocking on the door. You pretend you don’t hear her. Your greatest deception since it happened is trying so hard to be normal, and today you do not have the energy for it.

Today, you are going to stare into the darkest corner of your room and wonder why the darkness doesn’t do you a favour and swallow you whole.

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This is how you will bleed.

You will only leave your house when the sky is filled with clouds and it is raining. You do not feel the need for warmth anymore. The only thing you feel is numb, your mind doing its bare minimum to hold itself together and your body doing its bare minimum to keep your bones from falling apart.
You have become robotic in gestures, fluent in nothing words and social cues.

“Hello.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” “How are you?”

It is only when you walk by his house, that your heart suddenly feels like it’s trying to claw its way outside you, you feel hot and cold at once, your breath quickens and your stomach churns like you are being force fed the universe and you can’t say no — even though you are full. So you throw up, right there on the pavement, so close to his door.

Almost where it happened. But not quite.

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This is how you will try.

Your parents will take you to a therapist because they are so tired of asking you what’s wrong and you’ve run out of nothings to tell them. You’ve tried and they’ve tried, but the words just turn to ashes every time they try to leave your mouth. They start as fire in the pit of your stomach, but come out in a puff of smoke.

So here you are sitting in front of a person you have never met before, a stranger you need to tell all your secrets to. And for an hour, you just sit there trying to find the words to speak, but when you can’t even talk to your best friend, how do you speak to someone who doesn’t even know how to pronounce your name properly?

You are not you anymore. And you don’t know how to fix this. The worst part is…you don’t even know how to try.

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This is how it will end.

Your parents are tired of trying to get you to speak. So the doctors recommend a place for you to go to. A place where they treat special cases like you.

It will be good. They promise. And when you come back, you will be better than ever – a new person almost. Recovery is a wonderful thing, you will see, when they open your mind up to understand what is wrong with you.

Recovery is a wonderful thing, they reassure you as you are led away to a car that doesn’t belong to your parents, bile rising in your throat, but your body doing what it’s told. You want to say no, you don’t want to go.

But your mouth no longer knows how to speak for your heart, nor your soul. Because to you, recovery is not a wonderful thing.

Recovery is just an eight letter word.

And so is insanity.

“I am fine.” is just three words.

And so is: “He raped me.”