The Night it all went to Shit

I didn’t understand why I was someone that had to have this fate. “Why did I do this to myself” was the most asked question of every. Single. Day. but I still can’t stop. The constant need for control. For a hold on the world around me. The need to have some say in what happens around me. I didn’t understand anything that had fallen upon me, I researched it, I found bits of information that made me understand more and more about myself and life, the mystery that will forever be unsolved. I saw a tik tok that mentioned how those with sexual assault in their past often get anorexia. That’s when it clicked.

The control that’s taken when you are violated in the heaviest way. The fear when you wake to creeping fingers in a pitch black room. The same room that’s shadows have been engraved in your memory. Where the lion and evil beings lurked, the silhouettes of drums and miscellaneous toys that were so eerily alike. The shadows that you now stared at, while real horror occurred. The permanent damage that those trimmed, clean-cut fingernails traced on your thighs. The thoughts and fears that would never leave, even after the memories themselves did. The forgotten worries that you implemented in my mind without me even realizing. 

The one time I remember. The night that I can’t seem to forget. When she insisted on us bringing down the entire two mattresses along with the comforters for our sleepover. When I somehow knew to beg for mine to be on the end only next to her. When he insisted that we keep it how it was. Me next to him. This was normal, I knew it would happen this way, it felt routine. But why do I only remember this night when I refused to let my eyes drop, refusing to weaken against the pressure. A fucking 7 year-old-girl trained to resist sleep because of him. The night when I traced the outlines of the basketballs, and boardgames against the living room window holding the smallest bits of moonlight. The shadows that I was once convinced were going to attack, now etched in repetition through my memory. The routine practiced past reason, a coping method for what was to come. What I knew would come. The needed distraction for when you expectedly began to gently peel back my comforter, your hand and all the pain traveling through MY bedding. Your cold fingers, testing the water, ensuring that the skin of the tiny girl you were touching wasnt resisting; that the girl was asleep, unconscious, and without a fucking choice. The night when it all went to shit. 

I can’t remember how many nights your fingers practiced that route across my skin, how many times I ignored the pressing urge to close my eyes and accept what could’ve been childlike dreams; fairies granting me any wish, being a princess with unlimited power, anything thats different than my fucking reality. The reality where I knew you wouldn’t let one night pass. One night where you could take advantage of your sister’s best friend, the girls who lived next door and spent hours with your adopted parents picking out the wall paint colors, the comforters that you bypassed to violate me. 

I can only remember that one night now.  All those memories of happy child sleepovers with my best friend are gone and now replaced with only one.

The one that’s been replayed too many times in therapy. The one that’s been played over in exhausting amounts of time, the details and feelings said but not viscerally remembered until now. When I waited for the touch of your coarse fingertips inching up my legs. The space that had never been touched, still too scared of any other fingers because of you. Because of the extended nights where dark shadows held fear heavier than any mythical being, the fear of your best friend’s brother encroaching on every aspect of privacy you held. The fear of being out of control within your own body. How are you supposed to confront that when the person you waited months for would hate you for it. Would hate you for the truth. For ruining her relationship with the brother she calls the “GOAT,” for being the one to take away her one true person. 

The fingers of an older child, also too young for this type of touch. Brushstrokes across my inner thighs, painted blues and purples stained in my flesh. Reignitied in vividity with each new skin that travels the same path. 

That night. When you decided it was okay to pretend what you did was okay. Just because I “couldn’t” feel it. Because I was fucking asleep. But I wasn’t, at least not that time. My body was ready to shift, to warn you off but not admit I knew what you did. Too ashamed of what was happening against my will. Too scared to create a real issue by saying anything; instead I learned to float. My memories are forgotten as I trained myself to disconnect, to become a different form than physical. A 7-year-old who knows how to pretend she isn’t herself, who’s still stuck unable to feel whole. 

Even in the present, when that night feels so distant that it shouldn’t matter, your paint is still there in certain lighting. In the need to know everything consumed, to control what goes into my body so thoroughly because I couldn’t then. The control you took now replaced with an exhausting mess of control over myself that I can’t escape. 1200, 1000, 800, 600, 400, none of it wass enough, I wasn’t able to feel content or in enough control until I hit fucking 200. The rule that still follows me when I take an unexpected bite. The worry that courses through me each time I eat something that’s higher than 200 calories by itself, something that once seemed impossible.