She found one in a dark corner, lit by the embers of a cigarette.
She felt like it was real, and when ripped away, she was left with a hole in her chest once again.
She then found one that practically forced its way in, and she was happy. But that heart left her too when it stopped beating.
Now, she has realized, she didn’t need to find a heart at all, she just needed the ability to see that she already had one, and it just needed to know it was safe to come out and play.
Her chest was a warzone, but now it was a fortress, with walls strong enough to be safe,
A door to let the right ones in,
And windows to watch the beautiful world around her without fear.
A Facebook friend request, sent at 18years old, has still never been accepted after 10 years. But a message was received, that said, “I can’t accept your friend request. Is this some sort of trap?”
I said, “no, you just popped up on my people you may know, and I just did it. I didn’t expect you to accept it, or respond.”
Now, somehow, after months of incredibly spotty “chatting”,( being ignored for weeks, and then talked to every day, and ignored again) I still tried to be enough for this guy. At this point, nothing was serious, he really was off and on with messages and I was kind of dating around. When I say dating… I mean hanging out with guys that I had known previously, and only one guy took me on a “real” date, that guy ended up being the first person to not understand that no means NO.
Eventually I talked my way into being allowed to go to this original guys house. (We will call him Alan, because I don’t have any affiliation with the name and it can be a mash together of the words alcoholic narcissist)((sorry to any good guy Alan’s out there!))
I am told that I have to be sneaky, no one can see me go in his house, I can’t tell anyone, and it has to be late at night, I also have to leave well before day light. These were massive red flags that I just pushed aside… and they were far from the last.
I show up close to midnight, this guy is already hammered, and the whole trailer smelled of weed and hard alcohol. I’m not a drinker, but I felt like if I didn’t drink with him he wouldn’t like me, and he basically said that too. (I know… you’ll be screaming at me throughout this whole thing just like I am while reliving these memories.)
He had me take multiple shots of rum, then listen to music as he quizzed me constantly about who sang the song and what was the name. He then said “if you can guess this band, I’ll marry you right now.” And of course my fragile little naive and trauma bonded self was so thrilled that he said that. I got it wrong. And he said, “you missed your chance.” and in the same minute, told me not to pursue a career I was very seriously going to pursue. He said I wasn’t strong enough and that I’d get hurt, and then I’d never get to spend time with him since I’d be gone all the time… mind you, he ignored me for weeks at a time up until this point. Only leading me on with messages of how much he wanted to see me and be with me. This was our first meet up in person since I snuck out 3 years prior.
After he said he needed a back massage and I obliged, he passed out, wouldn’t wake up to anything, I left. Only to find that the place I was staying, the doors were locked. The guy I was staying with, who paid me to take care of the house and his dog, who allowed me and encouraged me to live with, (I crashed on the couch and there were 2 other roommates) locked me out because he was mad that I was seeing someone… (again, this situation is a whole other story that needs its own segment!)
I snuck in through the window by crawling over the A/C unit, slept for a few hours, and then had to go to work.
I ended up moving out of this living arrangement after that guy decided to touch me in my sleep, and then panic the next morning when I said I was leaving because I was fully aware of what he did, and it was wrong. I felt so much shame and guilt, and embarrassment, that I didn’t tell anyone about what happened until almost 10 years later.
I moved back in with my parents, and they had my stuff packed up and home in less than 20minutes, no questions asked.
But this meant that I couldn’t go see, you guessed it, Alan. He ignored me some more, told me how I shouldn’t have moved back home and I shouldn’t have been in the other guys house either. After a few weeks I found a place of my own, finally. But it was a tiny attic space in an old house, right in the heart of the next city over. But I stayed there for 5 years. And those 5 years were filled with a million paper cuts that I brushed off as accidents, bad habits and childhood trauma.
For anyone reading this story of mine, please try to disregard any typing errors or awkward grammar. Remembering the past and then trying to put it into words is a bit difficult. It’s going to take me a while to get it all out too, as this portion of my life has a lot to remember. Many of the memories are things I don’t want to relive, but, for my own healing, I need to tell it, and maybe it will find someone else out there who also needs to hear it.
Thank you for beating with me if you have made it this far!
Trigger warnings: very brief and vague mention of suicide, depression, rape and sexual assault.
At 16 years old I made a choice that would change my life.
I was never a rebellious kid, I was shy, quiet, and you’d always find me hidden in the back of the room. I had friends, but I was the kid who wasn’t popular, unless you needed someone to keep a secret for you, a shoulder to lean on.
Growing up from childhood trauma gave me some self esteem issues that lasted throughout my school years and even now I struggle, just not nearly as much. I’m happy to say that I’ve learned a lot of mental health “tools” and emotional intelligence.
Now back to when I was 16 with no way of knowing who I was, what my feelings were and that my trauma would mold me into a people pleasing wreck with some crazy attachment issues.
I did something I had never done. I snuck out. I didn’t sneak out of my own home, I snuck out of my grandparents home. Now I had no intentions of doing this. I simply loved staying up at their house because I love them and staying in their downstairs was like a vacation. I had the whole bottom half of the house to myself, a sitting room where I could play my games and be my nerdy self, and a beautiful bedroom with a queen sized bed to sleep in with my own bathroom as well.
But this guy I had been chatting with told me to meet up with him. Looking back on it, I realize that the manipulation started from the beginning. He had been telling me that he wanted to be with me, that we could run away to Vegas and get married. I didn’t want to sneak out, I didn’t want to get caught, or break my family’s trust. But that’s exactly what ended up doing. I snuck out to hook up with a guy. A man. An adult. 7 years older than me.
The next year or so was spent in a bad depression. I lost weight, I couldn’t eat. I was a shell of a human being, my soul felt like it left my body because of the pain I was in, I thought my heart was ripped out. My parents had found out a few weeks later, because my cousin who I confided in knew what I had done was scary and not ok. She did the right thing, but after that, I was basically shut away from the world. My family couldn’t even look at me without shame or disgust. I wasn’t allowed to close my bedroom door, even to change. I couldn’t be out of sight for more than a few minutes without getting in trouble. I was constantly reminded how horrible of a child I was, how no one would ever trust me, and that I was a compulsive liar. I know these things aren’t true, but those things really hurt me for a long time. I hated myself. I never liked myself before, but I definitely didn’t after this. And yet teenage me panicked thinking about how I ruined my chance at being with my true love.
Years went by, I had a couple of boyfriends, and one best friend that asked me out and turned out to be gay, we lost contact for some time but were able to reconnect before he took his own life… I still, to this day think about him constantly. he was the one who brought me out of my dark place, and showed me how to be happy, showed me friendship, love, compassion and also grief. He’s the one who convinced my parents that I could go out, because he’d take care of me. And he did.
After I heard the news of his passing while I was at work, I went into another weird spiral, and yet again I found myself searching for love in all the wrong places. I started looking for that loving care in men that were anything but. I was taken advantage of, more than once. I was so emotionally detached that I feel as if I was only a spectator watching my life and not able to tell myself that I needed to watch out for red flags and scum bags.
From rape, to sexual assault, to being kicked out of a living arrangement with my side job (that’s a whole other story) to being stalked at my new apartment and the guy barged in and wouldn’t leave, he was an ex navy seal.
Everything that happened all boiled down to the fact that I was too afraid to use my voice, to listen to my intuition. Those “butterflies” you feel in your gut? That’s a warning sign, not a welcome mat. Yet I grew up believing that butterflies mean you liked someone, so I thought that was true.
Through all of this, I found myself on Facebook, and guess who pops up in my “people you may know”? The guy I snuck out to be with that night. I felt full of myself that day and I sent a friend request.
That request never got accepted (10 years and 2 kids later and it still hasn’t), but I received a message soon after.
Hi, it’s been a while! I know I’ve been MIA on here for quite a while this time, but creativity has really hit bedrock. I have ideas, but no way to form the words.
Anyway, I sit here tonight to start something new. This platform has been my little escape and a way for me to express my feelings through poetry. But for right now, I have something else in mind. For you long term followers of mine, you’ll understand a little bit of why my poetry (especially in the beginning) was so deep and emotional, even a bit sad.
For anyone new who reads this series, thank you for stopping in, I hope I don’t send you running!
This new series is going to be me opening up about my personal experience of living in a narcissistic abusive relationship.
I decided to write this because I know how hard it has been for me, (and still is, I am still in it) and how isolating and lonely it gets after so long. I want to raise awareness so that other people can say, hey that sounds like my life, and it’s not ok, but thank god it’s not just me. Trust me you’re not crazy.
This first little post here is just my intro to the series. This is not pre written or planned out, this will just be me writing my experiences. I will be putting trigger warnings just in case what I talk about is too sensitive a topic, you’ll be able to skip that story and maybe read on a different part. If for some reason this ends up being helpful, who knows, I may make it a book and share it with more people.
For now, thank you for sticking around ( I hope you do, anyway) stay safe, stay vigilant, you are loved.
And the stresses have become nothing more than forgetting to swap the laundry, or spilling a bit of coffee from your morning mug
I am so glad
Glad to know that I’ll be there too someday
That we will finally join up and say, “we did it”
“Look how far we have come”
I’ll get to sit and smile, my heart melting at the love and memories being made, and knowing that you are in the safest of spaces, in the safest of hands.
I look forward to meeting up with you, we can chat about all that has changed from now, until then.
I don’t know how to feel, it all passes by so quickly, it doesn’t quite feel real.
Happy 5th Birthday my little seal.
For anyone confused by the last line, my sons name is Ronan, which, in Celtic, translates to Little Seal, there is a neat little folk tale about it too if you’re up for a google search!
Ink & Embers 