I know that there is a time and place for everything. But I guess the same is true for people. It seems as though this time and place isn’t meant for me. 34 is not the age of Chucky. I can’t help who I am. I can’t stop how I am. I don’t want to, either. But it seems as if there’s a large consensus that I’m not but steel wool. Abrasive, blunt, and too much. No one seems to ask why.
My era was about 17-21. Heading out of high school and mostly through my associates degree. Largely those times were full of trauma. Between rape, drugs, liars, and being taken advantage of in other ways, it was easier to be blunt than to be assumed a cotton ball.
During my senior year of high school, it became well known not to fuck with me. I’m not sure who started the rumor, why, nor how it spread, but people were terrified of me. Just straight down terrified. So, I used this to my advantage. I allowed them to be scared because so was I. I was getting out of multiple grooming situations. I was addicted to Xanax and craving pain killers of any kind. I just was absolutely fucked at that point. The last thing I needed was for people to take advantage of me.
I heard that my time away bouncing from school to school had started a rumor. It spread like wildfire in the tiny town. Who was I to take it from everyone? I had never thrown hands in that town. I hope my cousin spread that because it was a gift from the gods. It saved me from having it worse than I did. At least with that in place my issues were more under my own control.
I spent my senior year going from pasture party to club to some stranger’s house every weekend. It was normal to me to not remember how to get home and be taking directions from my drunk best friend. I didn’t drink because I had to babysit Cobra, I only popped pills and smoked. It was easier to keep track of her when I was calm and collected. I knew what I was getting into when I swallowed something that wasn’t bought at the liquor store.
By the time I graduated I was a full-blown addict. Not just because of what I was fed by an abuser, but by what I kept feeding myself to keep the demons away from my dreams. Not that it actually helped but at least when I was awake, I was mildly less worried about it. I didn’t care about the invisible, and visible, scars that laid in wait across my body. I didn’t want to go to college, I knew my time there would be less about academics and more about the scene of it, even if it was in a small town, I’d find my way to the kind of people I always found my way to and I’d end up in a position I didn’t want to be in. I knew I could end up dead or worse. But when you have Dread Father for a parent, you don’t get much say in your life. Between college/addiction/possible death or living on the street, you pick your battles.
I got to spend a last hurrah summer with S4 and her family so that I could make sure if something happened to me, they would have good memories of me. I had also hoped it would get me clean. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. Despite not having a car, I still had friends in their state, and I knew how to get what I needed when I needed it. I wasn’t as drugged as I usually was, but I still had connections when I asked around.
By the time I made it back, I was ready to go out with a bang and gave up on any remaining goals I had. I didn’t have hope and just lived through the day. I spent my weekdays being the academic kid my parents wanted me to be. I spent my weeknights between sex parties and a professor who had taken a liking to me. My weekends were split between going back to my partying friends or going to my parents’ house for a calm night. There wasn’t a day that went by that I was sober. 2 years and I still didn’t manage to end my life with the ease I thought I would. I only gained more scars and more trauma. I fucked up pretty badly.
I became more volatile, and I had made connections with people I shouldn’t have. Being the person I was, I had to involve myself with the worst kinds so I could get my scores for free. It was easier to hide my tracks that way. I remember being coked out and pried off a bleeding broken nosed boytoy for calling me a whore after a wild weeknight party. One of the few degrading names I still can’t stand to this day. I remember trying not to cry in English Lit when I was presenting the Jabberwocky, a poem I picked and memorized while naked with the man now grading me on my performance outside the bedroom because he couldn’t see me behind closed doors anymore. Public speaking became unbearable at that point. I still don’t like being in the spotlight. All I can imagine is the grins he tried to hide and the eyes he couldn’t keep from wandering.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I wasn’t supposed to visit my ex in another state, wind up pregnant, only to miscarry when I found out he died 2 months after I got home. I couldn’t even find a way to get to his funeral. How the fuck do I tell two emotionally incapable people that I need a flight for a man I loved for over 4 years that they didn’t even know existed?? That’s not a conversation I could have. Not while miscarrying for the first time. That baby was all I had left, and I was losing it at the same time. I hadn’t even known it existed.
All of it sounds like some crazy novella but it was happening in real time, and I couldn’t stop the train wreck. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t look away, I couldn’t slow down. I just stared at my life happening to me. I stood there like a deer in the headlights waiting for 18-wheeler to plow into my body and force my soul from its shell. I kept waiting and nothing happened. So, I took matters into my own hands. Literally.
I was disassociated so badly that I didn’t even know anyone else was in the apartment with me. I had forgotten Cobra was there. I sat in my kitchen and was ready to let it all flow out until she heard me. I guess I had woken her, and she coaxed me down. I was out of it for a couple days since I had taken a handful of god-knows-what in hopes that would help prevent anyone from saving me if they got there in time.
I knew no one would have noticed until it was too late though. I lived alone, an hour away from family, they would have thought I was on a digital detox as per my usual routine when I was depressed or feeling any emotional imbalance aside from manic. It could have been a week before someone noticed I wasn’t there.
But she saved me.
Cobra was there. She stopped me. I split. I became someone else and this version of me was locked inside. I was locked away for a short bit before I became aware and became a protector of those on the inside and those on the outside. I always protected those I loved. I still do. I’d do anything, absolutely downright no questions asked anything, to ensure the ones I love had everything before I had a microscopic molecule of what I needed.
I’d drop my life at the snap of their fingers and run to them if I had to. Shit, I have done it. Multiple times. I’d do it again and again and again. I’d never change who I am. Everyone needs someone to love them so fiercely they truly would bite a bullet for them.
And I’m the person who would bite the bullet for you.
Traumatized Viridimere 