But it's not like the others, I guess is what I'm trying to say. The others are almost never over a page, they have a definitive start and end, and they capture a moment I want to remember, be it sad, happy, lonely or beautiful.
This is not a moment I want to remember.
I want this moment, stained with shame and humiliation to be a repressed memory I have absolutely no recollection of.
I want this to have never happened.
Most things I tell my friends. Boys, my feelings, I like to share them and feel that I am not alone. This is my only secret I consciously keep. Natalie knows because she was there and she saw my face afterward, the one that refused to acknowledge what actually happened.
And I have to tell the secret to someone else, because someone else out there has to understand what is going on right now. I need to vent it out to you. Because he's back.
The amazing song I have on repeat describes parts of what I am feeling perfectly:
"I have a headache in my chest from all the chaos that you left."
And that is exactly how it is, that aching in my breastbone like a fist against my lungs. It drags down my shoulders in lines that ache. I can feel the cold sweat in the small of my back and the hot blush over my cheekbones. I feel faint. Like I can't quite breathe. It's a feeling of dread, of fear, of embarrassment and shame. My vision clouds a lot, so even my own eyes aren't reliable.
This is the part I have trouble saying. Natalie was there, she knows. I never even speak to her about it in concrete terms. I just say his name and she knows.
My dad's friend, white beard, awkward mannerisms. I know he didn't mean anything, but it was still a physical violation of a boundary. My boundary. Molestation feels like too big a word for it, but I suppose it is a crime of perception. My perception. And that's how it felt to me. I didn't ask for his hands there and yet there they were. And there was my dress....or rather there wasn't my dress, and it seems so trivial when I try to tell it but it was my birthday, my sweet sixteen and all the sugar he drained out of it and all the bitterness and cold that remained.
My dad knew. He made him apologize. He did. I went home.
It's been a month. He came walking up the path when my parents weren't home two days ago. He let himself in, made himself at home. I've been hiding in my room for two days. When I leave to use the bathroom or get some food, I walk on tiptoe. I know it won't happen again but there is a heaviness to the air, to my voice and that fist in my chest when I know that he is here, in my house, because my father let him in, gave him a key.
And I don't want him here.
It wasn't alright, and I....well I'll be alright, I was alright, and I just really can't take this leaden fist and this crawling skin for much much longer.
And I know he's my dad's best friend....but how can he leave him with me alone after that? How can he do that? How can he sit me next to him at dinner? How can he ask me to join the conversation, how can he ask me to GET OVER IT? How can he do that?
No comments:
Post a Comment