Introduction
I remember it all. I remember him. How could I forget? He changed everything
My life was just as normal as anyone else’s. I was a kid, still living in the vibrant colors of adolescence. I was small with messy curly brown hair that made my mom call me “Grenuda” because I resembled a witch. I loved to read and listen to music on my Walkman. I liked to take walks and hang out with my best friend, Joanie. I did well in school and made my parents proud.
And yet, it was not as vibrant as it might have seemed. I think of these memories through a haze, blurred like a fingerprint on a camera lens. I can’t see it clearly, but I can feel every second. It burns within me like smoldering Greek fire. I will forever know the traces of his fingers along my innocent flesh and I will see the scars created in their wake.
I don’t see his face anymore and yet his voice reverberates in my ears and through my bones until I feel heavy. Weighed down with stones at the bottom of a river, it’s hard to find any sense of breathing easily. The panic and gulping of water as it fills my lungs shakes me even now.
Does he remember? Does he think of me? Of the little girl he saw and destroyed? Does he regret it? Or does he find other little girls to ruin?
Wasted. Those days, each one a stain on my memory, on my body, makes me feel wasted. Goods gone sour, tainted, expired, dirty. He may clean his hands but I will always remain rotten. No matter the method, this dirt stays.
The days I think of this, of him, far outweigh the days I don’t. It makes me think of all the ways things could have been different. For years I blamed myself. I thought that if I had just said no, if I had fought a little harder, if I wasn’t so naive and stupid, then things would have been different. I would have had a childhood, I would have been clean. I wouldn’t hate every ounce of myself.
These thoughts do nothing. They change nothing. All they do is make me feel so low I can hardly go on. He has no idea the pain I live with. The agony within me everyday. I’m not even a notion to him.
To be so easily forgotten only adds to the pain. To be used and then discarded.
I spend too much time on these thoughts. Too much time on him.
I want to forget.
I will never forget.
He won’t let me.
