Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

TRIGGER WARNING - sexual assault "There's a sick part of me that believes that this is what I deserve."

Beneath it all,

I'm still afraid.

Like a newborn babe 

in a room full of twisted doctors,

I am afraid.

There is a part of me

that is waiting for him.

Him.

This man.

This beast.

This beast of a man who barely exists

outside of my spine-twisting dreams.

This ghost who haunts my afterthoughts,

and makes me check every corner I cross.

It's illogical to be this paranoid.

But the thing is

that

this fear of mine

is not so much about him.

It's about what he did.

And I can't help but lose all hours

of the night shivering

over who else has the capability

to completely destroy my insides

like he did on more than one occasion.

Who else can take my naivety,

and turn it into a pedophilic rendezvous?

And would I have the strength to say no?

Or would my fear

convince me to just shut up

and "let it happen"?

Like what happened in that empty classroom.

I'm afraid that,

even after all of the work I've done to grow,

I am still his little s**t.

His "good little girl",

the type to not go home and tell mommy

who touched in between my legs today.

Except that it won't so much be him

as it might be someone else.

Maybe the guy standing next to me on the bus.

Maybe my boss at work.

Maybe the guy who swears he likes me.

Maybe all they see is an invitation to take over.

An invitation to destroy what little of me 

I have left.

The worst part of it all 

is that I don't think I'd be able to stop it

from happening again.

There's a sick part of me that believes

that this is what I deserve.

Like a "you escaped the man from the classroom,

but you can't escape your worthlessness" 

death sentence to whatever innocence

I've managed to scrape up.

Maybe that's why I check every corner.

Maybe I'm not afraid of being destroyed.

I'm just afraid of the fact that I would let

it happen.

 

Author's Note

A stream of consciousness poem about how I've been feeling lately. I tend to forget that I'm recovering from childhood sexual abuse, and that my PTSD is a thing, even if it doesn't show itself for a certain period of time. It's beginning to show itself again, and I'm starting to slip back into that twisted mindset of downplaying my self worth. This got it a little out of my system, though.