When You Were Young

I've tried my whole life to pretend that what happened to me is something that I can just bury deep down inside of me without ever having to look at it. I keep hoping that if I just don't think about it long enough that it will go away. But that is not the case. I am always thinking about it. Maybe not directly but it's always there. It's there when a boy touches me. It's there when someone startles me. It's there when I see children. I think that because of my experiences as a child, I always fear for children now. I look at them and I want to help them escape. I still can't even help myself escape. I've been hiding this dead body in my head for so many years now that I'm convinced I should have died a long time ago.

It started when I was four and I say it but I don't really know what 'it' means. He would touch me and he would make me touch him. He made me do a lot of things to him. He showed me things, he taught me how to do things. He was the first person I ever kissed. He was the first person I ever loved I think. He would protect me and defend me always. He let me be myself and he just went along with it. He was my best friend. I never felt threatened by him and I was never afraid of him. I was only ever afraid when he'd leave. I'd lay in my bed alone and I'd think about what would happen if someone were to catch us or if someone found out. I didn't know what we were doing but I knew it had to be bad. He'd always start off anything we ever did with, "promise not to tell". So I knew it wasn't okay. I remember panicking all through the night, not sleeping, worrying that I would somehow get pregnant. I was a child and there was so much I didn't know. But there was also too much that I knew.

When I was about 12 he vanished out of my life. He was my rock and now he was gone. I felt so insecure and alone. At this time I had no friends, I was going through the most awkward stage in my life, and I just all-around felt ugly. He, however, was doing great for himself. Everybody loved him, he was attractive and funny, he was everyone's favorite. I still saw him some times at family events because, yes, we are related. This is the part that always makes me feel the most disgusting. It was incest. That word alone is just repulsive and then everything it represents is just ugly. After it ended it felt even uglier because I had to step away from it and realize how gross it all was. I shoved it to the darkest corner of my mind and kept on with my life the best I could.

Life of course is not that easy and at this time in my life, it was very hard. My grandma was my very favorite person on the planet and she died the same year everything stopped. My grandpa became a drug addict. My brother abandoned my family. I was being bullied at school. I hated life. After all that stuff stopped, my life became empty. Everything I loved was leaving. Nobody around me had even the slightest clue that something was wrong. I kept everything to myself.

In high school things started to get better for me. I found the best group of friends possible and they honestly saved my life. None of them knew about the things I was struggling with and that's how I wanted it. I became this person who didn't want anybody to get too close because I knew it wouldn't last. I have a lot of problems in my head that I've been dealing with since I was a little kid. I don't want to say I have any mental disorders because I don't know, I've never been evaluated or anything like that. However, I do know that I have a lot of anxiety and it is constant. I think I might have OCD or something like it because that has been a consistent struggle in my life ever since I can remember. Also, my brain likes to sometimes lock me out and I feel like I'm not part of reality. I don't know about that one, that one is a little terrifying but it's only happened to me on rare occasions when I was so lost in my head that I couldn't escape. I really don't know a lot of the things that are wrong with me but basically, I know that there are some things going on in my head that I know aren't right.

If you've read this long first of all thank you, second of all I'm almost done. The current state of my life is that I'm a college student and I'm trying to finally heal from all of this weird stuff. It's effecting my everyday life and that's not okay. I don't want to be stuck anymore. I have never even had a boyfriend because I am so terrified of someone getting close to me. I mean that in the sense that I don't want to be vulnerable but also I really don't want to be touched either. I can't even hug my friends when they're crying. This stuff is ridiculous, I want to be normal. I want to love someone and be loved back. My whole life I've felt like I wasn't worthy of love because I'm too gross but I am tired of feeling like that. It's not fair to deprive myself of being loved. I say this now but I know in about fifteen minutes it's going to kick back in and I'm going to hide back in my little head again. I don't know, I just am lost and I'm trying to figure it out. I hope that taking this step of talking about it will help me. Even if nobody sees this it is nice to get it out of my head for a while. Thanks.