Triggering (SI/Sexual Abuse) - Cutting away the pain...
“Sarah phone!” mum shouted up the stairs.
“Who is it?” Sarah croaked back. It was 11.30 at night, who would phone her that late?
“John” mum said as she passed the phone to Sarah.
‘Should have guessed’ Sarah thought. It was the fourth time he had phoned that day.
“Hello?”
“Alright Sar? Want to come to town tomorrow? I’ve got the day off work especially for you!”
“Erm… well… I’ll just talk to my mum a second!”
Sarah put the phone down and went to find her mum.
“He wants me to go to town tomorrow, do you think I should?”
“Of course you should, he’s a lovely boy, think about all he’s done for you recently, just do this for him! Why, don’t you want to?”
“Yeah I do. It’s just… Ok, I’ll go!”
“Good, you’ll have fun!”
“Er… ok, night mum!”
Sarah picked up the phone.
“Hi”
“Hey. Are you coming then?”
“Yeah, what time?”
“11 by the phones! Good I’m glad you’re coming, you can help me choose my mum’s Christmas present!”
“Ok. Well as I have to get up in the morning I’m going to go to sleep now!”
“Ok babes. Sweet dreams. See you tomorrow, can’t wait, I’ve got a special surprise for you, it’s…”
“BYE John”
“Oh yeah! Bye Sar, love you!”
“Bye!”
Sarah put the phone down. ‘he said he loves me again! Why won’t he get the picture, I’m not interested in him that way??? I hope it goes ok tomorrow, I wonder what this surprise is!’ Sarah lay awake wondering for a while then eventually she fell asleep.
Sarah was woken up at 8.14 the next morning by her mobile phone.
“1 new message” Sarah opened it, it was from John!
“Hi Sar, can’t wait to see you later, wear a skirt today please! Love you! John.”
“John it’s almost Christmas! It’s far too cold to wear a skirt! I’ll wear my jeans thanks. See you later! Sarah.”
Sarah got ready and got the bus to town where she met John at the bus station at 11.15. They spent most of the day wondering pointlessly round town trying to find a present for John’s mum, at about 3 they decided to walk over to Tesco to buy some lunch.
“I can look at CDs while we’re there” John said excitedly although he’d already bought 3 that day. When they got there they spent over an hour looking round, John at the CDs and DVDs, Sarah at the books and magazines. Eventually they bought their sandwiches and left the shop.
“Let’s go down to the beach” John suggested.
“Isn’t it a bit cold?” Sarah replied.
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun” John ordered. “I’ll keep you nice and warm!”
They walked through the marina down to the steps near to the county hall; they sat there in silence eating their sandwiches. At about 4.30 John got up and grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her up.
“Come on, let’s go round the corner. We can sit there where no one can see us, and it’s out of the wind!” Sarah followed obediently and sat two steps above John. They sat for a while, and then John turned round and moved up right level with Sarah, one step below, right between her legs, facing her. He grabbed hold of Sarah’s head, pulled her close and edged his tongue into her mouth. Sarah heaved and pushed him away.
“Stop it John!” He tried again, more forceful this time, causing Sarah to choke. She pushed him off again.
“John I’ve told you before I don’t like you in that way, why can’t you leave it as us just being friends?”
“Because I love you Sarah, I want to marry you and live with you forever!”
“No, you don’t, you just want to have sex with me!”
“So what if I do, what’s so wrong with sex? Why are you so scared of sleeping with me?”
“I’m not just scared of sleeping with you; I’m scared of sleeping with anyone! I’ve told you about what happened in year four! That was horrible, it’s put me off sex for life and it was so painful and I’ve never been happy since! He hurt me John; I don’t want it to hurt again!” There was silence for a while, and then Sarah spoke again.
“What’s more, I believe sex should be saved until after you are married, it makes it more special then!”
“That I can solve,” John replied. “I’ve been saving for an engagement ring. That was going to be your surprise, I was going to buy it for you today and give it to you for Christmas!”
“John, you can’t possibly think that that’s going to happen. I’ve told you, I don’t like you in that way and I certainly don’t want to sleep with you.”
“Sarah, I’m going to show you, sex isn’t all horrible like you think, it can be nice!”
“No John!” Sarah put one hand behind her to push herself up and with the other tried to push John off but he grabbed her wrist and pushed her back down, pinning her down with her wrist above her head. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She just sat there, silent tears falling down her cheeks as John pulled down her trousers.
“John, please don’t!” Sarah sobbed.
“It’s nice. I’ll show you!” he said sliding his free hand up her shirt and under her bra. He grabbed and groped at her breasts, rubbing and squeezing, after what seemed like hours he stopped leant back and undid his own trousers. Sarah was sobbing uncontrollably by now,
“N-John, Plea-ease don’t!” she cried.
‘He’s going to hurt me, I can’t scream, he’ll hurt me. He’ll beat me like Greg did. I can’t make him stop!’ Sarah thought. ‘He’ll kill me if I try to get help, I don’t know what to do.’ The pain of Sarah’s memories overtook her.
‘I’ll have to let him do it; he’ll kill me if I tell.”
By this time John was on top of Sarah, she was trapped, she couldn’t move. Her mind drift backwards and forwards between the past and the present, first she was trapped between John and the steps, next, in her mind, she was back at school, trapped between brambles and Greg’s fist and penis. There was nothing she could do, the memories of her past, combined with the future made her to weak to try to push him off, too weak to try to scream. She lay there, silent, as John’s penis entered her body, she lay there, silent, as the burning pain came again as he lifted his hips up and down, she lay there, silent, as he come inside her, his wet semen filling her vagina, his hard penis bruising her inside. She was in so much pain, yet so scared she just couldn’t scream. She watched as birds flew over head. Once again, as when she was 8, she wished she was a bird that could fly away, escape this pain and terror. Eventually John pulled himself of her, leaving her crying and bleeding and bruised. He went and sat just out of Sarah’s view. Sarah, realising she was exposed to all, sat herself up and did her trousers up, then she sat there and sobbed until she could cry no more. She turned around; John was still sat there, staring out to sea as if nothing had happened. Sarah stumbled up, liquid pouring out from between her legs. Immediately after, John did too. She was in a lot of pain but all she could think of was how she had to get clean. She ran all the way to the bus station, into the toilets where she tried to scrub out her insides. She sat there scrubbing and scrubbing until she realised she had to be home in ten minutes. She pulled herself together, went and washed her face and hands, and walked straight past John to the bus stop. John followed her like a scared sheep.
“I love you Sarah!” he said.
“Don’t expect to hear from me ever again John!” Sarah shouted.
“Sarah, don’t tell!” John shouted as she got onto the bus, “you’ll regret it if you do!”
The bus journey took a lot longer than normal; Sarah just wanted to get home to clean herself up. When she walked in the door, her parents asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing” Sarah shouted at them and ran up the stairs before she started crying again. She grabbed some clean clothes and got into the shower and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin was red raw and bleeding. Until then she didn’t feel clean. She got out thinking ‘that’ll have to do for now, ill clean myself more later on.’ She went downstairs and joined her family. She sat through tea in silence, avoiding looking at anyone. After the meal, her parents sent her sister into to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
“Sarah what’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“No, I’m fine; I just hate John that’s all.” Sarah lied. And how she did hate John.
“I’m going to bed” Sarah said. “night”
“Night Sarah, love you!” mum and dad chorused. Sarah went up to the bathroom, found the sharpest razor blade she could and sliced her arms into shreds. Blood poured everywhere. She cleaned up the blood, bandaged up her arms then fell asleep sobbing silently into her pillow.
Later on Sarah was woken up by her phone. “Sarah, if you tell anyone I’ll kill you! I’ll be watching you; you know I have a knife! Don’t tell! John.” Sarah burst into tears. ‘not only has he hurt me like this, he is threatening to kill me now.’ Sarah cried herself back to sleep.
She spent the next two days in bed, “ill with a cold”. Then the visitors came for Christmas. Sarah put on a happy face and pretended nothing had happened yet every night, when everyone else was asleep, she cried until she eventual fell asleep.
Christmas came and past, it reached the12th of January, the day the family took down the Christmas decorations. Sarah’s main job was to put away the advent calendar. Sarah took the books off the tree, reading each one as she did. She finally reached the 24th, the birth of Jesus. ‘Oh my god, what if I’m pregnant?’ Sarah thought. ‘No, I can’t be I just had my period!’ This was true; it came just four days after what happened.
Sarah went into denial, punishing herself every time she thought about what happened. ‘nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened’ she would chant to herself in her head. If she thought about it she would hurt herself. Days passed, weeks passed, she heard nothing from John, and she pretended all was normal. Eventually though she worried she seemed to have put it all behind her. There was just one thing bothering her it was over a month since her last period,
‘Oh god, maybe I am pregnant,’ Sarah panicked. ‘I’ll have to do a test, I can’t be, oh god what am I going to do? **** this isn’t good!’ Instead of pulling herself together and thinking things through Sarah went straight up to her room and took out a blade, rolled up her sleeves and sliced through her arms until blood poured out.
‘You are such a slut Sarah, you ****ing whore, you’re disgusting!’ her conscience would tell her. She spent days punishing her self for what had happened, carving into her arms deeper and deeper each time.
Sarah went away by herself for the last weekend of January on a youth conference. She was given some money by her parents to use in an emergency. On the way home, thinking a lot straighter than she had been she thought,
‘Ok, this isn’t the sort of emergency they meant but this IS an emergency.’ When she had to wait for her train after a switch she went into boots at the train station, she used the money given to her, plus some extra returned to her from the fare pool at the conference to buy a pregnancy test. She hid it in her bag and went home. When she got home, she unpacked and went to bed. She had school the next day.
When Sarah got to school, early as usual, she went straight to the toilets and took the test. She waited 15 minutes to get the result to make sure it had time to work properly, and then spent another 15 trying to find the courage to look at the results.
‘****! Oh no. ****!’ It was positive. Sarah had no time to think about what to do next, the buzzer went for first lesson so she ran to Mrs Chiles’s office to sign in then to her lessons. At lunch time she went over to the shop with her friends and bought herself a pot of paracetamol, and then she went into the toilet and took them all. She thought maybe it would kill her, or at least the baby but nothing happened.
Two days later she tried again, this time on the way home from school. It had an effect this time, she felt sick, and her toes and fingers went numb, she went dizzy. She was so scared.
‘I don’t really want to die, I’m going to die. **** I’m so stupid!’
She went to guides and suffered as every noise sounded five times louder than usual. Then when she got home she checked her phone. There was a text from Charlotte, one of the guiders, who had been friends with Sarah since she started, new, in the school a few years before.
“Hi Sarah. I’m just wondering, are you ok? You seemed very down and quiet today. Is everything alright? You were incredibly pale!”
Sarah replied.
“Hi Charlotte. No I’m not really ok. I don’t feel well at all!”
“How don’t you feel well? Have you talked to your parents?”
“I can’t,” Sarah text back. “I’ve taken ~ paracetamol today. I can’t tell them though. If I tell them they’ll take me to hospital and I won’t die that way.”
Sarah waited for a reply, she didn’t get one.
‘Crap, she’s going to tell my parents’ Next thing Sarah knew the phone rang, Sarah knew it would be about her. A few minutes later dad came upstairs.
“Sarah that was Charlotte’s mum. She says that you told charlotte that you’ve taken 16 paracetamol today. Is that true?”
“Yes” Sarah broke down into tears.
“We better get you to hospital then!” Dad took Sarah straight to hospital where they waited hours. Sarah had a few blood tests and had her blood pressure and temperature checked, they just had to sit and wait then. They took Sarah into a small room and a psychiatrist asked her lots of questions.
“What did you do? Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yep, I took lots of paracetamol!”
“How many?”
“Today or all week?”
“Today!”
“~ today, ~ on Tuesday”
“Why did you do that?”
“I wanted to die?”
“Why?”
“I just did!”
“No reason?”
“Nope, no reason, I just had enough of life and wanted to die!” Sarah lied. She couldn’t tell them she was pregnant. They’d tell her parents, and then she’d have to tell them how she got pregnant. She just couldn’t do that; John would kill her if she did.
“Are you sure? Is there anything you want to talk about? Do you still want to die? Do you think you’ll do this again?”
“No! I’m fine! I won’t! Can I go now?”
“We just have to wait for one more set of results to come back, when we have them, if everything is ok then yes, you can probably go.”
The test results must have came back fairly soon after because they were told they could go home at last. Sarah got home and went straight to sleep, planning how she could get rid of the baby without telling anyone.
A few days later she went back to school after numerous appointments with counsellors and psychiatrists; she was put on antidepressants and told she had to see her psychologist every week again, instead of every two as it had been. When she got back she was taken aside by the child protection officer, a teacher in the school and told that the school are there to help, that she can talk to her if she wants to. ‘no thanks’ Sarah thought almost aloud. She went to lessons and pretended like nothing had happened. She went home and tired to do the same but mum and dad just wouldn’t accept that.
“Sarah, you tried to kill yourself, that isn’t normal. We need to know why; you can’t just pretend nothing happened!”
‘I can do what I like’ Sarah thought as she walked off and went and hid in her bedroom. She checked her phone, it was John.
“You better not have told anyone! I’m watching you!” Sarah got messages like this every day for several months after this and then after a while John started coming up to school to make his presence known, trying to scare Sarah. Eventually he would sit outside Sarah’s house texting her with threats. Sarah decided that she had to tell someone. So she told a friend at school.
“Oh my god, you’re a freak, I don’t believe you. What a liar”
“Fine then, don’t believe me, thanks for being such a good friend!”
“I don’t want to be friends with a pathological liar!”
“I don’t want to be friends with you either.” This was at the end of February.
In March Sarah decided to tell John that she was pregnant.
“John I’m pregnant, it’s yours. I don’t know what to do!” John her text back.
“It’s not mine, there’s no way it’s mine. Don’t you dare tell anyone it’s mine! You’re just a slut and a whore. I didn’t do anything to make you pregnant remember. If you tell anyone I did you will die!”
Sarah was terrified. After that John followed her more and more. He would text her telling her she was a slut and hat she had to get rid of the baby else he would tell everyone she cheated one him.
‘I never went out with him in the first place, he raped me yet he’s making me out to be in the wrong. He’s totally lost it. I need to get help.’
The rest of February passed and March followed and passed too, the threats continued, John was following Sarah more and more. He would wait outside school whenever he could, telling people to tell her that he was there, not that he ever wanted to talk to her. His presence was enough to scare her out of her skin. Every small noise would make her jump and her nerves raced so much sleeping became almost impossible. Because of this Sarah would often stay up all night on the computer talking to people just so she didn’t feel so alone.
In April Sarah had to go on a field trip to France for a week, now no one knew she was pregnant so she didn’t know how she could tell the teachers without anyone else finding out. She decided not to. That meant she spent a whole week in less than freezing temperatures, hiking up and down mountains, doing far too much for someone who was pregnant. She managed fine though, only struggling to hide the morning sickness which had been so bad through a lot of the pregnancy.
A few days after she got home from the fieldtrip she was having another sleepless night so she was downstairs on the computer until gone three in the morning, It was Thursday 21st April 2005, very early in the morning when disaster happened.
Sarah was running up the stairs to go to the toilet as the pressure on her bladder was much too much for her to hold it in anymore. As she ran up the stairs she stepped on something and went flying, stomach smacking straight into the stairs. She felt immediate pain. Cramping, like she had sometimes when she was on her period, only it felt 28 thousand times more painful. She got up and wobbled her way to the toilet. A few minutes later she began to bleed. First slowly, then faster, until she was filling at least one super absorbent sanitary towel in less than half an hour. The pain was incredible. She was trying so hard not to scream. No one knew she was pregnant so how could she tell them she was having a miscarriage. She spent the night in the bathroom giving birth to a small foetus. Moments later she doubled up in pain again and passed out some lumpy bloody stuff. Once she’d got over that she explored the baby, picking it up out of the toilet. It was just like the pictures you see in the books, like a newborn baby, yet with really transparent skin and much smaller in size. Its fingers seemed to be webbed together; there was a string of flesh hanging from its stomach, dripping blood everywhere. Its head was bigger in scale than the rest of the body. It looked so ugly, yet so beautiful. Sarah tried to flush it down the toilet, it wouldn’t fit. She picked it up out of the toilet again and ran it a warm ‘bath’ in the sink. She washed it until it was clean, washing off the sticky bloody goo. Then she found a small towel and wrapped her baby in it.
‘I have to keep it safe’ Sarah thought. ‘I have to keep her warm, maybe she’ll survive if I keep her warm.’ That night Sarah slept with her ‘baby’ lying on her pillow.
The next morning she woke, very weak and still bleeding. She got up to go to school feeling very weak and dizzy. She took her baby and put her into a small shoebox she had in her wardrobe. She kissed it on the head then put the lid on and slipped it into her school bag. When she got to school, she went to tutorial then straight to the toilets.
‘I have to hide her, no-one can find out!’ She panicked again. She opened the box up and was immediately sick.
‘I can’t keep her here, I have to get rid of her, and she’s going to rot if I leave in my bag.’
Gently Sarah lifted her baby out of the box; she kissed its small body, which fitted into her hand, head resting on her fingers, the rest curled up on her palm. She was sick again. She cried and cried for what seemed like hours then opened up the sanitary bin. She wrapped her baby, Nadine, up in her towel and placed her gently onto the tray and slowly she closed the lid. Her baby was gone. Sarah tidied herself up, then ran down to the school field and sat and sobbed for hours, cutting herself everywhere possible. She sat there calculating how far gone she was. 18 weeks. In re for gcse she had been taught that babies had been known to survive at twenty weeks.
‘Why couldn’t I hold onto her just 2 weeks more, maybe then I would have told someone? Maybe I would have got help. She could have survived if it wasn’t for me. I killed her. I killed her so I should die too.’
Later that day Sarah took another overdoes, still bleeding she went to bed and slept.
She woke up the next morning and the bleeding had slowed. She went to school and spent as much of the day in the toilets as she could, wanting to be near her Naddy’s ‘grave’. She spent the days pretending all was fine, and then every night, lying in bed thinking about what had happened, crying. She couldn’t cope. She had to tell someone. She had all these feelings of guilt and disgust in her. When she slept, she would dream about the rape, sometimes with John raping her, sometimes Greg.
‘I have to get help’ Sarah thought. ‘I’m making myself ill!’
Later that week Sarah had an appointment with her counsellor. She decided to tell her about what had happened when she was younger.
“When I was 8 I was raped repeatedly by the same boy. He would hit me and hurt me until I was scared to move then he would touch me and rape me.”
Sarah broke down into tears. Her counsellor was very supportive.
“Sarah I can see you find this hard to talk about, maybe you could write it into a story for me.” Sarah went home and did just that. This is the story she wrote:
How could you?
The graveyard was dark on that cold misty winter morning. It was quiet. All that could be heard was the rustling of the branches of the great pine tree and the click, click sound as the bare branches of the old oak hit against each other in the wind. There was an occasional caw of a crow waking from a night of silent slumber.
“How could you? How could you be so selfish? How could you do that to me? Did you have no heart?”…
Sarah sat sobbing, head in her hands, tears flowing down her cheeks like rivers trickling down a hill…
“How could you do that to me?”…
Eight and a half years after it happened and still Sarah mourned. She sobbed with self pity as she sat there on the ground, sprawled across the grave, knife in her hand; she dragged it across her arm. Once, twice, three times she cut till blood poured out…
“How could you do it? How could you even think of doing what you did?”…
The grave she lay across was the grave a boy, who took his life at 13, such a young age and although Sarah hated him, she was the only one who visited that grave. She was scared he’d come back if she didn’t…
“I hate you! How could you? I really, really hate you! You hurt me so much! You ruined my life! How could you?”
Sarah sat alone, crying inconsolably...
Eight years ago, 8 years 7 months and 3 days to be precise, the dead boy, the boy in the grave, had almost killed Sarah. He’d definitely killed her happiness and trust. The boy, then almost twelve, had been bullying Sarah for a year or more, this day though, was to be worse than any other, worse than the bullying. It was worse than anything Sarah could ever imagine…
Sarah sobbed on, like a mother who lost their baby. She drifted into her memories:
One summer’s day Sarah was sat alone on the school bench. She’d been upset by her ‘best friend’ and was feeling alone. Then along came a boy, much older than her and said “come with me” he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her across the yard and pulled her to behind the music room and onto the field. He lifted his fist and… One, two, three, he punched! Once in the ribs, the second time in the stomach, then in her chest again. Then he trampled her feet and kicked her shins so she could hardly stand! She was so weak now nothing she could do would stop him. She couldn’t cry for help, she couldn’t run away yet he punched her again, just to be sure. This knocked all the breath out of her…
Sarah jumped with a start, floating quickly away from her memories, she punched the ground hard! One, two, three...
“This is what you did to me! You did this everyday for over a year! You hurt me! How could you hurt me like that?”…
It was later now. Sarah was trapped. One, two, three, the punches came again. His hand cupped tightly over her mouth. Oh how she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream so loud. She wanted to bite his hand. It was so warm but it belonged to such a cold hearted person. A 12 year old boy who had such an awful life his way of coping was to attack an 8 year old girl. Sarah felt sorry for him till he hit her again. Once, twice, three times. Then it happened. It started. He touched her stomach with his sticky hands. He touched her chest. Then he grabbed her skirt and yanked it down so hard Sarah fell to the floor along side it. “GET UP” he shouted, “NOW” Before she could he’d pulled off her knickers too…
Sarah was frozen now yet sobbing all the same. Paralysed with fear, she couldn’t move.
He grabbed her, he pulled her, rubbed his hands all over her, and he stuck his fingers in her. Then for a brief moment he stopped, sighed deeply, and then moved closer again. Then slowly he undid his trousers and they fell to the floor with Sarah’s skirt. Then down went his boxers accompanying Sarah’s little knickers…
“No!” Sarah screamed out loud, “Please don’t! Please not again! “Sarah was shaking. So hot, but yet shivering. Shaking like a leaf, yet sweating like a pig.
He came closer, closer, closer. He grabbed her again and held her. He held her half naked, shaking, teary body close. Too close. She couldn’t breathe. He touched her, rubbing her all over, up and down her tiny, fragile body. She relaxed a bit as this was actually soothing. She knew it wasn’t right but that’s he wouldn’t stop. She’d best just relax what was coming next was a lot worse. If she flinched he’d hit her again. And it came. The punches came. She was knocked backwards in terror. “KEEP STIIL” He roared. “Don’t struggle, just keep still!” he grabbed a bramble and, just in case, just to be sure, he dragged it across her till she was bleeding. “Keep still. Please don’t go. I love you!” he declared.
She couldn’t move anyway, she was trapped between the hedge and his fists. She hurt too much to walk now anyway, she was in so much pain…
“You said you loved me, if you loved me then why did you hurt me? Why do you haunt me? How could you do it? ...
Sarah sobbed on, collapsed to the ground by his grave, “Stop, please stop,” Sarah cried out. It didn’t stop; she drifted back in to her memories.
Then he did it, he forced him self right up close and into her, so hard, so painful, the bruising there already made worse by another attack. Forwards and backwards his hips swayed. In and out his penis went. He pushed her back against the hedge, digging it into her back. Sarah was trapped. She couldn’t breathe, tears flooding down her cheeks from those small pleading eyes of hers. “Please let him stop, please let this be the last time, please don’t let him do it again,” she pleaded inside. This was the third time, there was another twelve days if this to follow…
“How could you? Why did you? I did nothing to you; I was a friend to you! How could you? “ …
* * * * *
Twelve days later and the final day of the school term before the summer holidays. The boy had attacked her every weekday now for 14 days. Sarah hoped so much that after the holidays he would be gone and that this would stop. She secretly hoped that as it was the last day of term, toy day, it would be different, that he’d find something else to do. For three whole weeks of school, Monday to Friday, she spent her lunchtimes being assaulted. Today, she hoped, would be different. Except it wasn’t different, she knew deep down it wouldn’t, but oh how hard she wished. She wished she was a bird so she could fly away. But instead it came again. The beating came again, the rape came again! This time though WAS different, it was worse! He didn’t stop when the whistle was blown to mark the end of the lunch break. He just sat there, after having hit her, after having kicked her, after having winded her, after having rape her, he just sat there, crying, rocking forwards and backwards, her head on his lap. What had he done? He’d really hurt her this time. He’d hit her so hard to make her promise not to tell that she fainted, she fainted and fell to the floor, hitting her head on a stone. She’d also cut her leg during her fall yet while she was unconscious and bleeding still he raped her. Still he raped even with blood pouring out of her leg all over him. When he registered this was blood he panicked. “What am I doing? What have I done? I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry!” Sarah eventually came round and he helped her up slowly, carefully, apologising as he went. He walked her to class and told her teacher she’d fallen and he’d looked after her. He got a sticker and got sent back to class with big thanks from Sarah’s teacher. That was the last time Sarah saw him.
“You said you were sorry but if you were sorry how could you do it in the first place? No one likes me now because of how much you screwed up my life; I’m treated like a freak. You weren’t sorry for me at all, only for yourself! You just didn’t want to go to jail! Killing yourself was the easy way out, the selfish way. You just didn’t want to get in trouble!
Sarah sat against his grave now, the grave of her rapist, a 12 year old boy. She sat there swaying backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards like on the very last day she saw him. She was chanting to herself, chanting to the grave!
“How could you? … How could you? … … … “How could you???”
She took this story with her to her next counselling session and gave it to her counsellor to read. She sat and read it in silence then broke down into tears.
“Sarah this is so moving. And it has all your feelings about it in it too. This will be good for us to work with.”
Sarah left the session feeling really angry. ‘How come she can cry about what happened yet I can’t? I must be so sick if I don’t cry after everything that has happened to me.’ Sarah hadn’t been able to cry since the day she threw her baby away.
“How did it go?” dad asked as he picked her up from her counselling session.
“I’m not going back there, I can’t” Sarah replied.
“Why not?”
“I’m just not, and you can’t make me!” Sarah shouted in reply. “I am not going back!”
Weeks passed with Sarah trapped in her grief and anger. She still saw a psychologist every week and decided to try telling him. She told him about what had happened when she was 8; she told him how much it still hurts. He suggested that she told her parents, so the next week, with her psychologists help, she told her dad. He cried! After a lot of questioning and tears and cuddles Sarah went back to school.
The next week her psychologist asked her if anything similar had happened more recently. She lied and said no. That day she decided to tell her form tutor, Mrs Simpson. Sarah told her about when she was 8, she told her how bad it made her feel, then she went on to tell her about what had happened at Christmas. She spent hours talking to her about what had happened, eventually breaking down into tears.
The next day she spent lunchtime sat with Mrs Simpson in her classroom. Mrs Simpson went down to get herself some lunch. While she was gone, Sarah took out her craft knife, bought especially for the purpose and cut her wrist. Mrs Simpson came up and found Sarah in floods of tears and took her straight down to the child protection officer, Mrs John. She sat there with her for ages, telling her what had happened. Mrs Simpson sat with her too. They phoned up her parents to come to school. Once again only dad came. They told him what Sarah had said, and left him with Sarah as she cried and cried. After that Sarah was taken home and there were serious conversations with her parents about what had happened.
“Why didn’t you tell us? We could have put a stop to it. You should have told us”
Sarah just sat and cried. ‘I wanted to tell you, I really did!’ she thought.
“You have to tell the police! Will you tell the police?”
“NO” Sarah shouted then ran up to her room.
Her dad phoned Richard, her psychologist and told him what they’d found out. Richard made an emergency appointment with Sarah. They spent that session talking through everything, Sarah crying the whole time. He told her she had to tell the police, but only Sarah could make that decision. Sarah wouldn’t. On the way home from that session Mum asked Sarah the one question they hadn’t yet thought to ask.
“Did you ever think you might be pregnant?”
Sarah broke down into tears.
“Mum I was. I did a test, that’s why I took the overdose in February. I found out I was pregnant!” Sarah cried and cried.
Mum and dad worked around her, arranging appointments for her everywhere. At the GUM clinic, with her psychologist, her GP, and with a counsellor specifically to deal with rape.
When she saw her GP she left the practice crying. Dad had gone with Sarah to see her. When she told her about the miscarriage she told Sarah she was telling lies that she couldn’t have had a miscarriage. She asked Sarah if she’d had an abortion. Sarah’s temper flew up, into a rage.
“I had a miscarriage. I lost my baby and all my doctor can do is ask me if I had my baby purposefully killed.”
Sarah ran out of the surgery, followed by dad, she ran home, went straight to the toilet and made herself sick. Then she went downstairs and cried into her dad’s arms. “Naddy, I need Naddy, I want her back!” she wailed. She cried for almost an hour. Dad cuddled her and made her fell better. Then she went back to school where she told Mrs Simpson what had happened at the doctors, meaning she had to explain all about the miscarriage.
When Sarah saw this new counsellor she told her everything. The counsellor told her she needed to have some tests. A week later Sarah had a blood test, had to give a urine sample and had a swab test. They tested her for STIs, HIV and other infections that could have been caused by the rape and miscarriage. They all came back negative. It was then Sarah decided she had actually been lucky. She could have been given all sorts of infections and diseases that could mean she couldn’t have children. Instead Sarah was able to start her life again, look for someone she loved and eventually she would be able to have children that she really wanted.
Sarah spent months thinking like this and her depression began to lift. Then one day, in October guilt overtook her.
‘I’ve been happy that I lost my child, I’ve been happy that I am not a mother, yet I killed my child, I fell, I shouldn’t be happy, I should be dead.’
Later that day Sarah took over ~ tablets of many varieties. She was later admitted to hospital where she was under observation overnight; luckily the pills had no effect on her except cause a fever and sickness. Of course Sarah didn’t think that way. She had wanted to die.
After that, all the pills in the house were hidden. Every sharp object taken away from Sarah, yet Sarah just bought more and more. She couldn’t do anything so drastic again so she just ended up cutting herself more and more. Eventually she stopped this too thinking, ‘If I make it look like I’m coping fine then one day I can end it all and they wouldn’t even suspect anything was wrong.’ By this time it was almost Christmas again.
Christmas came and went, Sarah had fun, and she wouldn’t let herself think about anything that had happened, she just enjoyed the season to be jolly, hiding everything inside. Eventually in January Sarah decided it was time to punish John. She went straight to the police and made her statement. It took her over 3 hours to complete it. Months passed with the police investigated the case. John was still following her, yet she had changed her mobile number so she wasn’t getting the texts anymore. She decided now it was time to tell her friends what had happened. First she told Lesley. Lesley spoke her mind.
“I don’t believe you, there is no way you could have gone through that and not told us. Are you sure you aren’t schizophrenic? Maybe you should be tested.”
Later that week she tried telling Annie. Annie believed her and said she would even help with the case if it came to it.
Time passed and still Sarah heard nothing from the police. It got so hard for her Sarah sunk back into a major depression. In the summer, a few weeks after having taken her a levels Sarah decided it was time to try to kill herself again. She went into town, bought ~ packets of paracetamol and lots of different things to take them down with. She went home. Shut herself in her room and then took them all. After she had taken them all she went down for tea. She couldn’t eat anything and got into a fight with her parents. She ended up storming up to her bedroom, barricading herself in her room where she lay and let the drugs take there toll. A while later, Sarah got impatient as she hadn’t died yet, but boy she felt sick. She was banging and banging her head on the wall so mum came up to tell her to stop. Then Sarah cut her wrists, feeling a lot worse, thinking at last it was her time to go, she carved the words sorry and bye into her arms along with a lot of other cuts and scratches. She still wasn’t dying; she couldn’t fall asleep so she was banging her head again. This time mum tried to come in, but she couldn’t. She shouted at Sarah to open the door, having it open a crack she could see in.
“I can’t” Sarah slurred. Mum noticed her arms, she screamed out for dad and he came running. They pushed open the door and started shouting at Sarah.
“Come down here. Let me clean those arms up”
“I can’t” Sarah slurred again.
“Sarah what else have you done?” Sarah pointed to the bag of paracetamol boxes.
“Oh god Sarah, get up now, we need to get you to hospital!”
Sarah tried to stand up but immediately collapsed to the floor.
“Get up” mum shouted. Sarah couldn’t. She shuffled her way to the stairs and slid down them on her bottom. She stood up once she was down stairs, walked about 10 steps then collapsed on the floor. After that she kept drifting in and out of consciousness. Her parents called an ambulance. By this time Sarah was hysterical, screaming out for her lost daughter, crying out for Naddy. The paramedics took her to the ambulance, lay her down and set off to the hospital. On the way Sarah was violently sick, yet when she got to hospital they said she needed to be put on a drip to bind the paracetamol together, which basically meant make her sick even more. She was awake until gone 3 being sick and spent almost 24 hours on a drip. Once off the drip and feeling slightly stronger, Sarah was made to see a psychiatric nurse. She was asked the usual questions but this time, they provided her with solutions. She was to see a psychiatrist and be referred to the local mental health support centre. She was given these solutions and took them up. She was in hospital for 3 days...
Sarah spent the next few months in and out of day centres and counselling officers and was beginning to improve... She began to feel better about herself and applied for uni... She began uni in september, but because the police were still investigating what happened, and kept coming to Sarah with further questions she just couldnt cope... the cutting began again and she became suicidal, she couldnt handle uni so she left... She felt so so guilty and useless... She spent her time hid away in bed... that was another very happy christmas...
The doctors changed her medication, which really helped sarah... she applied for jobseekers allowence and was put into occupational therapy... and then sarah found a job, meaning she got a room in the university again, and some indepenace, which sarah needed cause she felt stiffled by her parents...
She still had issues with self harm, and one day she cut so deep she knew it needed stitches... she went to the hospital and while she was there she bumped into someone she met at the day centre, who had gone for treatment after taking an overdoes and had nowhere to stay for the night, so sarah offered her to stay at her room in the uni...
Last edited by bloodyfool : 06-06-2007 at 05:00 PM.
Reason: Could be seen as tip sharing - sorry
The next day, Jocey, Sarah’s friend from the night before, came round in the evening with a bottle of wine, her boyfriend, and his best friend… They wanted to say thank you to Sarah for the night before. Sarah was working that evening, which meant she was on call, so she left her room for a while and when she came back, Jocey and her boyfriend were in the bathroom having sex… Too embarrassed to say anything Sarah just sat in her room with the stranger, whose name she didn’t even know. They sat talking for a while, with the music turned up loud to drown out the sounds of what was happening in her bathroom… Sarah relaxed into the situation, and ended up falling asleep… The next thing she knew, the guy was kneeling over her, pulling at her trousers, his were already on the floor, and he was hard… He had straddled Sarah, so she couldn’t move, he pulled open her legs, pinned down Sarah’s arms, and tried to force himself inside her. “Please let me in” he giggled “ It’ll be nice” Sarah told him to get off her, and struggled to get him off, but he was just too heavy, and she was stuck, so she shut her legs to stop him, shouting at him to stop, and crying. But he just pulled her legs apart again, with so much force Sarah felt her muscle tear. He tried to force himself inside her, but Sarah resisted, but he got it in eventually, with so much force that he ripped the skin causing Sarah to bleed. He swayed himself forwards in backwards inside her, raping her, while she lay there, bleeding and sobbing, begging him to stop… Blood and semen trickled from Sarah all over her bed sheets… he didn’t stop until Jocey’s boyfriend came out of the bathroom, by which time, Sarah had given up begging and was just lying there in tears. The man got off Sarah, who ran into the bathroom, dripping a mixture of blood and semen as she went, she wiped herself so she was dry, then kept going causing herself to bleed even more. It hurt so bad, worse than she remembered from before… Jocey’s boyfriend said he wanted to leave, but before they left Sarah spoke to Jocey, “I asked him to stop, he wouldn’t, he hurt me, a lot, I’m bleeding… I’m sorry but don’t ever bring him back… I don’t want that to happen again” Jocey looked at her and laughed “You’re bleeding cause he’s big. Very big! I bet you enjoyed it though” Sarah felt sick. How her friend could think that she didn’t know. She ran back inside and threw up in the bathroom. “Too much wine” Jocey said, and they left… Sarah got into the shower and stood there for three hours scrubbing away so she was bleeding even more, she changed her sheets, then cut herself, so she was bleeding a lot from several places… She fell asleep hoping she would bleed to death over night, but she didn’t she just woke up the next morning in a puddle of blood.
The next day Sarah realised she should get herself checked out, but she was so scared… it took ten days, but she went to the doctors and said she had had unprotected sex… they took a urine sample for a pregnancy test, which was negative, and asked her to come back the next day for STI swabs and a blood test.
When Sarah went back the next day, she had to lie on a bed with her lower half with nothing on and her legs open so the nurse could get a swab in… It her Sarah so much just to lie there like that, and when the nurse attempted to put in the swab, Sarah flinched with pain… The nurse took the swabs, and then told Sarah to stay there, that she would be back. She went to get the doctor, who took one look at Sarah and said “is there anything you want to tell us Sarah?” Sarah shook her head and the nurse said to the doctor, and her as a question at the same time “this was rape wasn’t it?!” Sarah didn’t say anything, they stood there looking at her with pitying eyes, but Sarah was too scared to say anything. They let her go but said “if you want to talk, come straight back.”
Sarah didn’t go back. She lay in bed all day everyday for most of the month, only getting up to work. She just hid away.
Sarah felt hurt and scared, she felt betrayed. Most of all though, she felt anger towards herself. And as a punishment she would cut herself at least once a day. She got by from day to day on the knowledge she could cut as a punishment… Cut away the pain.
“All I am to anyone is a sex object, no one has asked if I’m ok, no one cares about me… everyone hates me, all anyone wants about me is my body! Everyone hates me, and I don’t blame them. Nobody hates me as much as I do!”
Later that week, Sarah decided, “if all people like me for is my body, then they can have it” She left a message on a local dating site that she was available to pleasure men in anyway they pleased and left her email as a contact. She had one man offer to pay her, and a lot of old men contacted her. Then one 30year old man contacted her, asking her to meet him later that day…
He took her to his house, and they went straight to his bedroom where he laid her on the bed and undressed her. He licked her pussy, he bit her clit, and he squeezed her boobs, and hit her and bit her all over, and then he asked her to give him a blow job, so Sarah did, as she had lost all respect for herself, and then they had intercourse. Sarah felt like an animal. “I’m just a dirty whore now”
He finished his business, took off his condom, which Sarah thought it was considerate of him to use, then took her back to the uni, saying, “same time next week?” Sarah shrugged, went into her room and went to sleep.
The next day Sarah came down with flu, so went home. When she was there she told a friend about what she had done on msn, and about how she felt, and than she went to bed and spent the next couple of days there. On the day before Sarah was due to go back to work, Dad took Sarah into the living room and shut the door… He asked her if what he had read was true, he had found the messages Sarah had sent to her friend on msn. He didn’t know that Sarah had been raped, he didn’t understand why she was hurting so much, so he got angry, he shouted at her, called her a slut and a whore, and said he didn’t want to know her anymore, then he slapped her, full force across the back of her head. Sarah ran out of the room, grabbed all her stuff, and got the bus back to her room at uni, where she cut herself all over. Her arms, her legs, her chest, her stomach, even down below, hoping that, if she was scarred down there, noone would want to use her for sex again. That night Sarah had the best night’s sleep in a long time, as she didn’t feel scared someone would come in and rape her that night, cause if they tried, they’d discover one very cut up girl, covered in dry blood, and “no one will want to sleep with that” she thought as she fell asleep… She didn’t work the next day, and she had the day after that off too, but she has too face the world tomorrow, no more hiding under the duvet, like she is now, like I am now…
This is my story... Written by me about me...So what am I going to do? Get help? Kill myself? No, I’m going to keep living the way I have for the last six and a half years, getting through each day, by cutting the pain away!
Last edited by bloodyfool : 06-06-2007 at 05:02 PM.
oh my.. thats so.. so terrible but its so powerful.
please take care...
xx
If only you'd ever speak to me
the way you once did
look at me the way you once did
pull to me the way you once did
but you don't
you don't feel anymore
you don't care anymore
it's all gone
it's all gone
Thankyou for all your comments ... I originally wrote it just after I had od-d the last time, when things appeared to be on the up, as a help to tell people to stand up and justice will be done, but it wasnt, and then what happened in march happened, and yeah... so now it doesnt have a happy ending im afraid... but yeah... Thankyou for commenting though... I wasn't going to post it on here but i put it on my blog and decided to put it here too... Sorry if it triggered anyone, and sorry for rambling... Yeah, Thanks! Take care. x
wow, this was one of the most amazing things i've ever read. i'm so sorry, but keep your head up, you have so much courage to face all this. best of luck <3
Aww hun I was reading through this thinking how creative you were being and then I read that this is about you.
I'm so sorry hun but it takes a lot of guts to admit to what happened!
You deserve more than an award for all you have been through!
Please take care hunni PM me whenever you need to talk.
I will never EVER accuse you of lying like your friends did!
*big hugs*
thankyou again for your comments everyone. i apreciate you're kind words, and offers of support. I don't talk to random people about my problems anymore, i keep them for my counsellor and/or psych so i dont end up causing anyone else issues. thankyou for offering though! x
Wow i really am shocked, you must have so much strength inside you to still be here today after all of that.
im really sorry to hear how bad things where for you, no one should be made to go through that ever.
i have great respect for you having the courage to put that on here and thank you for allowing us all to read it, its a really moving an powerful peice, it kept me hooked to it and im now at 1.00 in the morning really tired and yet i just had to keep reading, and for someone who hates reading like i do thats an amazing thing.
i wish u all the best for the furture and i hope one day you find ur prince charming and can start to live a normal and happy life together.
take care and much love
Danni
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
... I originally wrote it just after I had od-d the last time, when things appeared to be on the up, as a help to tell people to stand up and justice will be done, but it wasnt, and then what happened in march happened, and yeah... so now it doesnt have a happy ending im afraid... but yeah... Thankyou for commenting though... I wasn't going to post it on here but i put it on my blog and decided to put it here too... Sorry if it triggered anyone, and sorry for rambling
... Yeah, Thanks! 
Take care. x
