Thanksgiving

I'm grateful that I woke up on Thursday and lived for almost 4 hours before I remembered. I'm grateful for the distractions of my extended family and of my grandmother's dog. I'm grateful that I knew something was wrong and ended our relationship before it happened again.

I'm not grateful that I made it into a joke. I'm not grateful that I didn't feel safe enough with you to tell you. I'm not grateful that I've spent almost a year asking myself "but wasn't it really my fault?"

I don't want to be here. Would it be better to spend today crying in my bed at home? I don't know. I can't do big family Thanksgivings, not anymore. This one has taught me that.

It wasn't Thanksgiving, last year, when you sexually assaulted me. It was weeks after, but Thanksgiving was when it started. You drove me home, and when you asked me out, I said yes. That yes did not mean yes to everything. None of them did. You assumed, and you get to forget.

I hide it well. My trauma isn't the kind that makes me shake or cry uncontrollably. It's the kind that takes my breaths, one by one, until I'm as close to hyperventilating as I can be without my breaths being audible, because I must not allow my pain to take up space.

I'm so anxious to hide the pain that I make social mistakes. Let them think that I don't think clearly, that I'm stupid. I can't afford to fall apart.

I can feel myself slipping. Falling into my old coping mechanisms isn't good for anyone. But I'm doing it, and I can't seem to stop. I need it to stop. Need to stop remembering your grandparents watching the football, your youngest sisters fighting over toys. I hear it, under the sound of my grandmother and aunt and sister and uncle and cousin, all with their own agenda today. I feel myself slipping away, my identity consumed by memory. Where am I going?

I read a book recently in which the protagonist had constructed a garden in her head. Maybe I should build -- not build, that's the wrong word, but maybe I should create the image of a waterfall in my head. I don't know if it would help. I just tried running through the rain in my head, my feet splashing in puddles. This is usually a happy place for me. Nothing.

How have I gone from the best I remember feeling to one of the deepest lows in four days?

You live in my body now. You didn't ask if you could, you just opened the door and set your bags down. I don't see you very often; sometimes, even when I see you, I can close my eyes and walk past. But sometimes, when I'm in the bedroom of my mind, you're there. I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes me feel it more. You push, and every time I break a little more. You'll never leave.