Keep waking up to nightmares. Memories. Memories of assault and rape. I’m sitting here shaking. Cold sweat. I sometimes think I can hear the men whispering outside my room. I can hear their footsteps. Feel their breath against the back of my neck. Climbing into bed with me. Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m in my own home anymore. I think I’m on that dirt road. Or in my bedroom back in Lake Odessa. Sometimes I’m at camp and being watched. All of them around me. I can’t escape. I can’t run. I can only lay here and shiver. Am I typing this? Am I sharing? Am I reaching out into the dark and am I finding the right hands reaching for me? Or is it theirs? It is his? Or his? Of them? Clawing are me. Commanding me. Beckoning me to make them feel more like men as they rip me apart inside and out. I don’t know. I never do. So I huddle in my sweat. Could be my tears. In a ball in a corner on the floor in the dark.
Save me. Why doesn’t anyone ever save me? I’m so tired of saving myself.