Diary of a Scorpio girl – Entry ten – she just knew*…

The following piece of writing is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

[Trigger warning: themes of abuse and violence]

It was time, she didn’t quite know how she knew but she knew it was time, things had shifted, things had changed drastically, she was no longer that person, that child, that punchbag – she was now who she was always meant to be and that meant starting a new life. Was it an easy choice no, did she know the consequences, yes but most of all she knew it was the abuse that had caused her demise. For decades she was never accepted, never good enough, never quite right, never pleasing enough and it tore her to shreds, it ripped from her who she could have been, it caused her to lose herself so explicitly that she didn’t even know who she was.

Until she broke, as she was thrown to the ground she shattered into a million tiny pieces – they had finally destroyed her. As she found herself laying there on the cold hard ground, she felt empty, so tired and exhausted from all their years of violence and unmet expectations that she didn’t know how long she lay there – so still, so quiet, so frozen. She could hear a faint distant voice from deep within her, a voice that kept nudging her, telling her to get up, that this is not the end, this is not how our story ends. It took all her strength, every last ounce of strength she had to get up, to want to move, to be able to sit up – she looked around and she felt like she was looking at the world with new eyes – everything looked so different. She ached all over, sharp pain was piercing her entire body, she was bleeding, she was fragile and weary. She looked down at her hands and they didn’t even feel like her own, she looked at her scratched and bruised legs and they too looked alien. She felt her face and it felt unfamiliar. She felt tears streaming down her face, they felt warm against her cold worn skin, she made no attempt to wipe them away for it was pointless, they would continue until she was ready to make them stop. Her head felt fuzzy, unclear, she logically knew she was alive, but it wasn’t enough to help her function coherently. One thing she did know for sure was that when she had been dumped on the roadside she had been left for dead – she wasn’t meant to have woken up – her body was meant to have given up on her.

As she adjusted herself to make sense of being alive, she felt a hand on her shoulder, she weakly looked up and saw the kindest face she had ever seen. He gently helped her up on to her feet, she staggered and almost collapsed into him, but he was able to keep her upright – she felt his strength through his helping hand. She knew she was safe, he felt safe, he had nothing but concern in his eyes – it made her tears stop. They momentarily held eye contact, her eyes conveyed so much of what she’d been through, his eyes in turn seemed to understand it all, how this was possible, she did not know. She had been held prisoner for most of her life, trapped in a single room for most of the day, only being allowed out with strict instructions to bear, veering off from these had dire consequences, bruises that would last for days, no food and being made to sleep on the floor. She was told what to say and how to say it – she was told what to wear, how to respond to questions from third parties, when to smile and when not to – everything was carefully choreographed to make it all look normal and perfect – no would ever have suspected what she had been enduring. She had accepted her fate a long time ago, initially she had tried fighting them, but she could never match the cruelty they bestowed upon her, she gave up as she thought this was how it was always going to be. She found herself escaping into her thoughts dreaming of a time when she’d feel the sun on her face, hear the birds singing, feel the grass beneath her feet and the wind in her hair – such simple pleasures were what she longed for. She didn’t know what kindness meant or what it was meant to feel like – all she knew was fear, punishment, disappointment and rejection. She was so beautiful, but she could never look at herself in the mirror – she felt ashamed of what she saw, she felt ugly, she was told her hair was wrong, her skin was wrong, her colour was wrong – it was all wrong, so she was told over and over.

She was painfully thin, malnourished from years of neglect and being poorly fed – her body felt weak. She could feel them getting more and more agitated with her as the years went on – they didn’t know what to do with her. In the early years they took great pleasure in tormenting her, in calling her names, in telling her to kill herself – they found it amusing, especially when she cried – that seemed to spur them on even more. She rarely spoke, she could never look anyone in the eye, she was beyond shy, she didn’t know how to be around people on the rare occasions she was allowed out of the house.

She vividly reminded the day her life was supposed to end – they had been arguing amongst themselves for days, the atmosphere felt sharp, more toxic than usual, she knew things would not end well for her. She could feel it in her protruding bones, she could barely breathe as she heard them both coming up the stairs and as they both entered her room, she knew she would die that day. It was the most severe beating she’d ever experienced, she could hear her bones crack, she could feel her skin tear, she could feel her blood leaving her body, her life force escaping her, she knew she was dying, and she wanted to, she wanted it to finally end – she welcomed it for she’d finally be free. She blacked out – she was barely breathing – they thought she was dead, as the panic began to set in, they bundled her into the back of their car and drove to the furthest, most remote place they would think of and threw her lifeless body onto the side of the road after which they madly sped off without a single care given. She was stunned by how much of that day she remembered. The man who stood before now, still holding her hand, felt like the first human she had ever met who could actually see her pain and wanted to help her, not harm her. Her soul spoke to her with a ferocity she hadn’t experienced before – it told her she could trust him. So she did, and that was how she knew she would be okay, she didnt know how but she trusted herself enough to know that she just knew.