30.4.2000

Version 1: "Blood never makes you trust anyone."

I seriously believed someone wanted to poison me when I was a kid. I couldn't leave any food or drink unattended even for a second because I was sure someone'd put syanide or arsenic or something else lethal in it. Did I receive treatment for this? No. There was no way I could've mentioned it because if they would have found out I knew they wanted me dead and they would have used more direct methods, like cutting my throat open when I was asleep or such.
How did I get over it? I have no idea.

This belief makes perfect sense, though, if you consider that I had been threatened to be killed several times before the paranoia-incident. But you're supposed to get over those sort of things. Especially when you were never seriously injured. You're expected to get over those things. They don't make you cry yourself to sleep ten years later.
Because you're weak if you don't get over it. You're somehow defect. Somehow wrong. Because you're supposed to think of the pain he went through and how he never meant it and how he never did what he threatened. You're supposed to understand him even if you can't understand yourself. You're supposed to get over it because other people have been through that and a lot of worse and survived. However, no one ever talks about those who didn't survive. They were weak. They could've been helped, had they only wanted to be helped.

You're supposed to rationalize. Rationalize and forget and get help. Not necessarily in that order. You aren't supposed to cut yourself or want to kill yourself. That's destructive and irrational and unacceptable. You can be angry but you have to do something productive and 'acceptable' with your anger. "Anger is an energy. Use it wisely."

I won't explain and I won't apologize. I can't anymore. I can't feel sorry for anything I've done. I can't feel anything.
Excuse me, I'll go cry myself to sleep once again.
And I'll have none of your shit about self-pity.

Yes, it would help if you understood and cared and wanted to comfort. But I can't ask for that because I'm not willing to explain what kind of damage that kind of fear does and I know asking for understanding or caring isn't allowed. And I know I can be... unlikeable. I'd just like it if someone, for a change, .... I don't know what. Told me they don't hate me?
I wish I could believe that.

Version 2: "Loving every minute of it, babe."

There were insane fights. Insane fights that'd start from my mother commenting on how my father drove the car, from my mother starting to cry suddenly, unexpectably, from my parents accidentally walking in the same room with each other. They'd stop the car and chase each other around it, screaming and yelling and banging the windshield with their fists. They'd run around the house and throw things at each other. They'd scream till midnight and make us cry and they'd shut up for a second after I told them to shut the fuck up and then start again. My mother would sit for hours staring out of the window and crying, my father would yell he'd kill us and then proceed to cut himself, after which he'd chase our mother around the house with a knife and spill blood everywhere. I tried to dig my way through my sheets and the walls, I'd try to stick fingers in my ears and scream to stop hearing, I'd try to pretend nothing was happening, to stop being there when there was no place to escape to, no way of escaping.

I'd go upstairs and hide in the closet and later come downstairs for dinner like nothing had happened. And I'd wonder how they could be so normal after everything that had happened and I'd wonder why no one ever called the police. I'd fill the silence that hurt my ears with music and I'd hide the noice that hurt my ears in music and I'd read hundreds of books just to get away and I'd refuse to talk to anyone and I'd fail to explain the teacher why I was always crying because I couldn't stop crying.

I'd learn to shove my elbow to my stomach to make the screams in my head stop, and I'd learn to stop washing my hands too often because they'd ask why and I learnt to walk down the street without being noticed and I'd learn how to lie still and hide myself till the bad things had stopped happening and I learnt that I would always wake up, however much I didn't want to.
And eventually they would stop. And eventually I'd forget how to cry and I'd learn how to push the fear away in greater fear of being attacked for my fear.
And I'd give speeches, even, without crying. And the parents would stop fighting, eventually they'd even start talking. My sister would stop running away because she moved away. I'd learn that cutting was more effective than hitting and biting. I'd learn that shrinks would never change anything and that there still were beautiful people but I couldn't ever be one of them.
Not necessarily in that order.

But what I never learnt, was how to stop being afraid. How to trust anyone. How to hide everything. And I never learnt how to deal with it, how to forget it, how to move on.
Because there's no way of moving on. There's only a way of moving out. And I never really remembered that the trick is to keep breathing. And I never found out how to write about all this without crying.

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