Dear 14 Year Old Me, 9/27/1991,
I’m writing you today to forewarn you of the events to come. When you wake up this morning and stumble blindly down the hallway(from lack of eyeglasses) and reach your destination of the kitchen, you’re going to find that there’s nothing to eat, as usual. You’ll get a tall glass of water and chug the entire thing with hopes that it will hold of the growls of hunger until lunchtime.
You’ll head back down the dark hallway and continue into the bathroom to shower before school. Once you’re in the bathroom, you’re going to get an eerie feeling, as if someone is watching you. You’re going to get goosebumps from head to toe and you just can’t seem to shake that odd feeling. You look around, but no one is there.
You decide to continue on with your routine, so you’re not late for school. You step into the shower and begin to wash your hair. Immediately, you have that feeling again. Only this time, it’s so intense it feels as if someone is in the room with you. You draw back the shower curtain to investigate, still no one there. You stand there for a moment, hoping the feeling will pass, but it becomes stronger….more and more intense with each passing second.
You turn towards the window, which just so happens to be located in the shower, and that’s when you see it, a hand. There’s a hand pressed against the glass and you try to shout, but at first, nothing comes out. You jump out of the shower and start calling for your mother, only she doesn’t come. You call out into the darkness for her again, yet she still doesn’t come. You’re paralyzed with fear. You’re unsure if you should run out into the darkness, into the unknown, or if you should keep calling out and hope that your mother will wake from her drug induced slumber.
You decide to try again. You call out to her, voice trembling…hair dripping with shampoo bubbles, still she doesn’t come. After what feels like an eternity, your mother’s boyfriend appears. He starts bitching at you for being so loud, you try to explain to him what’s going on, but at first he refuses to listen. He’s too wrapped up in his anger to hear that you’re petrified because some pervert is spying on you while you’re showering! Finally, when he pauses to take a breath, you scream out to him that someone is watching you and you ask him to call the police.
He quickly turns and heads into the next room. You figure that he’s grabbing the phone to call the authorities but that isn’t the case. He throws open your brother’s bedroom window and starts screaming as loudly as he possibly can, scaring the person off. You stand there for a moment, absolutely dumbfounded by his actions. You decide to return to the shower. You quickly rinse the shampoo from your hair and proceed with the fastest shower of your life!
Your mom’s boyfriend would drive you to school most mornings, but he is refusing to do so today. He tells you that your little “shower stunt” is going to make him late for work, so you’ll just have to walk. Normally, that would have been your preferred method anyway because you cannot stand her boyfriend. But today, everything is telling you that you should not walk. You should not leave the apartment alone.
You try to wake your mother to tell her of the morning’s events, only she’s dead to the world. You try to weigh out your options. If you stay home, you know you’re safe from something possibly happening to you once you walk out that door. But, if you stay home you’ll have to deal with your abusive mother, who has already beat the shit out of you in the past 24 hours…so you decide to take your chances on making it to school safely. After all, your school is less than three blocks away…you’ll make it.
You grab your backpack and keys and you head out the door. As you put the key in the lock, you’re engulfed in that eerie feeling again. Your instinct is telling you to go back inside, but the pain in your ribs serves as a reminder of what’s in store if you do. You stand at the door, hoping, waiting for that feeling to pass but it doesn’t. You decide to “walk it off,” and you continue on around the side of your apartment building. As you round the corner, a man steps out from between the two buildings beside yours. A voice in your head is yelling “RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN,” only you have nowhere to go.
You stop, dead in your tracks, and lock eyes with the man that you believe was just watching you shower. He asks you if you have the time. You tell him no and he turns and walks in the opposite direction of where you’re going. You stand there for a few minutes, trying to ensure that he’d be long gone. You decide to take a shortcut through the college commons because the area is heavily populated, surely nothing would happen there.
You make it safely through a breathe a huge sigh of relief. As you’re walking, your bracelet snaps from you nervously tugging on it, as you have done a million times. You stop to pick up the pieces and in the blink of an eye, there’s a gun against your temple. You try to scream, but again no noise escapes from your mouth. He tells you that if you try anything stupid, her’s going to fucking kill you. You find your voice and begin to speak. “Please, please you don’t have to do this. You can just let me go right now. I won’t call the police, you can just walk away.”
He turns to you and says, “Shut the (expletive) up, bitch. you wanna die!?” You ponder the idea for a moment. You say to yourself, “If I choose death, this will never happen to me again.” But then you remember your nephews, who are the only thing in this life that bring you joy and you decide today is not your day to die. You try to tell him your story, you beg him to stop, to not do this to you, you can’t handle going through something like this again. But it doesn’t seem to phase him, in fact, it seems as if you begging him to spare you is fueling him even more.
He hears a helicopter above and tells you to put your arm around him and act as if you’re “together.” He moves the gun from your temple to your side and digs it deep in between the ribs that your mom just kicked the (expletive) out of. You wince in pain, and he screams, “I WILL KILL YOU!” You begin to sob uncontrollably and beg to God to save you from this hell. For the first time since you were a little kid, you begin to pray. You pray for forgiveness for giving up your faith, you pray for someone to see or hear what’s happening, you pray to the God that didn’t protect you as a small child, to please find mercy and protect you right now. Your God fails you once again.
You feel your strength with each passing moment. He tells you that he’s taking you to the railroad tracks next to your school. You come to the realization that if this happens, you’re not getting out of this alive. You explain to him that in order to get to the tracks, you’ll have to cut across the schoolyard. If you cut across, someone from the school is likely to see you. You also tell him that the truant officers usually scour the tracks looking for kids who are cutting school. This last minute effort of reasoning is most likely the reason your 37 year old future self is typing this today. You put enough fear in him to make him realize that if he took you to the tracks, he’d most definitely be caught.
He drags you beside a garage where he tells you to perform oral sex on him. You tell him “(expletive) off, suck it yourself!” Not a wise move, as it angers him and he hits you in the head with the handle of the gun. You see stars and your head feels hot, the scenery around you is spinning. He pushes you to the ground where he tears at your clothing and forces himself upon you, holding the gun to your head all the while. You feel completely helpless, you feel faint and you try not to lose consciousness. As he stands up, he tries to rob you, but you’re 14 and poor…you have no money.
He turns to leave and as he does so he says, “I’ll see you later!” That will forever be one of the most terrifying events of that day. He knows where you live, he knows what school you attend. What’s going to stop him from coming back!?
You try to gather your composure, but you’re not sure what to do. You’re right beside your school, but do you want to go there or should you try to make it home? You’re covered in wet, dirty fall leaves and the smell is permeating throughout the air. The smell is nauseating, you feel like you’re going to vomit. You gather your things and start to head towards home. You spot an elderly lady walking up the alley and you beg her to stop and help you. She looks frightened, as you can imagine why. You’re covered in mud and leaves and your mascara is streaming down your tear stained cheeks. You beg her to help, but she just keeps walking. She looks scared of you, like you may try to harm her, but all you need is a hug, someone to comfort you and tell you that everything is going to be fine.
Eventually, she does stop and takes you to a safe house to call your mother and the police. The rest of the day’s events are sort of a blur to you, even to this day. In the days, weeks, months, and years to come you never feel safe. You isolate yourself from everyone and everything. You begin to cut yourself, masking the emotional pain with physical. You begin to drink and use drugs at the urging of your mother, because it will “help ease the pain.” You begin a downward spiral that will take you years to get out of. You feel empty, helpless, alone.
For the next few years you decide that drinking is your best friend. When you’re drunk, you’re happy and you forget about all of the negatives in your life. Eventually, the social pressures become too much and you drop out of high school. You get wrapped up in a relationship with someone who is toxic and abusive, but you stay because you feel as if that’s all you deserve. Until the day that he brings you within inches of your life, then you realize that if you don’t leave, he is going to kill you. You’ve been through too much (expletive) to let this mother(expletive) treat you this way, you’ve survived worse than him, you’ll be fine.
And that’s the moral to this story. You’re a survivor. You always have been, you always will be. No matter how much (expletive) life has thrown your way, you’re still here. You often sit and wonder “why me?” You learn to tell yourself, it’s because you’re strong enough to handle whatever comes your way. Sometimes you think “if I could change one thing, it would be…” but then you realize that altering just one tiny event could prevent you from the future where I sit right now.
If my 36 year old self could have anything from my 14 year old self, it would be for you to have time with your future 14 year old daughter. Then she could see that we’re practically one and the same, except she’s more beautiful and much smarter than I’ll ever be. But maybe she could see that I’ve been there and gone through what she’s going through, with a few extra twists and turns in between. Maybe she would finally understand why I try to protect her the way I do, maybe she would understand my fears for her, maybe she would see my pain the way I see hers.
