Breakdown

When I was seventeen I lost my memory. Not all of it, but chunks of it. This was a result of trauma induced by a toxic environment amongst my then peers. Bullying is something that continues well into today's day and age. Little has changed. Bullies will always exist. Sometimes they grow up and pretend that they have evolved over time, but it's impossible to truly change if you choose to ignore the crying child within. 

I met a boy, slighter older than me one night, as my friends and I dragged State Street. That's what bored kids do at night in Utah, when they don't drink and they can't get into clubs. It used to be the way we met people outside of the halls of high school. This boy and I hit it off, and we started dating immediately. I can't recall timelines very well, but I think this relationship lasted a year. On and off. We came from different worlds, he and I. He was raised LDS (Mormon), and I was from the streets, Hood. I think this is one of the reasons why his friends hated me. That, and his then ex girlfriend was great at causing drama. She seemed to live for it. She spun this narrative that I had stolen her boyfriend from her, as if they were a happy couple before I appeared on the scene. What I know now is that this man was never faithful to her, and that's in part, why she acted the way she did. 

In my defense, on the night we met, I knew he had an EX GIRLFRIEND. He kept looking at his phone, shaking his head, annoyed, insinuating that he was so very over her. I took the bait. As an adult woman I would obviously see this as a red flag and he'd immediately be written off. But as an impressionable teen girl, I believed him. Our relationship was a very real relationship. We did all the things couples normally do together. And not once did his ex girlfriends name come up. It was if she didn't exist at all. She honestly wasn't a part of our relationship. No matter how hard she's tried to convince people of my home wrecker status over the years. And she has, even when I couldn't remember her. Even when I had no idea who she was, she would stand in front of me spewing her hatred for me. She'd call me ugly, scream in the middle of the store about how I was stalking her, because we happened to both sign up for the same cake decorating class one fall. She even physically attacked me once while I was holding my one year old son at a mutual friends wedding. Still, I had no idea who she was, or why she was such a pain in the ass. She just looked ... crazy.

I met these people on various occasions out in public, before I remembered who they were. It was odd the way fate would throw us together at the most random places in time. One night that was at a Halloween party where her now husband (the same guy I dated at seventeen), came back for me. I suppose he wanted to talk, but he ended up scaring me instead. He'd grabbed my arm angrily and wouldn't let go. I can understand the frustration of being completely forgotten, and maybe this is what his actions were about. The party host asked him to leave, and threatened him with the police if he didn't. I was, unbeknownst to me, surrounded by people they had both gone to high school with. I don't know if they knew who I was, but they assured me that I wasn't the first victim to be thrown into the middle of this couples toxic relationship. It seems they thrived on jealousy, and they obviously needed unsuspecting victims to play their narcissistic game with them. One of the party goers pulled up her facebook account, where an hour after showing up to the same party as me, she had angrily posted, "some people just want what you have", shortly after leaving. In reference to me, who had no idea who she was, I guess. These people spoke about what a bully she had been the entirely of her high school days. Now she's posted up online asking to be your consultant for spiritual healing? Oof, the audacity.

On the same night I met him, I was raped and filmed by his brother. I was held at knifepoint and was raped with a knife until the pain made me pass out. I have never since felt that kind of physical pain. Not even in childbirth. I'm embarrassed to share that I did willingly sleep with him (not the brother) that first night, hours into meeting him. But I'm only embarrassed because the world asks me to be. It happens. You meet someone, and when you're young, sometimes things move really fast. His brother, for some reason I'll never understand, walked in on us and began filming us having sex. He said something along the lines of, "You look like Paul Walker and Jessica Alba!" I remember those words, because they seemed so absurd against the backdrop of the way the evening had began. Exciting, passionately, full of possibility between two willing parties. I guess women always combine romance and sex. We're hardwired too, even when the situation doesn't really call for it. I would recall later on that his brother actually had viewing parties for that sex tape. I think the police ultimately had to burn it during his trial, because it classified as child pornography. There was blood and piss all over the wall where I had been raped. This detail horrifies me for some reason.

His brother fled on foot and we took coverage in the bathroom, locking the door behind us. I washed off in the shower, crying and begging him to let me go. I wanted my mom. I wasn't sure if he was going to hurt me or not, as I had never suspected my night taking a turn like this in a million years. I was a child, living carefree the way we do before we know that we can't. Or that we shouldn't. It is best if we don't.

I now know that the man who raped and filmed me is the same man who stalked me for years, holding a pencil to my neck at Mervyn's when I was shopping with my mother. He also drove past my house, followed my young son to school, and pointed a gun at him once. He sat outside my house while I stared him, confused, perplexed, wondering what he wanted. And if he was there for me. This man confronted me at a bathroom once, making jokes about his front teeth being missing. He said a woman he had loved had broken them all out. I didn't know it then, but I had busted out his front teeth the night he left me with a broken memory. Halloween night, if my memory serves me correctly. 

I had dressed up like a cat. We had been arguing? Or maybe we just hadn't seen each other in a while. The plan was to meet at his apartment for games and fun. I knew something was off immediately. I knew the person sitting in front of me in full costume wasn't my boyfriend. He wouldn't speak, just creepily nod his head. And he wasn't the right height. My boyfriend was very tall, this man was short. They goaded me into following them into a bedroom where they said my boyfriend would be, but they simply tried to undress me and have sex with me instead. His brother grabbed a video camera and started saying nasty things to me. He shoved me when I wouldn't comply, calling me all kinds of names. I ran out of there and said we needed to leave. 

They followed me. She showed up. I still had no idea who she was, but she was livid with me. I put two and two together when she started talking about my boyfriend. The verbal fighting went back and forth for a few minutes, then frustrated I decided I just wanted to go home. I started to walk away when his brother grabbed me. He too was  bigger man, and I couldn't get away from him as he beat me and threw me into the pavement again and again. My head smashed into the ground with such force, I really thought I was going to die. For some reason he paused momentarily, and my guides came through. A man's voice very clearly told me to reach into my pocket and grab the brass knuckles I had innocently shoved into my pocket and hour earlier before when I left for the party. This same voice guided me as I stood up shakily, saying "not yet, not yet ..." And then, "NOW." I started swinging my fists as if my life depended on it, because it probably did. I beat the shit out of that man. I remember him screaming, "my teeth! My teeth!" 

I was standing by the bathroom door, looking down on the bed, asking where my baby was. My boyfriend looked confused and told me there was not a baby. I started screaming, yes there was, she had been there just moments before. Then the oddest sensation took over me, like a cloud of doom my brain became covered. I could see it creeping in, but I couldn't stop it. I looked at the man sitting in front of me and I asked him, "who are you?" I was terrified that his stranger was sitting on my bed, because I had no idea who he was. 

There is nothing quite like losing your mind. The EMT's came. I think they had to break the bathroom door down, because I had taken to hiding in there. I was screaming for my mama, when they jabbed me with a syringe. Immediately I sunk into the tub in a fetal position. One of the men talked to me gently, told me I was his sister's age. He said he wasn't going to hurt me, just help me. He seemed sad, and genuine. We love a genuine King.

This story will be told with nothing left out one day, but for the sake of having a book to write, I'll keep it short and simple for now.

The last two years have tested my faith in people like never before. But you know what it hasn't  made me question? Myself. I know the truth, even if the people I have reached out to to talk, won't share that with me. I know the attention seeking religious guru you follow online is nothing more than a narcissist who thinks she's fooled everyone. This is why I am so careful about who I lend my support to. I follow like one public figure. I may continue to write about this topic a little more in depth, but for now just setting the record straight is validating enough. 

I don't want to demonize anyone, not the way they villainized me. I'm not them. I could write a blog that ruined lives, but here I am sharing shreds of the truth. I will not be silenced anymore. Fuck, I don't think I can be. I've lived a life of secrets, and now all I want is to meet good people.

Namaste