I remember every single thing about the month of February, in all of my almost eighteen years on this earth, since I was able to have a coherent memory. I know what it was like, perhaps not at first, but at some point I began to hyperfixate in that particular month.

For the life of me I can’t remember the date, which frankly is a good thing, looking back if I did know the specific number; it would have eaten me from the inside out, the fact I can even account the general month it took place in already drives me to the brink of suicide.

The taste of hate hadn’t yet touched my mouth, then, I was around ten or eleven, a bright-eyed elementary schoolers who was acutely aware of every single emotion known to man, when somebody cried, I cried with them, harder, taking in each experience they suffered through and forcing it on myself. But more importantly, I was “normal” -- As normal as an autistic and ADD combination child could be, no signs of severe mental illness had hit me.

Sometimes I wonder about it -- the prospect of a different universe in which terrible things didn’t happen around me -- or rather, in this context, to me. Would I have ended up the same? Depression runs in my family, through our veins and the brain fluid that surronds our oddly wired brains, would I have still have tried to kill myself?

Maybe -- probably, actually, the world is sick enough, whether through outside forces or the general political sphere I would have tried it anyways.

That’s besides the point though, suicide currently isn’t on the menu, simply the last experience I’d have as that kid.

It was a sleepover, that I can remember, a few of my friends were there, Sophie, Rachel -- some other people I can’t remember (the faces blend in after a while, all morphing into these gross fleshy beasts), but one I do remember -- I always remember is Elaine.

Her.

My closest friend, the girl who invited me to everything and took notice of everything I liked, who encouraged me constantly to keep going and who had invited me there in the first place.

I cared about her a lot, as a friend, I never suspected anything off about it, that something lingered underneath the smile she had, the newly stuck on braces obvious anytime she talked.

Why should we worry? This is a child’s life, a friend wouldn’t hurt another friend, she had respected me as a person for so long, no need to start worrying now.

I still do worry -- about her that is -- she lives close enough that I could walk to her house, in the fleeting moments I had of my manic episodes, it had come to me.

“You know, you could kill her”

“She knows you told, she’ll rape you even harder next time”

Obviously I never did, I’d much rather drink away the feeling or slit open old wounds than do anything, ineptness so what I’m known for, next to the gaping wound coming out of my head.

Most of the night was spent watching mid 2000s anime and eating copious amounts of teeth-rotting food. We laughed, sometimes being yelled at by one of the kid’s parents to keep it down as we were all losing our collective minds. If we were to lobotomize the night of tragedy, it was average, most of it would be blurred and cut around the edges due to the nature of it.

I loved my friends a lot.

Elaine was the type of girl to lie easily, the words spilled out of her mouth so easily that when in the night, all of the lights out as I was attempting to fall asleep, I saw her from the corner, the kitchen light still on as she was standing by the corner, the simply phrase drew me in.

“Can you come here?”

Sleep was already a very difficult thing for me, and the chance to talk more with Elaine was a sweet pill for me.

Rachel’s parents were both alcoholics, and kept booze in the house at all times, and more importantly, so easily accessible that it was maddening how they even had children, her mother was out and the father was passed out in the basement.

The only reason I remember it was because I had asked him for pain relief the next morning.

We talked for a bit. The entire house smells like cigarettes, but not the nice kind. I was already used to that when my grandfather was alive, the cheap, smoky ones that would stick on your clothes until you died from lung cancer. Elaine was a touchy type of girl, and her getting close to me, while making me a bit uncomfortable due to sensory issues, didn’t strike me as weird.

The wording I can’t remember, but all I knew next was that she had poured me vodka in a silly plastic cup, at first I didn’t want to, but she was raised by a manipulative witch of a woman, of course she knew how to worm her ideas into people.

One became two, and due to being a child, a small one at that, it went through me. I had never drank anything in my life, but now I could probably handle it, which I am ashamed to admit.

“You want to go to Rachel’s room?” She asked, I fumbled around a bit while standing, the taste burnt my tongue.

“Yeah” I slurred out, smiling, we’d probably watch more anime, some silly one at that.

I love my friends.

Elaine didn’t bother turning on the lights, instead she ushered me into the walk-in closest.

Nobody would hurt me, she was my friend.

But

It’s hard to talk about rape, even if you haven’t suffered from it, even if you arent a victim of it, it’s hard to explain without sounding so vile, so disgusting. Because it is, especially when it’s against a child, and more importantly, having your rapist be your closest friend.

I said no, multiple times

I cried the entire time as she molested me in the closet, invading every part of me and forcing me to perform sexual acts on her.

Even all these years later, admitting and saying out loud.

“I was raped”

It was extremely difficult.

She left me in the dust immedtatly after, leaving me covered in my own blood, I didn’t know what sex was, not like this.

I thought it was supposed to be something adults did.

Something that I didn’t want to do.

But yet --

I was dirty, corrupted and filthy, covered in my own piss and blood as I silently sobbed, my arms sore from how much I tried to push her off of me, how they had bruises in them because I had to bite down on them to keep myself from sobbing in a manic state.

I wouldn’t tell anybody until I was fifteen.

During middle school, I still hung around her up until she completely abandoned me, I wouldn’t recognize the event until it started flashing before me, and the signs of a mental condition began to show, how I’d have panic attacks for no reason when I’d see her, nightmares happened to me constantly, where I’d wake up screaming.

At first, you ignore these feelings, you shove them down assuming it’s just the usual teenage depression, but as time goes on, as it worsens, you hurt yourself.

When I first started cutting myself it was for punishment, for feeling that way, for being such a disappointment -- why couldn’t I just act normally? It was all my fault after all.

“It will always be your fault, no matter what they say”

As it moved on, it became more for feeling something other than emptiness or severe anxiety relating to my, then undiagnosed PTSD. My mom wouldn’t find out until after I told her.

The night I did, she cried, I can’t remember that day, other than me looking at her and through my swollen, blood covered lips from my constant lip biting.

“Do you remember that -- that sleepover I had? With Rachel and Elaine?”

She paused.

“Yes, I do,”

“I -- Something bad happened I -- Elaine she --”

I didn’t even have to say anything more, she knew.

To this day my mom blames herself, that she was the one who let me go, but really, none of it is her fault, she couldn’t predict that such a vermin could hide in plain sight, but as a mother, you share a half with your kid, when they hurt, you hurt 5x more, it eats you open like the flies to my own body, but instead of nibbling, a slow decay, it went through her like the plague.

She’s in therapy for a multitude of things, we’ve been through such similar experiences that sometimes I’m certain our family is cursed, both me, my mother and grandmother have all been raped. I hate to spy on others, but -- sometimes, when I’m in the bathroom, my mother in the other room in ZOOM therapy, I can hear her talk about it, how she still blames herself for it -- how angry she was -- of course, she’s better, her urge to cuss out Elaine’s mother is less now, and I hope, for my sake that she heals faster than I can.

My grandmother said something important to me, a few years later.

“You never forget it, but the pain of it will fade, it might take decades, but it will,”

I never believed it, at that age, but that was because of one simple fact that I hate admitting.

For everything, for all the therapy I’ve been through and personal self growth, something that tears me open to say is that I still blame myself for it, I’m angry at myself for not stopping it, even though I should have had to in the first place, that everything I have now isn’t deserved, that for everything, I am disgusting and deserved to be molested.

Obviously I don’t, which while only three words, is hard to type.

Nobody deserves to be raped, but yet -- I still think, somedays, that I do -- it’s the same with a lot of things, nobody should self harm, but I deserve to because I am a terribly depressed retard.

It’s been a while since elementary school, but still -- it doesnt leave me, as much as I wish it wasn't a part of who I am, it really is, as I stated before, who would I have become without it? People who have not suffered trauma say that it makes you stronger, it never does, it makes you emotionally distressed, mentally ill beyond comprehension and ruins you, nothing good comes out of it.

I can’t listen to Stairway To Heaven without having a panic attack due to that being the song she loved, the one that played before we went to that sleepover, the entirety of February is a sloppy, muddy month that I always remember vidly, all the pain and the body aches from it, how my mom was so confused on why I was still wetting the bed, how I’d draw sexual content even at a young age after and being hyperfixation with my own death.

Once I hit High School, I felt like in a weird way, it both got worse, and better, I continued with my therapy, and was around people who understood me, but there was this nagging feeling…

THEY KNOW THEY KNOW THEY KNOW THEY KNOW THEY KNOW THEY KNOW .

One of the people who was there, who let it happen, in my head, was there, here, at the school.

That wasn’t the only reason I relapsed, multiple reasons did me in, the worsening in my mental health due to the political climate, the fact I was getting closer to eighteen each day and the fact that in my head, everybody knew what happened.

I had a psychotic break where I tried to take my own life.

There is a little disorder, one not well researched known as OSDD, it’s related to DID, both which are not well known in terms of research, but one thing is for certain, that a good portion of cases are caused by severe childhood trauma, mostly sexual.

OSDD is a general term for all four different subtypes of it, the fist (1b) being the closest to DID, I have that.

During my break, I dissociated, I don’t remember what happened, but all I knew was that obviously I failed miserably, I hadn’t even cut deep enough and more importantly, not on a nerve.

I hid that from my mother.

All I knew was that everything and everybody knew what happened to me, that they knew that I deserved to be raped, that my molestation was all my fault, you could have stopped it, Edward, why didn’t you try to stop her? You moron, you filthy pig.

Because of all of that, I had a break from reality -- I was never sent to hospital, this was during the end of junior year into the rest of the summer, COVID was high and wild and more importantly, my mom knows exactly what those places are like.

“They put genuinely mentally ill people in with rapists, I’ll never let you go there”

This began a...thing. I don’t know what it is, nor do I really want to know, all I know is that because of my molestation, I now have to deal with all of that.

Trauma makes you bleed out your old personality into a cup and mix it with the strongest alcohol known to man. Whoever thinks it makes you stronger deserves to live with somebody who’s been raped for a day, not even an hour and they’d understand.