Honestly, I don't know what even is driving me to write this. Maybe it's just the fact that I wanted to share these thoughts with someone before realizing that I have no friends. Maybe it's just a distraction, something to focus on until I fall asleep instead of the dark alternatives that is going through my head.
I grew up in Iraq, my life wasn't the easiest while growing up. When I was six I watched my mother die in front of me in an explosion while we went shopping. I blamed myself, and so did my brother. You see, the full story is my mother and I were leaving the market but I had cried in an attempt to get her to buy me lego set. Those extra minutes we spent walking to the store were the difference between her staying alive and dying.
Throughout my life I tried to overcome this thought that I caused my mother's death. But whenever I look back at it, I see no other way but that. So did my brother as I mentioned before, my older brother, who spent the sixteen years since it happened to abuse me mentally, once I was able to fight him off when he attempted to do it physically. He continued to do that until he met his death. A death I was also blamed for as I was the one who kicked him out of the house, three days later he died of an overdose.
I have lost the ability to communicate my reality to others, and people seem to notice that I am never in the same place as they are mentally. Every date, every relationship always end up the same. I always find myself avoiding answering questions about who I am.
My interest or motivation in talking about what happened to me seem to have died after two brushes I had with being sexually assaulted once by my older cousin and another where I was physically raped. I don't want to get hung up on the details. But I think what killed my motivation to speak was the aftermath of the two events that happened few months apart.
At the first one, we were having a family gatherings. Many were sleeping in the same room. That's when my cousin, who was thirteen years older than me, I was ten at the time, made his move and was trying to remove my past. Things escalated and it ended with me trying to escape and him choking me and making threats. I managed to escape and go to sleep on the couch in the living room as he didn't want to risk waking up everyone.
That night, I slept on the couch. I remember needing to go pee and was too scared to even get up. Eventually, I was too exhausted to stay awake and looking at the entrance in fear my cousin would show up. I ended up wetting the couch that night, and because I had slept late that night, I woke up to everyone ridiculing and judging me. I ended up avoiding everyone and talking about that night ever again.
The second I was dragged by this man early in the morning. I used to work in the storage of the restaurant he was running. I was raped, had my clothes torn and almost died as I was making my escape. I only managed to escape because I somehow had enough strength to shove one of the man's keys into his right cheek. I was chased by him but there was a police man who saw me and came to rescue me. He told me to run, and until today, I don't know how their interaction ended. I haven't seen either of them yet.
I returned home late at night, with blood on my hand as I was checking to see if I am bleeding from my anus, which I was. During my absence there was some money that went missing, everyone at home, and everyone they called were under the assumption that I stole it and ran away. So instead of me sharing what had happened, I spent the entire night listening to people lecturing me about how bad stealing is and that I shouldn't run because, and I hear the irony in this, I could get hurt.
I ended up just going to sleep that night after all the relatives who came looking for me left and I remained with my sisters. The next morning I woke up and found the money on the floor, just my luck, I guess. I ran to give it to my sister as she was waking up. And a look of fury just came over here as somehow that proved that I was in fact the one who took it. I spent the next ten, twenty, maybe even thirty minutes getting hit by every item my sister could find. I remember eventually, she stopped as I had curled like a scared rat next a toilet seat after the wooden mob stick broke on my back.
I remained there until the next day. The next morning, I just woke up, changed my clothes and went to school. And it was never brought up again.
There are many things that run through my ahead as I write this. I think I am just tired, I think I am exhausted. And there is no end, I have been everywhere to get a job. I spend my days coming up with stories for movies T.V shows, and books that will never materialize. Just a way to ignore suicidal thoughts as I each day goes by in a dead end life.
I don't know what will happen in the upcoming days, all I know is that these thoughts have been dominating my head and I just wanted to get them out, a bundle at a time.
I just hope things went differently.