I thought I was better.
I was wearing this great badge of pride, ten thousand disasters that exploded against my skin in little sarin bombs, and I breathed through each one of them, worse for wear, broken, ugly, incapable in ways I'd rather be like others, but alive. Alive, and sometimes alive enough to spread the breath around.
I thought I was better. I thought I had turned into the face of each horror and stepped on them one by one. Rape. Abortion. Hate. Hate. Outcast. Ugly. Different. Hate. Cold. Hungry. Suicide.
I had stared into their plastic faces again and again until the shivering stopped and the colours faded from my own glare.
I thought I had gotten every one.
Lately, they've been coming back. Some good, my grandfather's hands and my first implosions of self awareness, and then yesterday.
Another ghost.
High School, elementary school too. Sixth grade when I finally changed schools to one where I didn't get beat up anymore.
This teacher. The way he touched me. Told me I was a special girl, not like the other girls.
The way he called my parents house looking for me, at all the wrong hours.
The way he touched me.
I'd forgotten him. I'd forgotten that week in ninth grade when he transferred to our high school, I was still shaking from the chemicals, when he got closer than ever before I smelled his breath.
I'd forgotten the grooves his corduroy pants left on the back of my left hand, the reason I never wore corduroy until last year, the reason I only just realized I've become so enthused with it now.
I'd forgotten, and now I am remembering, and with it every flash of magnesium contains a new fury. The way I flipped out on the bathroom floor that one time, having sex with the first man who ever made the word love sound unlike a weapon, the way I suddenly faced rape, and lay there shivering five years later on that bathroom floor, so far away in my head.
I am still terrified of gynecologists.
I am flipping out again and I am unprepared this time, I thought this horror show was over.
And all the clich�s are ringing like anvils falling from a darkened sky, I'm a special girl, I'm a special girl, how could he, why does this make me different, my skin has become a trite coming of age storybook so long after I left that corner of the library.
I will go press my face up against a different brand of corduroy and tell myself that this is a reminder that I needed to survive.
I will go press my tears into zippers and button-flys and tell myself that this is where my words come from, that this is why I have earned the great rush that comes at the height of the rollercoaster
I will tell myself that the rollercoaster is okay if it is going fast enough, if I don't fall off the ride.
I will tell myself that I have more treasures within reach of my small fingers than I have ever deserved and I will not
I will not hear his voice when I am shaking in front of the mirror. I will not hate my skin when I tear off my clothes for bed, I will not.
I refuse.
Perhaps I needed this fight now. Perhaps I needed the inspiration.
And this time, there was someone listening.