That creak.

That creak in the middle of the night that would wake me every damn time. And I knew who it was, I knew why it was. I simply pretended to be asleep, silently hoping, and all the while knowing that this was the way it had to be- for me, at least. Hadn't I written this a dozen times in diaries long forgotten, hoping to find the right words to explain myself what was happening to me? I never could find the right words and years later I came to realize that it wasn't some deficiency in my vocabulary, but rather, that no words existed, none at all, to voice what was happening to me.

And when that hand traced the still-developing curves of my body through the sheets, I stiffened almost at once. The hand did not notice, it never did. And, I always wondered, no....knew, that even if it did, it would not have stopped. I knew that I need only turn in my bed, pretend to begin awakening, and the hand would withdraw in a flash, followed by hurried footsteps leaving my room. But the strength required for such an act had escaped me the second I had heard the door creak. I was weak, I was broken, I was incapable of finding that strength within me to stand up and say, "No more!" because that is just what happens when you are treated like an object. Free will is a luxury that we the abused can hardly afford, each for a different reason. Usually it is fear, as was the case with me. I had no strength in me to even make a noise- even my breathing had become slow and silent. My leg itched and the fear that kept me rooted to the spot I was lying in was the same that allowed me to ignore the bothersome itch.

I was still silently hoping, but never praying. Long ago I had given up on God, or any other being of that stature. I did not have it in me to believe in something greater than myself, something that I could not see or speak to directly. Call me narrow-minded, but I was always a strong Atheist, firm in my beliefs, or lack thereof.

The hand found its way under the covers and cupped one of my small breasts, and I was still in the early stages of adolescence, which only strengthened the feeling of repulsion towards the hand and its owner. I wanted nothing more than to fling the hand away from me, to grab something heavy and bring it down on the head of the hand's owner. To find something sharp and to hack away at the wrists of this person and slowly, painfully, cut their hands off, tendon by tendon, bone by bone. I wanted to be somebody else, anything else.

The second the hand found its way under my clothing, I was gone. Dissasociating was always a strange and spontaneous experience. I could still feel the hand exploring my body, hear the heavy, warm, and disgusting-smelling breathing in my hear, could feel the weight of the hand's owner on my bed, their body pressed up against mine- too close. I was in my body, but I was not. All of these feelings were still with me, but they were faint, as if they were happening to the person next to me.

And through this I gathered the strength to turn my body and make a yawning noise. The hand retreated quickly, not even bothering to pull my pants back up or my shirt back down. The hand's owner half-ran out of my room, and all at once I was back inside my body.

The feeling of my pants down, my shirt halfway up, brought me so much shame. I was disgusted, I was humiliated. I was angry at myself, angry that I could not defend myself, even though I knew that I was physically able to do so. That parylyzing fear was like a disease, spreading throughout my body, forcing me out of it so that I became numb to the experience.

I sat up in bed and yanked my shirt down, pulled my pants up. I sat in silence in the dark, shivering, not from cold, but from a sense of being dirty. It was a different dirty, not like having dirt on you, but an inexplicable feeling of being contaminated. I did not want to touch anything for fear of dirtying it, of infecting it with this disease that I carried with me. The one that turned me into an object, a helpless and hopeless rag doll.

And I felt the first tear run down my cheek, hot and wet. It was followed by another, and then another, until my cheeks were wet and shiny, and I covered my mouth with my hands to stifle my sobs, because no one could know. No one could know the shame I had to live with, no one would ever understand, no one would ever try to help in the way I knew I needed it. Because not even I knew what that way was. I wanted to disappear right then and there, I wanted to crawl into a hole and never be bothered again.

I wanted to die.

And the scars on my wrists were thrown into sharp relief by the moonlight coming in through the window. Amongst the scars were also the cuts made the previous day. Consequences of fits of rage brought on by this- this feeling of disgust and self-loathing too intense for me to comprehend and much less to handle by myself. A shiver ran through my body, bringing with it a fresh wave of this nauseating feeling and I grabbed my hair in my fists and tugged hard, focusing on the physical pain because that was always better than this psychological torture, this emotional bruise that would not fade. There was no way to wash away this feeling of being dirty, only temporary distractions from it in the form of physical pain which left behind shameful scars.

I rocked back and forth in my bed, hardly able to contain my sobs now, my body trembling from the strain of containing all these silent screams. These cries and pleas for help, for anything that might take me away to a place where I could live in safety.

I swallowed and, through tremendous effort, I shoved all my feelings back inside of me, dumped them somewehere in the back of my mind. I wiped my tears, scrubbing my face hard with my pajama sleeves, until my face hurt from the scrubbing- a subliminally self-given punishment. My head hurt, my heart was pounding furiously.

I got up from bed and grabbed my iPod from my desk and then calmly got back into bed. I shoved the earphones in my ears and turned on my iPod, all the while acting as though this was normal, to be up at three in the morning just to listen to music, lying to myself and telling myself that every thirteen year old girl liked music at this hour.

I found a good song, I pressed play. I closed my eyes.

"I tried to kill the pain, but only brought more (so much more)
I lay dying and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
I'm dying..."