L. Rose

My body was mine, and mine alone. My body was sacred. My no was meant to be my power. You took that from me.

It makes me mad that you had the privilege of keeping this to yourself, where the only freedom I could be given was to tell others and lessen my own burden.

I spent my life ashamed for actions that were not my own. Ashamed of the ways I was tainted before I was even grown. I prayed to God hoping he could save me, heal it all, but in the end it was my own role. Trauma is isolating, suffocating, makes you feel as though your worth is imaginary, insubstantial.

My mother had the option to believe me once, read my diary said it was fictional, I was imaginative, “she’s great at telling stories”. My story froze, locked away, unable to be told – would resurface at a time i was not ready. 20 years old, addicted and inebriated it came to me, blaring vision of the events that traumatised me. I tried to acknowledge but I become my own critic the words I’d heard mimicked in me. I didn’t believe it, thought I was sick, needed help, it wouldn’t be the only time I thought i was creating my own issues. Took years of acceptance, hearing and seeing my own experience before I believed again.

Hurt myself so bad I was covered in scars from the age of 12. I was different, complicated, no one understood. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just be happy? I didn’t know how to explain the things that I’d been through, still thought I was the problem, sinful in my experiences, I was sure i would be punished for my victimhood.

“So I set free myself from all the guilt that I thought i made” Kendrick Lamar – Mother I sober.