Poem

Life would be so much easier without these memories, these thoughts
The memories are like an illness that pops up out of nowhere at the worst possible time
It doesn’t matter that it’s been years, a decade now, since any of those things happened
They live on in my head like it was yesterday, not last century
They were so long ago, obviously I should be over it by now, but I’m not.
They still haunt me everyday, never ceasing, never relenting
I pretend that everything is okay, and that’s what everyone thinks
Sometimes I think it too, but something always comes up to shake me back to reality
Everything is not okay. I am not okay.
I have become an actress, playing the role of a strong individual with her whole life before her
In reality, I see myself as very weak, about to fall into the abyss at any moment. Maybe I am falling
It seems more of my life is behind me than ahead of me, I’m more dead than alive.
I can’t imagine another decade like this never knowing when the next “illness” will suddenly pop up
It’s a very isolating illness these memories. I haven’t found a cure.
I can’t seem to talk about them. I can hardly give some a name: “trafficking”
That one word holds so much for me. Humiliation, guilt, grief, regret, terror, self hatred.
I hate myself so much for not doing something, anything, to save her, even if it meant my life
By not doing anything, it seems to have consumed my life anyway, a catch-22
Nothing has been the same since the second trafficking to Prague, it never will be
All through the day, I can hear their words that still haunt me, maybe more now than they did then
“No one will ever love you” “The only thing you’re good for is sex” “You deserve this”
Not a day goes by that I don’t hear all of the above and more, it’s like a recording without a stop button
Sometimes, I wish there was a “stop” button on life, maybe even a “pause” would do
I’m always on the go, I have to be or the flashbacks get too intense and I spiral into self destructiveness
The less down time I have, the less time there is think about what was and what will never be
I don’t want to think about not having parents, mom getting raped, or about the girl getting killed
I don’t want to remember getting raped and beaten, sold and trafficked
Sometimes I wonder why they didn’t kill me like they did the girl or any other way they threatened
I wonder if they let me live so that I would suffer more and slowly self destruct
I try to put on a mask so that no one knows how much I’m struggling
Any sign of weakness was punished by my family: hunger, sleep, pain all punished by rape and beating
I learned to ignore it as much as I could. I cut myself, stopped eating, didn’t get a lot of sleep
I was determined to NOT be weak in front of them and in turn I learned how to self destruct
They no longer had to destroy me, I had learned to destroy myself to avoid the punishments
It didn’t work and I was still punished but never unlearned the need to self destruct
The more I self destruct, the less flashbacks I have. The better I am doing, the worse the flashbacks
Everything is not okay. I am not okay. I don’t know if I ever will be.