blood and bone

It's dark, and I'm falling.

My knuckles are white from gripping the arms of the patio chair and I can't keep my eyes open, no matter how badly I want to. I pry my eyelids apart one last time and glance over to make sure that he's still there.

My beautiful man, my person, my home.

And then I fall even deeper.

The vertigo never stops, but it gets brighter and suddenly I'm there. I'm in that room, on that bed and he's prying my legs apart and I'm saying, "No. No, I don't want to. Please, I said no, please stop, please don't."
I get more frantic when I realize the pressure on my legs is the same and I can't move. I can't get away. "No no no nononononononno don't, please, please, please, please stop, please, I don't want it, please..."

There's a part of me that can hear my screaming, hear the wounded animal noises I'm making, the keening and wailing of a body violated. Suddenly I realize those noises are coming from me now, right now, my body is ripping itself apart and my voice refuses to be silent any longer. 

Arms around my chest, holding me together while I'm flying apart, and a voice in my ear reminding me who I am and where I am and how loved and safe and cherished I am, even in this...

I'm still falling. I'm still breaking. He's inside me now, moving, telling me that he knows I like this, I've told him I like this, and doesn't it feel good? He knows it feels good. Come on Cami, tell me how good it feels. My body has stopped resisting and my brain has left the building. I'm a shell on the bed, going through the motions, making the noises he wants, moving the way he dictates.

And yet... there's a spark that's buried, that's hiding to survive, that's whispering in my ear, "I don't think we wanted this. I don't think that we're okay with this..." and it's the spark that remains the key, that unlocks the truth of this night, the truth of the snake that crawled inside of me and tried to break me to keep me caged.

Eventually my body gives him what he wants. A burst of physical pleasure for both him and I that leaves him panting, and me curled on my side, coated in sweat and shame. The next day he is benevolent and kind, rewarding me with all of the things I used to beg for, but stopped requesting when I realized the price was something I refused to pay. He is constantly reminding me of how good last night was, wasn't it Cami? Wasn't it so good and hot and sexy? And I can't understand why I feel so sick, so ill, so nauseated and unnerved.

I was drunk. He's my husband. We had sex. I know I hadn't wanted to, but I must have changed my mind at some point. He's my husband. It was just sex. Why does it feel so bad?

And I quiet that spark even further and put it out of my mind and chalk it up to the beginning of the ending of our marriage.

Until the night that I am safe and drunk again and I fall into the well of darkness that my brain has been hiding and the spark roars into a flame and I realize

he raped me.

That husband, now my ex-husband, held me down and forced his way inside of me,
and
raped
me.

And now it is today. I am learning how to live in a body that has been taken by someone who had no right to take it. By someone who thought they owned me, all of me, and needed to remind both of us that he could take what he wanted when he wanted it.

The poison is out. It's on this page, spewed out in black and white, melting holes through my computer screen. The acid of the unknown isn't churning away inside of me anymore. Now there is just this truth that I have to learn how to heal from and put into my story without becoming subject to it. This will take time, I know. It will take tears and rage and love and truth and safety. I have all of those things now.

I am alive.

I am safe.

I am still here.

This is not the end. It is the beginning.