The Box Buried in My Backyard

TW: Sexual Assault

I brought it up to my therapist a few weeks back, my hands rubbing up and down my furiously bouncing legs. She listened to me break down the buzzing gnat of thought I assumed I buried deep in the backyard. I thought the therapy session would quiet the bug, instead, it moved to my stomach and dropped its anchor there.

In reality, I’ve come to terms that I was sexually assaulted. It was something I tried my entire life to cover my ears and scream the noise out. When I thought I was safe from speaking about it ever again, reality hit me. I couldn’t hide from the past anymore. I had to face the fact that it did happen, and there’s nothing I can do to change what happened. When I was originally trying to heal, I told myself it was just like setting a bone. You have to break it in order for it to heal properly.

Why did it have to happen to a four-year-old? I feel cheated by a moment that lasted no longer than the pin the tail on the donkey happening outside the room, a moment that caused years of burying the simplest remembrance deeper than where I thought the gnat I tried burying was. One moment caused years of night terrors, screaming loud enough the whole apartment building could hear, but not louder than the shattering, bewildered hearts of my parents that tried to soothe me back to sleep. Years of plastic beaded rosary prayers to calm night time demons, years of therapy appointments for diagnosed anxiety at eight. Years of unexplained outbursts and irritation, years of crying in the middle of sex and scrubbing the filth out from underneath my skin from where he did it. My childhood was stolen, and it makes my chest ache for the little kid that didn’t know what was going on, why they were feeling so heavy every day in their life, or why they couldn’t breathe or stop crying. The kid who didn’t know their childhood was stolen from them and left with a confusing puzzle given to them with the pieces missing. I mourn the loss, and I want to tell myself that everything will be okay. 

And it does. I’m now left with the large box I buried deep a long time ago, with the contents unpacked and put down neatly with a few kind and nurturing hands, in an environment in which they can be safely examined. I can sit and talk about what happened to me, and know that I am the same as the tattoo of a bear with its teeth gnashing I bought myself over the summer to remind myself I came out of that situation with immense bravery.

• healing
• sexual assault
• short story
• Trauma