September

 So I’ve got rather a lot on today. It’s a shame that the new School year always starts in September as the nights are starting to draw in when summer is over and winter is approaching. It would be better for schools to start the year in spring as we have abundant new hope. 

I remember the trauma. The worthlessness, Compounded by my Dad standing over me shouting at me as I curl up into a terrified ball I’m 11, so I’m quite a small person a child a primary school child and he is a grown man so he’s a big person touring over me shouting at me and I have just experienced a terrifying ordeal him what should be my own home. What was my own home? So when I escape by going to university and I do not yet know that all the other people there have other homes to go to But this is my home now, Which is a good thing because I’ve escaped the terrible place I had to live for the first 18 years. But now, looking back, it feels like I was very alone because all those other people had other homes to go to . And more than that the adults in the university staff lecturers, the administrators, doctors, the counsellor’s, the student students union, everybody, all, looked at me, Thinking that I’m like the others that I have some kind of other home to go to. And I didn’t know that,

It is only now, decades later, Now that I know some of them ans adults having reconnected through social media, Which appeared in the years since, That I realise that our situations were very different. There situations were very different to mine they weren’t there living as individuals in their own home. They were staying there with a home to go to. 

If I had known those adults are submissions, I could’ve explained to them my situation. So that they could have treated me more appropriately. But I didn’t know what they assumed. I didn’t know that other people had a family behind them. When my counsellor said that I can’t help being ill as if I should take some time off she must’ve been thinking there was somewhere else I could go. Like I could go home for a break from university, But of course, university was my livelihood. It was how I was surviving. And it made no sense to me that she was suggesting I take a break from my method of survival. And I didn’t know that there were people that had other homes to go to other than the one they had here at the university. So I didn’t explain to her why that made no sense. It would be like explaining the obvious. And I find it embarrassing to explain the obvious. Like telling people, that grass is green. I’d be offended if someone told me something that is obvious. 

So looking back, I escape my home by going to university, which is my method at that time of getting help for the trauma and finding a way of having a roof over my head. 

And I see her everywhere. Just like any other survivor of violent crime. I see my attacker everywhere. The nightmares stay the same, but the context of the nightmare changes to match my new situation. And on my two hour walk to the university every day, Because I could not afford to stay in university accommodation or any closer to the university. And I could not afford the bus. Or a bicycle. So on my two Mile walk To the university every day, I’d obviously see other people walking in the street. And I’d see her everywhere. Because I was traumatised. And I felt the pain in my gut. And over the years, I felt that pain subside. That pain had always been there, But because it was permanent, I didn’t notice it until it started to subside. And now I’m thinking about pancreatic cancer. Because that pain must represent some physiological occurrence. Chemistry, Like a stress hormone, Or biology, Like a tightening of muscle muscles, or nerves expanding their electrical energy. There must be something physiological that causes that pain in your gut. You feel when you are terrified. And I had that pain permanently for many years. But it is seeing her around every corner that makes me realise that I was continued to be afraid afraid that I’d be caught. I’d go back to the torture.. A woman that uses rapists as a weapon to hurt little girls. I see her everywhere.