I have an unwanted and unwelcome houseguest

You know what sucks about *distraction*? When you stop distracting yourself all the crap you were distracting yourself from barges back in, uninvited, slamming the door behind it. It doesn’t really care that I didn’t extend an invitation, and now, once again, I have an unwanted houseguest. And of course it expects to be ‘entertained’, it can’t just sit quietly in a corner, in the farthest room of the house and read a book or something. No way! It’s always right in my face, under my feet, vying for my attention. It’s vile and ugly ~ I don’t want it here! I can’t stand to look at it, and when it forces me to stare into its craggy, decaying face, cracked and scarred skin.
It displays my past with sober horror as if it’s a cabaret, and I am the audience. I can feel the bile rising in my throat; there is vomit in the back of my mouth, threatening to come forward with powerful force.

It croaks and taunts me, “Come on Grace, let’s have another look at today’s lunch.”
I’m sick to my stomach just being in the same room with it and I know it is only a matter of time before I will be sick. It sits down next to me, I feel my breath quicken in apprehension of what is to come. It smells of liquor and stale cigarette smoke and I gag as I try to slow my breathing down, try to calm myself.

It inches closer to me, touches my thigh, whispers into my ear, “Mind if I sit down, have a glass of wine? I prefer red, but if you don’t have an open bottle, white’s fine. I don’t want to be an inconvenience.”

Yeah right! My leg feels like ice now, my skin crawling from his touch. I begin to shake as I try to move away from it, remove his hand from my upper leg. It won’t let me escape; it knows there is no way to break free. It knows once the film starts I will be unable to look away from the turmoil that is happening in front of me. And not only is the movie in 3-D, I can actually suffer with the star of the show, I feel what she feels, I see what she sees. When she bleeds, I bleed. When she cries, I wipe her tears from my face. I feel her fear and her angst.

As the film starts, it knows I’m unable to shelter myself from the motion picture and it flaunts it in front of me as though it is a screening fit for the Cannes movie festival. Incapable of looking away I see my own eyes looking back at me. I become her, the girl on the screen, I feel his hands on my body and I feel his breath on my skin.

I can feel the filth on my soul like it’s my own skin. I know my worth. I burned it into my existence. I am branded. I am unclean. I can’t wash him off of me. I have dry heaves now, there’s no more vomiting tonight, there’s nothing left inside of me, except filth and shame. I can feel my heart beating in every single inch of my body. My face is hot and my cheeks feel bruised.

I scrub my skin until it’s read and raw but the filth cannot be removed. I vomit until my stomach convulses and there is nothing left but he is still inside of me. I cut my flesh in an effort to bleed him out of me. I watch the blood run down my pale skin and pool onto the floor but I still feel him, he’s still here.

I am nothing. He made me nothing. I am pathetic for struggling with this still, years later. Grace, get over it! Move on!