One Hell of a Year

My last year of high school was hell. I'd sugarcoat it, but that's exactly what it was. It is a story I tell in real life all the time in that joking way that makes people think you are fine. However, I think maybe writing it out, telling my truth as I saw it, may help me move on from that horrible year. You see, dear reader, that year is at the top of the list of things I have never truly gotten over. So many things I have yet to forgive myself for happened that year, and so many things I have yet to forgive others for.

The second part isn't for them, the people who hurt me, whether intentional or not. It is for me. It is time to let go of the hatred in my heart for them and move on with my life. No one said the road to recovery would be easy. I, for one, would never say that. Yet some people seem to not even want to try. I am one of those people. Maybe the proper term for that now is "was".

Now is the part where I send out a trigger warning. If you can't handle reading about death, abuse, rape, suicide or sexual assault, please don't read this. I am writing this not just for me, but in hopes that I can spur along someone who needs help recovering from similar things.

With that out of the way, let's start:

At the start of the year, I was excited. I was graduating high school. My life was about to begin. I had dealt with suicidal thoughts for so long, and had attempted so many times, I had never thought that I would make it this far. Yet here I was, first day of school, my last year of high school.

It was only a couple days later when that feeling fell apart.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I had gotten to school that day. I just didn't want to believe it. I told myself it was paranoia. I told myself so many things, but I could no longer convince myself of anything when one of my best friends came up to me with tears in his eyes telling me that my other best friend, essentially my brother, was dead.

You know that feeling when you are on an elevator going down and it feels like the elevator is going too fast? When it feels like you are being dragged down by your ankles instead of in the safety of an elevator? I felt that downward spiral, and felt a piece of me die with him. Suicide, the previous answer to my problems, and a thing I had never been on the other side of, was finally a real thing. After that, the minutes turned into days, but I was trapped in that hole. I have no idea when I came out of it, but on the day of my brother's candlelight vigil, I was able to at least poke my head out of it.

That vigil started a new chapter in my life. It started with pain, with blame being spread around like wildfire in a dry brush. If only you were there for him, if only you loved him back... If only, if only, if only... The truth is we were all to blame, my brother included. None of us new how to save him, not even he did. I remember I started smoking again that day. I also remember my beacon of light in the sea of guilt and darkness. We will call him Mike.

So Mike and I had met before, but we hadn't connected until the moment I stopped singing with the choir (which my brother was a part of). I ran off the stairs we were singing on and right into Mike. This began a whirlwind romance full of experiments. One of these experiments was being in a Sub/Dom relationship. Neither of us knew if we were more submissive or more dominant, so we would switch off. I even took this guy's virginity. We were happy, so it came as a shock when I realized we hadn't switched off for a while. It didn't overly bother me, but it was unnerving. I rolled with it anyway and slowly lost interest in sex, which had been happening on a frequent basis up until that point (about four or five months into our relationship), so I started saying no when we would sneak off to have time alone and he would demand sex.

The demands started getting less playful and healthy and turned scary. Our relationship outside of sex was pretty scary too. It was little things like him getting mad about stupid things, him using a lot more force than necessary during play fighting, me realising I was making excuses and lying about injuries. The person who was once my beacon of light had turned into a force dragging me down further.

Then, one day when we were just sneaking off as usual, it happened. He demanded sex and I had said no. He, being the Dom, thought it was okay to ignore my "no." Pardon the dark humor here, but I'm trying to spare you most of the gory details when I say anal is not supposed to feel like reverse pooping and you shouldn't be bleeding afterwards. As we were outside, he ordered me to stay half naked in the snow as punishment for saying no.

Did I tell anyone? Not for a very long time. Do I regret not telling anyone? Yes.

I continued to stay with him for a few months after that, mostly out of fear that he would do this to someone else if I left. From what I have heard, he did. Years after this happened, I still wake up screaming from the nightmares, and sometimes talk about Mike in my sleep. To this day he haunts me, but I work every day to get better. When I first left him, I just tried to drown him and myself at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. I now try to fight the ghosts of him with writing and helping others.