Growing up

I forget to come back to this blog a lot... I get busy, but when there are things that are bothering me I write about them here. I don't have anyone to talk to, and if there's someone out there who reads this and cares... Thank you. Recently I turned 20, on October 16th. It feels surreal to say the least. I remember when I was 16 and started this blog. A lot has changed. People come and go- I never would have imagined it'd turn out like this, but here we are. Alone in a city where I know no one, I have no family, no friends, and I barely have a job. I WANT to get help for whatever mental illness I have from the trauma of ... that. I want to be happy. I want to wake up every morning with something to look forward to. Because I'm scared. Everyday. Constantly. My worst fear, I think about it everyday. Something that doesn't even pertain to me anymore. I'm so afraid of pedophiles. What happened to me when I was 11 has ruined me, completely. And maybe that was their goal. I don't know. I will never understand the mentality it takes to look at children with lustful eyes. There is nothing to be desired. My virginity, my innocence... that was not yours to take. I don't know if I was the first child they raped, the last, or even the only one. But I know that there are disgusting excuses for human beings out there. My body was left broken. A child's body is too small and too delicate to be used like that. I am no longer small. I no longer look like a child. I'm 5'9 and have a "womanly" figure. I am not desirable to pedophiles, but I always feel watched. I feel like though my body is mature, my small & childish frame I once possessed is always visible if you look hard enough. I have nightmares about becoming physically small and not being able to run away. I just need to get it off my chest. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder if my body became this way as a defense mechanism. I felt like I grew into a woman's body while I was still a girl. Soon after the "incident" happened, I was 12. I started physically maturing. And it scared me. I was busty from a young age, and it felt like older men looked at me more and more. I don't want men to look at me for the body I didn't choose. I don't want men to look at me period. I couldn't tell if they were looking at me because I was a child or because I was a child with a "voluptuous" figure. I didn't care anymore. This body I possess is tainted. Since that day I've felt disgusting. Guilty, even. I didn't want to be a "lolita" or "nymphette," I just wanted to be a child. Sometimes in the mirror it seems my flesh is rotting. Sometimes I see myself and think I'm looking at a corpse, or something that used to be alive. Physically, it feels like everything inside me has putrefied into black mush. It feels like there are no longer complete intestines and organs, just a pile of black, rotting guts. I keep thinking there's maggots coming out from inside me. I'm so paranoid that I'm rotting from the inside out and becoming a host for maggots and roaches. Maybe it's a form of self hate, or maybe even my mind trying to convince me I'm just "meat." But I don't like to believe that I am. That's not what I want to be, so that's not what I will believe. I am nobody's doll, nobody's piece of meat, and nobody's fucktoy. Though I stand by that, it doesn't change what my mind tries to convince me of. My insides still feel like they're decaying. I still feel the insects crawling. I don't know if that will ever go away, but I hope for a day where I can look at myself and believe I'm okay. I'm trying so hard to move forward on my own, but it's hard. Despite my "cold" and "harsh" exterior, I do have feelings. I'm not a robot. I don't want to be alone. I want a sense of normalcy. Though I don't know entirely what it's like to live a "normal" life, I wish I could. I know I've gotten off topic... I came here to talk about my fear of pedophiles, but this blog is the only place I have to share my feelings. And I'm scared. Right now. I'm scared of dying alone. If I were to die today, there would be no worried family members, there would be no search party. When my sister and I ran away, our parents genuinely didn't care. My sister was adopted, so she didn't have a very big connection to our parents... but neither did I, and I was their biological child. My parents were both unstable, unfit for family life. My dad would get so irritated that he would grab me by the hair and throw me to the ground. If I didn't clean my room exactly how he liked, he would come in and destroy my things and make me start again. I was constantly called stupid and useless. Maybe something that contributed to me being a vulnerable child. My mom would yell at me about how I looked and would threaten me at times, then would cry to me that she was sorry. As stated in a previous post, our parents weren't home the day I was raped. I never told them when they came home. Or the day after. Or ever. I didn't feel like I could trust them. I already felt dirty and repulsive, and I figured they'd make me feel that even more so. I had enough at that point. I didn't want to to be around them anymore. I was finished with the abuse. At 14, (my sister 13) I decided I was leaving. My sister wanted to come with me. I didn't want her to stay with our parents anyways, so we planned to run away together. One single thing made me snap. One thing made me realize we didn't deserve the life we were living. But things had already been destroyed. Our choice was final. My family was even more broken than before; I was distant, my sister was unhappy, my parents fought constantly... I wanted to be our savior. I was just fucking things up more and more. I was making mistake after mistake. One stupid decision as an 11 year old, and several more mistakes later, I realized I had lost everything. And I didn't have much to begin with. My sister, the only person I wanted to protect, was gone. In a split second. And I can never unsee what happened to her. My one mistake had snowballed into a life time of despair & a series of bad luck. I kept think about what kind of people started this for me. To hurt a child, you must be very sick. And that's what pedophiles are. They're sick, vile, disgusting monsters. Even if they have "no desire to hurt children," they are still awful. The desire to have sex with a child is the desire to kill them. Looking at a child with lustful intent is appalling. These people ruin lives. And I am a product of that. I cried every night hoping my sister would never go through the same thing. If anyone looked at her that way, I would do anything to stop it. Even if the men who raped me don't say they're "attracted to children," the desire was there. The loss of all morality was there. To even consider it, especially towards a child, your sense of reality was already gone. There is no single excuse. None in the entire world. I did not "look older than 11." I looked 11. You deserve no sympathy. I can never forgive you. I don't know your names, and I can't remember your faces... but when, or if I ever see you again, I will know. My life has gone to shit because of my 1 mistake, and your inability to see other people as human beings. I lost everything because of this. And sometimes, I truly wish I could start over. I don't enjoy being miserable. I don't enjoy looking like the face of death. But I don't know what to do anymore. I have nowhere to go. I try so hard but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I research online for help but it just isn't enough. I want to live. I don't want things to end like this; I want closure to the thing that led me where I am now. I'm getting older... I'm not the determined 15, even 16 or 17 year old I used to be. I have to grow up... But inside, there's just so much fear and doubt, it's hard to know what I want as an adult. I'm 20 years old. I'm not that little girl anymore. I'm not a teenager with a dream of new life. When I started this blog, despite being cynical, I was still hopeful of changing. There's no one to tell me I've changed, and no one knows what I'm like. Maybe I can change. I need something to keep me going. I need to know I'll be okay. Recovery doesn't mean forgetting about the past, it's moving towards a future. The sky I want to see is blue. No more grey, no more feeling like I live where there's no sun. I want my reflection to smile back at me. And I want to see my real face again. I sound like a dreamer right now... so maybe I still have hope in me. But until then, I will carry on as long as I can. I have to live right now. I have to stop looking back so much. Thank you if you listen to me, even if you don't know who I am or don't care.

-Love, Aiko Ayumi.

The Day

Last night I woke up in a panic. I woke up crying. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know where I was for a minute. My room. My cold, dark room. Why did I think something had changed? I’m still here. I wish I could go back in time. I’m sure future me would too. I wish I could tell myself things would be okay in the future. I’ve been alone for... 5...6 years now... It’s painful. It’s quiet. It’s boring. I want a hug. I want to feel another person, because at this point, no one else feels real. I don’t even feel real. I feel trapped in a nightmare. I’m forced to survive alone. I just want my sister back... I want my mom... I want someone to tell me it’s ok. I don’t want to be alone any more. 

I don’t like this. 

It’s always dark here. 

It’s May 22nd. The anniversary. The day my innocence was stolen. The day I realized humanity is evil, cruel, foul. I woke up sweating, I wanted to vomit. I felt it again. And again. And again. It’s so disgusting. 

#3.

I’m back. It took over a year, but, here I am. I did a lot in the past year. My second to last post went into detail describing the horror I went through at age 11. I’ve tried, for so long, to overcome this, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that this truly HAS ruined my life. I did it. I went back to that spot. I went to the place my innocence was stolen from me. I went to the spot the worst of this misfortune started. I went to my grave. I could swear, I felt it all over again. That feeling was probably one of the worst things I had ever felt in my life. I felt... trapped- much more than when I had held the clothes again for the first time. This was a different kind of trapped. I was there. I was standing in the very spot my soul died. I wanted to cry, but... I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I was feeling; maybe I wasn’t feeling at all. I walked through the alley, pocket knife in hand- I wasn’t taking any chances this time. Truth be told, I didn’t know why I was there. I had no reason to be there. Nothing had changed. When i was 11, I got stabbed in the side when they raped me. Something came over me, and my scar tingled... I looked down, and  

I was standing over it. I looked down and saw the blood stains. My blood rested on this concrete for 6 years. I remember so vividly, sitting there, wishing they had killed me. That’s when it hit me. The tears finally fell. I was so tired of being afraid of one spot- I was so tired of being afraid of everywhere. I was so tired of being scared. I was so tired of being tired. I could hardly breathe- and I felt that all too familiar feeling once again. I hadn’t had a panic attack this bad in... God knows how long. There I was again. Crying. Unable to breathe. Clenching my sides. Feeling... off. Feeling exactly that feeling from 6 years ago. Fear so deep I couldn’t hold it in. I wet myself. At this age. Everything was exactly the same. I was wearing a tank top. A skirt. A jacket. Nothing had changed. I would walk home in shame once again. Only this time, my sister wouldn’t be there to greet me. So I left. I knew what I needed, and what I wanted. I wanted to leave from that spot. I didn’t want to be there. So I left. I got home, and once again, I was greeted by nobody. 

While on the topic, I should finally disclose what happened to my sister. She was killed. She was hit by a train. I know it wasn’t “my fault,” but I will always feel like it is. If I hadn’t contaminated her mind with the idea of running away, she would still be here with me. We were standing on the side of the train tracks, in a more abandoned part of the city. We got into an argument. She wanted to go home. I told her to hang on for just a little while longer- we would be free soon. She wouldn’t listen to me. She was crying and crying, stepping onto the train tracks unknowingly. If i had just 5 more seconds in that moment, I could’ve helped her. She was reaching out for a hug. “I’m sorry, Aiko.” And then the train came out of nowhere. The last I saw of her... she smiled at me. It’s my fault she’s gone. It’s all my fucking fault that I’m alone. I pushed her over the edge. My own fucking sister is gone because of me. She’s never coming back. I can never say goodbye. I cant hold her hand anymore. I didn’t get the chance to hug her and say I was sorry. And I never told her I loved her that day. She probably died thinking I was mad at her. I’m sorry, *****. I love you. I really do. 

After that happened, I couldn’t stand myself. I hated looking in the mirror. I hated seeing the bitch that killed my sister. I feel like I killed my sister. I started wearing a mask. Now with the mask and sunglasses I had already worn prior to cover my eyes... my face is hardly visible. When I see myself in the mirror without my glasses and mask, I feel sick. I feel like throwing up. My face warps when I see it. I don’t think I see me anymore. 

I don’t know who I am. 

Am I Aiko Ayumi? 

Or am I what’s left of her?