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.