27/08/26 - MYSTERIOUS SKIN AND UNEARTHED SKELETONS

TW for sexual assault, mental health issues

For a while, when I was sixteen, I would hallucinate mushrooms growing from the cracks in the sidewalks when I walked home from school. My friend had died, I was under a lot of family and academic stress. I kept drinking cough syrup and thinking about spores and disease. When I was eighteen, I had the biggest exams of my life. I hallucinated Julian Casablancas in my room, in the library on the plastic chair next to me as I studied, feeding me forkfulls of oats. I think my mind conjured him up to take care of me, an outlet to mentally check-out. Now, at twenty-one, I have began to halluncinate a faceless man, in monochrome. Sometimes, he speaks Russian, sometimes Malayalam, never Tamil. So I never understand him, but he puts his hand on my cheek, when I close my eyes in the shower or am walking by myself at night. Strokes my hair when I lie on my side, in bed.

I feel shame in my own solitude, I think. Or at least, I used to. I know why. I'm not afraid to say it anymore. When I was nine years old, I was sexually assaulted. Even that word feels so fucking small to describe it. I never told anyone that I had a crush on him, before he did what he did. And then, he did it. And there was just so much blood, sticky between my thighs and I had no clue what to do. I hit my elbow on the dining room chair and it split open. My mom yelled at me for it, after. The only person at home besides him, was my housekeeper. Bless her—she had never healed—she was from the more rural parts of a country far away, and she took care of me. She used soft fingers to wipe and wash me, applied creams onto me for days after, but swore me to secrecy. She grabbed my small shoulders, made me look at her, and she told me, "You cannot tell anyone about this. They will think you are broken. You will never get married, because of this if they knew. It's a shameful thing to tell people."

She didn't mean to, but she changed something within me. I never told anyone. At nine, I braved it mostly on my own. Shared a room, shared my GameBoy with this older boy, this devil, until he left. Something changed within me, I was not the same. The moods, the psychosis, the reproductive health issues, the hypersexuality. Teenage years were rough. Today, I watched 'Mysterious Skin' and Neil says, "But what happened that summer....is a huge part of me." I think as much as I try not to think about it, it defines almost all of me, which is what I've been afraid of. I want someone to take care of me now; I think I've wanted that and never received it since that had happened.

I don't tell people I hallucinate sometimes. I don't tell people a lot, because this shame for myself doesn't go away. I will always be broken. For now, I am so chock-full with loneliness that my brain has to supply me with an amalgamation of all the things I want in a safe man and put him next to me. Today, I watched 'Mysterious Skin', and I had to throw up after. But, it made me feel less alone. I'm not ashamed of myself for things beyond my control. I'm not ashamed for liking him and smiling so widely when he walked into my living room that I couldn't have anticipated what he would do to me. I was writing towards some greater point but I don't know what it is. I doubt I ever will.

I'm not crazy, okay? I still don't feel like telling anyone about this, not because they won't understand or because of this deepseated shame. I don't want to tell anyone because it's already happened. I can't change anything about it. It's better when there isn't a lump in my chest about it all the time. Whatever.

I wished with all my heart that we could just leave this world behind. Rise like two angels in the night and magically...disappear.